100 Wine Blogs, 100 Days Blog 18 Is Red Wine Really Heart Healthy?

18. Is red wine really heart healthy? Can wine be destructive? Can you benefit from drinking red wine?

Heart disease is the number one cause of death in women in the United States. According to the American Heart Association, Friday is “Wear Red Day” to show your support for those who have heart disease and to spread the word about heart disease.

Can you benefit from drinking red wine?

Drinking one to two glasses (5 ounces is one glass) of red wine a day may keep the heart disease away. It can lower blood pressure, lower LDL (low down lousy) cholesterol, raise HDL (highly desirable) cholesterol, prevent and reverse the attack of oxygen on body tissues, and may reduce the risk of ischemic strokes, heart attacks and blood clots by acting as a blood thinner inhibiting blood clotting. It also supplies antioxidants such as phenolic compounds: bioflavonoids, (in red grapes), non-flavonoids such as resveratrol (in red wine) and many more.

Can wine be destructive?

I used to work as a nurse in the Emergency Department and have seen a lot of destruction when it comes to alcohol consumption. Approximately 35% of all hospital admissions are alcohol-related with over one hundred thousand people dying each year in the United States because of alcohol abuse. In the UK, alcohol-related hospital admissions have risen over 47% since 2004, with over one million alcohol-related hospital admissions just in the last five years. Overconsumption of alcohol over time can cause heart disease and cirrhosis of the liver. This is a problem across the world and is a downside to drinking alcohol. It can be very addictive and should be consumed in moderation, which could be why there is no prescription for the use of alcohol in the medical industry.

Is wine really heart healthy?

Wine is heart healthy, but it can be destructive if you are not a light to moderate wine drinker. If you binge drink or have too much alcohol and are not able to drink in moderation, it is best to stay away. Even though the doctor might not prescribe it, drinking 1-2 glasses of red wine per day or several days of the week, may keep you Heart Healthy.

I am wearing red tomorrow on behalf of red wine being heart healthy!

Tell me your thoughts, make them funny, keep them nice and educate me.
Bon Vin!
Veronica

100 Wine Blogs, 100 Days Blog 17 How to Host a Wine Tasting in Your Home?

17. I would like to talk about wine parties and different ways to have fun hosting a party. In the last three blogs, we learned how to throw a great wine party, how to have your guests blend wines to make their favorites and how to identify wine aromas. This article will discuss how to host a wine tasting in your home. These are ways you can enjoy common interests without it becoming a boring ritual.

How to host a wine tasting in your home?

Invite your wine loving friends. Decide what type of tasting you are going to have. Will it be a sit-down tasting with tasting mats and tasting sheets? Will you have a spittoon, water and crackers available? Do you have a white table cloth if you are doing a sit-down tasting? It is better to see the color of the wine for observation with a white background. Do you want to have food or appetizers or should you have only plain crackers or bread to cleanse the palate? Remember to tell your guests that there is to be no smoking and for them not to wear heavy perfume or cologne. This can interfere with the tasting.

Do any wines need to be opened prior to the tasting? If so, have them ready to go. Some of the wines may need to be opened right at the time of tasting such as sparkling wines. You should pour about 2-3 ounces in each glass only. Do not pour a full glass since your guests will be trying several types of wines.

When you are pouring the wine and deciding the order of which wines to try first, pour white before red and light before heavy. Pour young wines before old if you are having a vintage tasting. Vintage tastings can be fun. You can try the same wine but at different ages.

Do you want to have a tasting that is blind? Your guests will taste from bottles that are inside sacks and will have either no information or limited information regarding what they are trying. It is fun if they try to guess which wine they are drinking, even if they are not experienced with wines. They can then get familiar in learning how to taste wines and differentiate one wine from another. It is fun to see who guessed right.

Remember that sight is used to determine the color of the wine, which is best against a white background. Smell is then used to determine the aromas the wine has captured by swirling your glass and taking in a sniff. Taste is used next to determine if you like the wine or not by swishing and swirling it in your mouth. The sense of touch is used to determine the texture of the wine. From all of this, you can reveal the overall feel of each wine and the qualities that make a great wine to you. Did any of the wines capture you?

Tell me your thoughts, make them funny, keep them nice and educate me.
Bon Vin!
Veronica

100 Wine Blogs, 100 Days Blog 16 How to Identify Wine Aromas?

16. I would like to talk about wine parties and different ways to have fun hosting a party. In the last two blogs, we learned how to throw a great wine party and how to have your guests blend wines to make their favorites. This article will discuss how to identify wine aromas. The next article will be about how to host a wine tasting in your home. These are ways you can enjoy common interests without it becoming a boring ritual.

How to identify wine aromas?

Another way to host a great wine party is to focus on the sense of smell. When we drink wine, we rely on several senses to learn about the wine. We first use our sense of sight to look at the wine’s color. We then use our sense of smell which may determine if the wine is drinkable. We use our sense of taste to determine flavors in the wine and sense of feel to determine the texture. These senses give us the color, aroma, flavor, texture and overall feel for the wine. Mastering these techniques makes us enjoy wine with a better understanding.

