Jul 20 2009
Widespread wine myths disproof
Surely you have heard about wine lots of interesting things. But are they really true or just were invented to spice up the mystery of its nature, history and development? Let us talk what curious things considering this magic beverage are real and what are just the result of our imagination and desire to exaggerate.
One of the most widespread myths touching the nature of wine is that the higher the price the better its quality. We are sure you know it isn’t true. But let us avoid proving that fact that expensive wine is not always a good one. You guess what kind of sort it can sometimes be.
Finest wines are produced from old vineyards. Well, wines made of old vineyards are really tasty and saturated, but the fact is that the older the vineyards the less quantity of grapes they give, of course, till the moment they get absolutely dry.
One more point is connected with the harmful nature of sulfites for humans. In fact, these natural preservatives are an integral part of any food wine. There are only few percents of persons who have a strong allergy on sulfites and they realize this point rather well not to risk their health. The majority of people receive no harm from these elements.
Rather silly myth considers wine filtration allegedly it spoils the taste of wine. Yes – unfiltered wine is really delicious. No – filtration does not spoil its flavor. Otherwise the majority of wines have had awful taste, but they haven’t.
There is no other proper wine lid as natural cork. The matter is that people simply got used to this custom closure. Nevertheless, more and more top wine producers change it on some alternative corks to prevent the spreading of possible infection and unreliability.
Screwcaps denote low wine prices as well. No, they don’t. The aspect is that earlier screwcaps were used really only for wines of low price. But nowadays the majority of winemakers prefer to apply exactly these handy versions of corks.
Greatest world wine production is European. Do not make rash conclusions! Surely Europe can be proud of its old customs, but it cannot say it has the world best territories for growing vines.
You can judge about wine quality due to its cork smell. Well, it is not absolute truth. To tell whether this wine bottle good or not you may according to its cork smell and wine taste together.
Only wine critics know better. Come on! Do you still believe in it? They are common people like we and can make mistakes. The same is about the opinion as if just wine experts know the sense of wine. Should we say that this myth was created by wine storage experts themselves to keep their good reputation?
Zinfandel is classified as a pink wine as well. No, no, no! In fact pink Zinfandel produced out of the red grape is called white zinfandel wine whereas red zinfandel wine characterized as robust and mellow one is real.
Best wines are labelled as “Reserve”. Though there are states which use this label for wines legally, there are still many countries, including United States, where the label “Reserve” has no juridical power and is applied in advertising aims.
55F is an ideal temperature for wine store indeed. Well, this temperature is used to be normal for a long storage of beverages. Nevertheless, the range of temperature for a proper storage of fine wines is much wider.
Similar to this point of view is that there is no matter what temperature of wine storage is. It is false opinion, of course. In fact extra hot temperature spoils wine in a moment, so it should not exceed the limit in 80F.
Young wine is nothing in comparison with old wine. Hmm… Sometimes young wine is better, while it looses its aroma and taste with the spin of time. Close to this one another opinion stands due to which old wines cannot be invaluable. But as we have already told not all of them are pretty enough.
Real white wine has no age. It is a general point of view. In fact many of them (such as, for instance, white burgundy wine and chenin blanc wine or gruner veltliner wine, german riesling wine and sauternes wine etc) have certain age of quality.
It is necessary to decant wine anyway. Truth. You must not think how to decant wine in case it is unripe or includes some sort of sediment.
Wine is of high quality when it has “tears” on the glass. Yeah, yeah, yeah… The only thing these “legs” can say about is that this wine contains too high degree of alcohol and nothing more.
One more point is that red wine should not be served with fish while white wine should not go with meat. It is really so according to general accepted rules of etiquette. But some exclusion of these rules can be derived. For instance, red wine pinot noir is a brilliant pair for salmon. Tastes really good!
Red wines should not be chilled while white wines should not be of room temperature. Hold on! There are certain exceptions. By the way, there are wine experts who offer to serve all kinds of wine at the average cellar temperature.
We hope our article will help you to avoid following silly wine myths and enjoy really wonderful flavour of this excellent beverage!
