A Perfect Glass of Wine by Brian St. Pierre

Author:Brian St. Pierre [Brian St. Pierre]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC
Published: 1996-04-12T04:00:00+00:00

BLOTTING IT OUT

A GOOD WAY TO CLEAR UP SPILLED WINE IS TO POUR A GENEROUS AMOUNT OF SALT ON IT IMMEDIATELY AND PAT IT DOWN, THEN LEAVE IT FOR TEN MINUTES OR SO. THE SALT WILL BLOT UP MUCH OF THE WINE. SCRAPE THE SALT AWAY AND WET THE BLOT THOROUGHLY WITH CLUB SODA, WHICH WILL DILUTE WHAT LITTLE REMAINS OF THE WINE. IF IT’S A CARPET, DRY THE WET SPOT WITH PAPER TO WES; IF A TABLE-CLOTH, WASH IT WHILE STILL DAMP.

Two other aspects of style deserve a mention. One is a recent tendency to blend in a little bit of Petite Sirah, Syrah, or Carignane, for some robust complexity. It’s no bad thing at all, but a return to an Italianate tradition of a hundred years ago, and well worth trying if you see it mentioned on a back label. The other is the debate about oak, which comes up with so many red wines, but seems to center more around Zinfandel these days. A number of winemakers who want to enhance the seriousness of their wines, or their reputations, or maybe just their prices, age their wines in small, new, French oak barrels until the wood flavor predominates. There is a cult around these wines, an authoritarian kind of enthusiasm; I don’t question their sincerity, just the harmonics of the wines being worshipped, which to me resemble Mozart played by a marching band—good tunes, shame about the orchestration.

Matching Zinfandel and food divides critics thoroughly. Some feel it’s almost too adaptable, back to the jack-of-all-trades master-of-none notion, some that it fits most meats and some birds and even salmon beautifully. I think the problem is the blackberry fruit, which can sometimes make the wine seem sweeter than it is, and the subtle but definite variations in fullness, weight, and tannin from one wine to the next. That said, my preference is for very lightly oaked, medium-weight, moderately tannic Zinfandel (“claret style,” in other words, and pretty much the majority), about five years old. With it I heartily recommend pork of any sort, especially when cooked with a lot of herbs and garlic, barbecued chicken if the weather’s cool, sausages, and especially barbecued ribs—there’s a quartet sung among sauce, smoke, meat, and wine that defines harmony.

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