Wine Color Recognition

The color of wine is as important as its taste because it tells us its journey from grape harvest to bottling. To view the color of the wine effectively, the traditional way is to tilt the wine glass against a white background. Very often, in a restaurant setup, a white background in a dimmed environment is almost impossible. What I do is always bring with me a flexible, battery powered reading light to act as the light source that shines into the wine glass. Similarly, it produces a curved edge of varying depths through which the wine appearance can be viewed.

In a professional wine tasting session, the judge will study the few attributes of a wine appearance – Clarity, Color, Viscosity and Bubbles. A bottled wine that is cloudy or hazy may be considered unacceptable by most consumers. It is because in a commercial winery, sediment should be racked off or finned by the time the wine is bottled. Although a cloudy wine may not necessarily taste bad, it could affect one’s perceived quality.

A wine’s color can be described by its hue and depth. Hue is defined as the shades or tint whereas depth describes the brightness or intensity. A wine’s color indicates the maturity of grape at harvest, duration of skin contact, barrel aging etc. One can almost imagine the journey of viticulture and vinification of the wine. For example, a colorless white wine may indicate that the grapes are immature whereas a yellowish color wine could be due to the over-mature grapes. In a red wine, the longer the skin contact, the more intense is the color. When a white wine is aged in barrel, gold tints are increased whereas a red wine will lose its color density. Eventually, all wines take on a tawny brown shades over the long aging process. When the wine glass is tilted against a white background, we can observe a range of color characteristics, a gradation of wine depths. The rim of wine gives the best guess of its age. A purplish rim indicates youth in a red wine, a brownish tint on the rim is the result of aging. To judge the color depth, simply look directly down into the wine glass from the top.

Common color descriptors include purplish red, ruby, mahogany, tawny, pale yellow, straw yellow, gold, amber ..etc Qualifiers such as pale, medium, dark help to express the color intensity, giving a fuller description to the wine.


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By Cher Lim
Wine Treasures Pte Ltd
Email: limce@singnet.com.sg

Experimenting on Chateau Haut Brion, 1989

I have always wanted to perform a subjective test on a well made wine to determine the effects of serving temperature on the wine. When I received a bottle of Haut Brion 1989, I decided to chill it in the refrigerator to bring the temperature down to 7C and quickly open to be served. My first taste of the wine was taken when temperature rose to 9C. The wine is quite “closed”, with minimum aroma and slightly pronounced tannins that is higher than expected for a 17 year old wine. The wine seems to be sharp and very structured. As temperature rises rather linearly (2C every 3 minutes in an air-conditioned room at 23C), the wine profile changes from a dormant mode to an active one. The wine now has a plum and cherry-like nose underlined by some smoky characters. Its tannins has softened over time, especially so when the wine rose to about 18C. The sweet character is more pronounced, giving body to the wine. In other words, the wine is more volatile as temperature rises. Exceeding 25C, the wine profile begins to fatten, losing the aroma and palate complexity. The body seems to overpower the palate which makes the wine less appealing. The acidity also begins to bite a little at the back of the throat with a little more rough edges than desired. It is therefore best served at 16-18C, keeping the volatile in check while giving an expressive nose to the drinker.

With this experiment, I may conclude that our taste buds perceive taste differently over a temperature range of 9C-25C. We can detect sweetness more readily when temperature warms up. Our tongue has a rather small tasting window as far as temperature is concerned. The 16-18C range seems to be an optimum window and serving beyond this window will do great injustice to a fine wine.

Copyright of Wine Treasures Pte Ltd

By Cher Lim
Wine Treasures Pte Ltd
http://www.wine-treasures.com
Email: limce@singnet.com.sg

Can we blend our own wine?

