Dan’s Cellar Notes for November and December 2004

By Dan Mouer

Wine for the Holiday Season

Wine just goes with a season of festivities. Many of us make wine just to give as presents to friends and relations. When I was growing up, Thanksgiving was the single day out of each year on which we children were allowed some wine. It was always sticky-sweet kosher Concord wine. Whether you are preparing for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, there is a proper place for wine at your table or around your hearth.

Folks who know I’m a bit of a wine nut often ask me for recommendations to pair wines with holiday feast foods. That is a big challenge, because holiday feasts, and their feasters, are incredibly varied. My suggestion is to have a number of different wines available that complement the foods they will be paired with, and which also appeal to wine drinkers with different preferences.

In general, feast foods are rich. They may be fatty, or salty, or otherwise filled with flavors and textures. Try to find wines that will stand up to, and not overwhelm, the food. I tend to prefer reds with lots of fruit, but not, necessarily, with lots of complexity. White wines for feasting are often better if they have a good bit of acidity and a little sweetness. The feast table is not necessarily the time to bring out your finest wines; they may either get lost in richness of the food, or they may simply increase the richness to the point of overwhelming.

If you are having a traditional Thanksgiving feast—turkey and all the trimmings—I recommend something like a simple Aussie Shiraz or West Coast Pinot Noir for your red selection. Good white wine choices would include a spicy Gewürztraminer, German or Alsatian Riesling, or a better-than-average Pinot Grigio. Of course, Chardonnay is often poured on Turkey Day; however, I would shun the fat, oaky chards in favor of one with the crispness of French Chablis, or the many selections available from the North American Northwest and Northeast wine regions. Or, better yet, try a rosé champagne with your dinner.

For Hanukkah, the feast foods in this country are often traditional Yiddish cuisine: latkes and applesauce, rich soups, and, of course, a slowly cooked, well-herbed brisket of beef. With the brisket, I think a delicate Pinot Noir—preferably Burgundy—would be my first pick. For kosher homes, it is now possible to buy all sorts of wines that are properly kosher. Of course, if you like Mogen David…help yourself! That might be a bit much with dinner, however, and would better go with the sweet cookies and pastries that follow.

Christmas is often associated with ham, and here in Virginia, that typically means a salty, smoked, country ham. Once again, I would tend to go with fruity reds or crisp, sweetish whites. A German Riesling Auslese will not only stand up to the salt, but will round it out nicely.

Kwanzaa feasts feature African and African-American dishes. Neither cuisine is traditionally associated with wine-drinking, but times do change. One of the symbols of Kwanzaa is the Cup of Unity, placed on the table and filled with fruit juice or wine. Sipping from it symbolizes the family and the community. As with other feasts, the rich soul-food offerings of the Kwanzaa table are often spicy and rich, and call for careful selection of wines to complement them. Keep in mind, however, that some Kwanzaa celebrants may be strict Muslims or Rastafari, and will shun alcoholic beverages altogether.

Aside from the feast table, the holiday season is a time of parties, and of visiting with friends and relatives. Wintry nights are easily warmed up with a fire in the fireplace and a nice full cup of mulled wine! Making mulled wine is also a great way to use one of your homemade wines that doesn’t quite meet your dinner-wine standards. Just pour a bottle or two in a stainless steel pot and blend in some sugar and aromatic spices (cinnamon, cloves, allspice, cardamom, nutmeg, etc) or herbs (thyme, marjoram, a tiny bit of rosemary) and heat slowly and gently. It’s heady stuff and way less fattening than egg nog!

New Year’s Eve is a time that is often celebrated with alcoholic beverage—usually spirits, and often to excess! Your homemade wine can be a more temperate choice for your own New Year’s celebrations. Of course, you MUST have champagne to usher in the New Year at midnight. What? You haven’t made any champagne yet? Ahh, well, that sounds like the subject of an upcoming installment of Dan’s Cellar Notes.

Q&A

Dan,

I just started my first attempt at wine making with a Winexpert kit: a Riesling. After mixing up the concentrate with water to 23 liters I took a hydrometer reading. It came about to about 19 Brix. I had read in a book that you should add sugar to anything under 20 Brix as a low-alchohol wine is prone to wine disorders. I added 1 pound of sugar (~20 grams per liter). That should bring it up to about 20.5 Brix. Hopefully that should net out at about 11.5% alcohol. Since this is my first kit, now I'm wondering if I shouldn't have just followed the directions as is instead of messing around with it.

Was adding the pound of sugar the right thing to do? If it was the right thing to do, should I have shot for an even higher alcohol content (12.5%)?

Todd,

First off, 19 Brix is fine for some sorts of wines. In fact, many German Rieslings are finished at 8-10% alcohol. With sound practices of winemaking (meaning, especially, sanitation), there is no particularly high risk of failure just because the sugar is a bit low--especially with sterile juice from a kit.

Second of all, I question whether your hydrometer reading was truly accurate. When mixing a concentrate, it takes a whole lot of stirring to get a good uniform mixture. The heavier concentrate quickly settles at the bottom of your fermenter, leaving lighter, less concentrated juice/must in reach of your hydrometer. At any rate, your small sugar addition will not be particularly noticeable, so relax and enjoy your wine when it's ready. According to Winexpert’s top techie wine geek (Tim Vandergrift), that kit should have a starting gravity of 20-21 degrees Brix.

Tim further adds:

1 Calibrate your hydrometer. It should read 1.000 in distilled water at 60 F. If it doesn’t, you’ll need to apply a correction factor. If you’re using a saccharometer, calibrate it as well, using a known sugar solution. Also, never use your fingertip as a sampling tool, as your skin will soak up sugar and water at different rates, throwing off any reading.

2 Double-check your primary fermenter volume. If you started off with too high an initial volume, you may have simply over diluted the wine.

3 Ensure that you are stirring the living heck out of the wine after adding your water. The concentrates and juices are not highly miscible, and need a vigorous stirring to meld—just adding the water isn’t enough.

Cheers, and good luck with the kit.

Comments? Questions? Write me at dan.mouer@verizon.net

Also, see: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CentralVirginiaWinemakers/