This is the weekly colum
With Christmas/holiday feasts coming soon, what is the ideal alcohol percentage for wine paired with food? The answer is 10-14%. Why?
U.S. labeling laws are loony, so the ABV amount on the label can be inaccurate, but this is a discussion of wine-food pairing quality not bureaucratic gobbledygook. Lower alcohol wines allow the grapes to show off and complement food rather than flaunt over-ripe fruit and alcohol.
We got to high alcohol wines several decades ago when American wine drinkers were neophytes. Big, blowsy, high alcohol red wines tended to get higher scores, and high scores moved bottles off shelves.
My theory on how this came to be: wine tasting can be intense. Professional tasting protocols—small pour, see, swirl, smell, sip, spit, write evaluation—usually involve multiple wines. For some reviewers that could be 30 or more wines at a time. When tasting that many, nuances vanish. Yes, you spit the wine, but the alcohol and flavors still dull your senses. Wines with the most impact on dulled senses—over-ripe, high alcohol wines. Most people do not taste and spit 30 wines at a sitting, so “professionals” evaluate in a different world than average drinkers.
For a grape variety to best show its stuff, it is harvested a skosh earlier than when higher-scoring, higher alcohol wines are harvested. For higher alcohol, grapes must hang longer to get riper to boost sugar that will be converted into alcohol. That creates wines that are more fruit-forward and concentrated and alcoholic. It creates wine that appears to be slightly sweet—from ripe grapes, not residual sugar—and sweeter because alcohol fools our palate’s sweetness evaluator. Sweeter wine sells, especially to occasional wine drinkers.
The process creates wines with less acidity that are less authentic to the variety of the grape. It also creates wines that pair less well with food. Big alcohol wines often are not even intended to be food wines. They are more “cocktail” wines, an alternative to people who aren’t into tequila shots. They are wines to be sipped milling about at an event or sitting at a bar ogling tonight’s prospects.
OK, it is your life, live it as you wish. For me, wine’s best place is as part of a meal, to be savored over time and food and convivial conversation. Wines with less alcohol that more accurately reflect the grape, terroir, and skill of the winemakers are a better fit for that paradigm. Something to consider for the holidays.
Last round
Why do Christmas trees hate knitting? They keep dropping their needles. Wine time, and Merry Christmas.
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