One of the ways that I like to learn about wine with my friends is to throw a “Wine Aroma” party. This can be done informally at your home, office or a local restaurant. Gather some friends and get started. First, you will need a “Wine Bouquet Aroma Kit” sold by Wine Enthusiast, or you can create your own scents by purchasing some of the items that are similar to the smells that you sense in the wine you taste. For instance, you can purchase a lemon, banana, dark chocolate, honey, green pepper, or any other item that you may want for your wine party. In the Wine Bouquet Aroma Kit, there are thirty-six wine bouquet aromas that are usually sensed in wine.

Wines will have characteristic scents that occur frequently differentiating a Sauvignon Blanc from a Syrah from a Cabernet. As you get to know the differences from training your memory and your sense of smell, you may be able to differentiate one wine from another.

For your Wine Aroma party, you can mix up the viles and have each person try to determine which aroma they smell. By trying to identify the scent, this trains your memory to know the difference between each scent and the aromas you may find in each different wine.

Another party idea is to open up some bottles of wine and try to determine which aromas are in the wine by matching up the scents in the viles with the scents in the wine.

Who’s got the best nose in the bunch? They should get to take home a bottle of wine!

Tell me your thoughts, make them funny, keep them nice and educate me.
Bon Vin!
Veronica

100 Wine Blogs, 100 Days Blog 15 How to have your guests blend wines to make their favorites?

15. I would like to talk about wine parties and different ways to have fun hosting a party. In the last blog, we learned how to throw a great wine party. This article will talk about how to have your guests blend wines to make their favorites. The next two articles will be about how to identify wine aromas and how to host a wine tasting in your home. These are ways you can enjoy common interests without it becoming a boring ritual.

How to have your guests blend wines to make their favorites?

There are kits that you can purchase that are on the market such as “fusebox” from Crushpad. The kit will come with the wine for blending. Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Malbec and Cabernet Franc are included in the California wine kit. The kit will also come with a blending placemat, corkscrew, recipe cards, wine evaluation cards, pipettes and a graduated cylinder. There is a mystery wine that is included that has already been blended. Once you get good at blending wines and how the different variations of wine tastes together, you can decide with your guests what the mystery wine might be.

You do not need to use this wine kit if you want to purchase these items separately. You can decide on a region or area and purchase some wines you think would be best for blending. Keep in mind that you should purchase wines that are not already blended.

First, you will each set up your area on a table that can accommodate all of the participants so that you can comment and share your thoughts together. Each person will need these basics for any wine tasting: water and crackers or bread to cleanse your palate between wines, a spit cup, paper towels, blending placemat, a pen or pencil and five wine glasses. You will be evaluating each wine that you create.

You start by tasting each of the wines by themselves before blending to get a feel for what each one tastes like. You can then either use the recipe cards that come with the kit to make a wine or create your own blend. For instance, the 1997 Opus One from Napa, California is one of the recipe cards in my kit. It gives the blend that you can recreate with the wines that are provided. The evaluation cards let you rate the color, aroma, flavor, texture and overall feel for the wine. You can decide what blend you like best. You can compare your blend with other participants. This is fun, easy and can become a habit.

If you do come up with an incredible blend and you are feeling daring, you can actually contact Crushpad to create your wine. All of you can split the cost and end up with cases of your favorite blend.

At Crushpad, they let you actually go to their facilities and help in the creation of your wine. You can sort the grapes, help in the fermentation or even taste your creation throughout the process. It is a fun and exciting adventure!

Tell me your thoughts, make them funny, keep them nice and educate me.
Bon Vin!
Veronica

100 Wine Blogs, 100 Days Blog 14 How to Throw a Great Wine Party?

14. In the next four articles, I would like to talk about wine parties and different ways to have fun hosting a party. How to throw a great wine party? How to have your guests blend wines to make their favorites? How to identify wine aromas? How to host a wine tasting in your home? These are ways you can enjoy common interests without it becoming a boring ritual.

How to throw a great party?

Decide how many people you are going to invite. Do they all have an interest in wine? What knowledge do they have about wines? What type of party do you want to have? There are so many different choices when it comes to wine. You can have a wine party and pair it up with fruit, cheese, dessert, chocolate or even a full seven course meal.

When you decide what to pair your wine with, you will need to pick wines that match up and bring out the best in the wine and the food. You can also determine what you are serving by what time of day your party takes place. If it is late evening, you may want to pair it up with desserts or appetizers. If it is every evening you may want a full course menu. If it is in the afternoon, a brunch can always be fun or if in the morning a breakfast will do just fine. Many people think that they cannot have a wine party in the early morning. Get that out of your head. Early morning is the best time to taste wine. Your taste buds are alive and ready to take on some new blends of textures and flavors.

Where should you have your wine party?