Wine blending is a common practice in the winemaking world. It is used to overcome certain deficiencies or defects in the must, to balance the wine or to enhance complexity. In other words, we blend wine either to correct some misses or to improve the wine. This technique is made popular by Bordeaux when climatic conditions become challenging and straight varietal wines do not usually turn out to be easy drinking. The famous Bordeaux blend consisting of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc has since become the most common blend in winemaking practices. In the case of Bordeaux, blending begins in the vineyard where the vines are planted with mixed varieties. In most wine producing regions, blending occurs at the must level before fermentation through any stage during wine processing. Without going into too much technical details, the parameters that can be modified are the wine’s acidity, pH, alcohol level, color, tannin, aroma and flavor, volatile acidity, residual sugar, off-flavor components. Where some of these parameters are quantifiable, a mathematical formula was derived by Dr Magalit to determine the amount of wines to be used to arrive at the desired value. The formula is P1+P2*X=Pb*(1+X) where P1 and P2 are the two wines to be blended. Although the concept seems simple, there are many underlying rules to a successful blend (to be covered later in the blog as this is a topic by itself!)

A common problem related to stabilization occurs if blending is done at the advanced stage of processing. We can see this in the form of precipitation in the must. Therefore, it is always better to blend the wine much earlier. A cool down (5-10C) period of 2-3 weeks is recommended to stabilize the must and observe for any irregularities. It is much like a pre-marriage arrangement where two parties get to know each other before the big day.

So, blending itself is pretty scientific and has its own constraints. I will not try to blend two finished products together since the environment and the chemistry of the wine are not ideal for such activity. The best approach is to work with a winemaker to taste his blends during winemaking and provide your feedback to him in its composition. This of course requires a trained palate and years of experience. For wine enthusiasts, it will be a superb experience. For wine students, it will be a perfect opportunity to have your wine knowledge validated. Sort of a full circle activity.

Copyright of Wine Treasures Pte Ltd

Cher Lim
Wine Tresures Pte Ltd
Website: http://www.wine-treasures.com
Email: limce@singnet.com.sg

Calibrating your own palate

I am always curious in finding out the general palate composition of Singapore wine drinkers. This is because the local food culture is dominated by hot and sweet sauces in their cooking. Most of us are so used to the delicious local food that authentic cooking styles from other countries will need to be fused with the local preferences in order to attract the dinning crowd. It is no wonder the new world wine is doing very well in Singapore, especially those from Australia or other warmer climate. Having grapes from the warmer climate and utilizing the modern techniques of winemaking, new world wine has a fruity and medium bodied palate. The riper grapes also have a higher residual sugar in the wine, causing it to be less tannic (in the case of Red) and less acidic.

I spent most of my evenings in the restaurant mingling with customers, helping them select the wine that is most agreeable with their palate and the food ordered. For a restaurant that serves fusion western style food where the chef uses quite an innovative array of oriental sauces, the pairing of wine and food serves as a good platform to explore the different wine style. As you may recall my earliest article about umami, the fifth sense of our taste buds which is induced by the presence of MSG. It is a description of deliciousness in our mouth. Having food prepared with oriental sauces, the umami stimuli are already present in the food (derived from soya sauce, mushroom, scallop or prawn paste...). Therefore, the choice of wine styles can now be extended beyond our comfort zone.

To calibrate one's palate, we can start by summarizing our food preference. If we are worshippers of Singapore’s local delights, the warmer climate wines are naturally more agreeable with our palate. However, this also means we can now utilize the umami stimuli in the food to satisfy our palate requirement and match it with the cooler climate wine whose higher tannins will blend with the food to enhance the overall sense of deliciousness.

Shiraz from France’s Northen Rhone and Australia’s Barossa Valley has a different palate composition. The best food to go with the Rhone could be a stewed meat dish that will benefit from the peppery nature of the wine. The Barossa’s shiraz tend to be more smooth and sweet, therefore a peppery meat dish will be a great choice.

Copyright of Wine Treasures Pte Ltd

Cher Lim
Wine Treasures Pte Ltd
Website: http://www.wine-treasures.com
Email: limce@singnet.com.sg