You can decide to have your party in your home. You may want to rent out a club house or room in a restaurant for your party if it is larger than what your home can handle. You may want to have a smaller party in order to focus more on the wine and less on the party. One of my favorite ways to throw a party like this is something I call “house jumping”. Each of your friends will have a portion of a meal at their house. You can have a designated driver, and go from house to house having first the appetizer at one person’s home, the main meal at another, the dessert at another and split up the homes and the meals. You can focus at each home on one wine and one meal. This makes it fun for everyone to be able to showcase their wine and their meal and not have to worry about the entire menu. It also is fun to talk about in either a limo or van where you can all be transported safely to each other’s home.

So, that takes care of who, what, when, where and how to throw a great wine party. Next we will talk about how to have fun wine blending with your friends.

Tell me your thoughts, make them funny, keep them nice and educate me.
Bon Vin!
Veronica

100 Wine Blogs, 100 Days Blog 13 What should you drink your wine in?

13. I guess for some people, it doesn’t matter what they drink their wine in, as long as they get to have some. Well, after several wine blogs, I think you have gotten to know that I have a big pet peeve about my wine glass.

What should a wine glass look like?

Stem: A wine glass needs to have a stem. Not too long but just enough to be able to hold the glass without touching the bowl. If you touch the bowl of the glass, you will change the temperature of your wine through the heat of the palm of your hand, warming the wine unnaturally. There are some companies that are opting to leave off the stem. Although it may be a new trend, I tend to like a stem on my glass, just how I like my roses!

Bowl: The bowl needs to be able to hold my wine and should not be too small. Wine needs to have room to develop flavor.

Lip: The lip needs to be thin and tulip-shaped. For white wine, it should be a little narrow at the top. For red wine, it should be tulip-shaped but not as narrow as the white.

Champagne or Sparkling Wines

My Champagne or sparkling wine needs to be in a champagne glass. If it’s got bubbles, I want a thin tapered flute to hold the flavor and keep the sparkle.

Reds and Whites

Container: Yes, it has to be served in a wine glass. No plastic please. A wine glass needs to be clear. No etching, color or design on the glass. You need to be able to visualize the color of your wine while it is in the glass. There is one exception for me as far as design goes. I do not mind seeing a winery logo in a small area on the glass. These types of glasses are fun to collect and I find myself having favorites that I use at home. I use a Laird Family Estate glass in a Chardonnay style or a Robert Mondavi Winery glass in a Reisling style for my whites. I use a Kunde or Silver Oak glass which both happen to be in a Bordeaux style for my reds.

You not do always have to buy the best wine glasses either. Get that out of your head. What if you break one of those $80 crystal glasses? Riedel is one of the glass companies that many people are familiar with or have heard of but there are many glass companies that make a wine experience more delectable. In the end, you have to drink your wine in a glass that makes the wine taste good to you.

Tell me your thoughts, make them funny, keep them nice and educate me.
Bon Vin!
Veronica

100 Wine Blogs, 100 Days Blog 12 What is Botrytis Cinerea better known as Noble Rot? Where can I find some?

12. Botrytis Cinerea is what they call a good mold. Noble rot is a mixture of sugar and acid which makes a flavor that comes from the grape being left on the vine to “rot,” get “moldy” and shrivel-up. This concentrates the flavors of sugar, acid and juice in the grape and keeps it contained. It makes for the best dessert wines the world has to offer. In different countries, noble rot is called different things. For instance, in California, it may be called “late harvest”. The grapes are left on the vine longer than the other grapes and the harvest is…well….late. This makes the wine a little more expensive; the ones that also come in the cute little bottles. Sometimes they are even called liquid gold because they may be gold in color with a rich taste. A dessert wine to covet.

Two of my California Late Harvest favorites:

2005 Dolce Napa Valley Late Harvest Wine (375mL)

Dolce happens to be one that I have in my stash of great wines. Check out my Dolce pictures on my blog page. “Dolce embraces a deceptively simple philosophy: the pursuit of perfection in the art of late harvest winemaking. Dolce was created in 1985 by the partners of Far Niente. With a classic blend of late harvest Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc, Dolce is the only American winery dedicated to producing a single late harvest wine,” according to Dolce. However, with this said, there are other wineries in California that do produce late harvest wines. This wine goes for $85.00 a bottle (375mL), the larger size is sold out.

Another one of my favorites is made by Freemark Abbey and goes for $40.00 a bottle (375mL). Made with 100% White Riesling grapes in 100% stainless steel tanks, 9.8% alcohol and they only produced 259 cases for 2008.

2008 Edelwein Gold Late Harvest Rielsing (375mL)

Vintage and Winemaker's Notes:
Edelwein Gold is a great representation of a heavily botrytised Riesling from Freemark Abbey. The color is golden straw with a slight greenish hue. The aroma overflows the glass with mandarin orange, peach blossoms and apricot with hints of honeysuckle and pear. The mouthfeel is viscous and the flavor full with white peach and apricot laced with honey. The sweet, crisp finish has a beautiful balance that lasts for several minutes on the palate. Enjoy!

Have I made your mouth water? Tell me about your worldwide favorite dessert wines!

Tell me your thoughts, make them funny, keep them nice and educate me.
Bon Vin!
Veronica