VInes Play Magazine: For the love of wine by Chanile

VINESPLAY F E B R U A R Y

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• FOR A NEW GENERATION OF WINE LOVERS •

FOR THE LOVE OF WINE STEPS TO A MORE PASSIONATE WAY TO EXPLORE WINES

WINE AND TRUFFLE PAIRING TIPS AND GUIDE TO PAIRING WINE WITH TRUFFLES AND OTHER CHOCOLATE FLAVOURED DESSERT

MAKE YOUR OWN TRUFFLES EASY TO FOLLOW RECIPES TO EXECUTING THREE TRUFFLES

For the love of wine steps to a more passionate way to explore wines

how to taste wine Go beyond the three steps and enjoy a more continuous approach

Wine and Truffle Pairing Tips and guide to pairing wine with truffles and other chocolate flavoured dessert

20 Make your own truffles three recipes with less than 5 ingredients and easy steps to making your own truffles

Editor's Note What's love got to do with it?

Everything. I am always intrigued by what catches and keeps people's attention. Especially when it comes to wine. Is it the actual drinking of great wine? Is it the experience it facilitates? Is it the people ..the very passionate people that tends to gather around wine? Is it all of the above? I love wine. The beauty and complexity of the beverage and even more importantly the spectacular moments that are usually tied to a great wine.

Chanile Vines

TRENDING

For the love of Wine

Wine tasting is a continuous process very often, and the senses are overlapping. For example, when you're looking at a glass of wine, you can already smell it if it's within a foot or so from your nose. As you bring it up to your nose and swirl it, you're still looking at it. As you lift it to your

SEE, SMELL

nose and smell it, unless you have your

& TASTE

eyes closed, you can still see it.

So sight and smell are overlapping. As you draw a little sip into my mouth and slosh it around or pull some air through it to make it turbulent and to try to pop off some aromatics, you're also smelling it at that point. And you're starting to employ your sense of touch. In other words, you're starting to use your nervous system to

evaluate

viscosity

density

smoothness

roughness or temperature. So, all of our senses, with the exception of audition, are used when we taste a glass of wine critically.

Here is a deeper look into the role of each sense in appreciating and falling even more in love with wine.

SEE There are a few things to evaluate by looking at a wine. The first is clarity, the second is colour and lastly the characteristics based on sight. To get a good look at the wine tip the glass at a 45-degree angle away from yourself, and look down through the thick part of the liquid, what we call the core, and then also move your eyes and look out towards the edge of the liquid. It's best to have indirect sunlight if possible coming in through a window and have a white background with a matte finish.

Clarity and colour evaluation Clarity of a wine is really a function of how well light is transmitted through that body of liquid. If light passes through without bumping into anything so to speak, the beverage, the wine that we're looking at looks very clear. In the case of a white wine, you'll be able to see fairly readily if there is any problem with clarity. The terms we use for clarity are clear if the wine is clear. If it's slightly off-clear, we might say that the wine is dull. Less clear than that, we might use the term hazy or cloudy. A cloudy wine may indicate fault.

Range of colour Wines colour ranges from pale (almost watery) to deep tawny (almost brown). Colour also tells us something about the age of the wine. White wines tend to darken as they age. Red wines, on the other hand, lighten with age. And both red wines and white wines tend to gravitate towards amber, or brown, or adobe type colours when they age.

Rim vs core Noticing the hue of the colour and assessing is it the same throughout? If it is, that's an indication that the wine colour is at a stable point in its life, that the wine is probably fairly young. If you see a little bit of a brown colour versus a darker more ruby red, for example, colour that you see looking through the core of that wine. That variation between the rim and the core, which we call rim variation, is an indication that the wine might be a little bit older. The brown colour at the rim however, can come from oak rather than from age.

SMELL/ AROMA According to researchers in nutritional science, between 80%-90% of all sensations simulating our appetites comes from fragrances. Without these aromas, your morning bread and strawberry jam would be bland and tasteless. Where does Aroma in wine comes from:

From the Grape Variety aka Primary Aromas Each grape has a set of aromas that is unique to that variety. Esters: Fruit & Flowers, Pyrazines: Herbaceous, Geosmin: Earth & Mushroom and Thiols: Smoke & Chocolate So, for example, the compound that produces the smell of strawberries in strawberry jam looks the same as the compound that produces the smell of strawberry jam in a glass of California Barbera.

From Fermentation (aka Secondary Aromas) The process of fermentation creates a group of bouquets that are commonly referred to as Secondary Aromas. You’re no doubt already familiar with secondary aromas, for example: freshly baked sourdough bread.

From Aging (aka Tertiary Aromas) Aging wine introduces elements that add (or alter) the aroma compounds in wine after it’s fermented. The group of bouquets associated with aging are called Tertiary Aromas. The most important element of aging is exposing wine to oxygen. In small amounts, oxygen produces positive smelling bouquets including the aromas of hazelnut and roasted peanut. The next most common element is the use of oak. Oak barrels do double-duty on a wine by slowly introducing oxygen (nuttiness) as well as adding aroma compounds found in oak.

Once we learn to click on the part of our brain that conjures up our mental Rolodex or our mental glossary of food and spice and herb-specific smell vocabulary, we will get quickly very, very good at naming what it is that we smell If we know a bit about the wine beforehand

Taste Once the wine is on our palate, however, the smells that reach our brain go through the retronasal smells. When you taste, draw a little bit of air in, sort of slurp the wine. I see many tasters do that, and then chew the wine.

There are five basic tastes, sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami. We can rule out two of these tastes in wine; there is no umami in wine and very little to no saltiness. Because there are almost no wines in the world that exhibit saltiness, I can think of a few exceptions. There are sherries made along the Southern coast of Spain that may have some saltiness. I've had a couple of wines from Greece made on rocky islands in the middle of the JNC that have a little salty tang to them.

Our tongue has no specific regions of sensitivity for each of these basic tastes. In fact, every taste bud on our tongue can taste all five of the basic tastes.There's an interesting area of study, won't delve into this too extensively about how these tastes evolve during the moments when you're first tasting a wine. Sweetness, if any, tends to be noticed first, followed by sourness or acidity, followed by bitterness.

You can also detect wine texture. Lower alcohol wines tend to be lighter. Higher alcohol wines tend to be medium body or fuller in body. And that body or that thickness that we feel by flipping our tongue around while the wine is on our palate, is due to the amount of alcohol that's in the wine

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HOW TO TASTE WINE We all know the see, smell and taste steps. While these three steps is all you need. Tasting wine is a continuous process where all the senses come alive. Use these evaluation process to get closer to loving the wine!

Take a quick sniff, just to make sure that the wine is okay.

Take another sip of that wine, and just little around the mouth maybe pull a little bit of air in and chew it a little bit. And we’re going to determine if there are any aromatics that we're smelling retronasal while that wine is on our palette.

We're going to think about how long the flavor of the wine sticks around. In other words, what is the length of finish of that wine, how persistent is it. Some wines just jump right off the edge and go away, disappearing very quickly. Some wines have a very long finish that may last for several minutes.

At that point, we can rank the wines. If we were tasting the whole flight of wines and we want to put them in order of some parameter. Such as maybe our preference, or age, or relative acidity, or sweetness etc.

at that point we're 02 So going to swirl the wine and sniff it more thoughtfully.

we're going to start to 03 And take notes on what we're smelling in the glass: fruity, floral, vegetal, or vacious, minerally, woody, buttery, and so forth

Determine the basic taste element center in that glass. By basic taste I mean, sweet, sour, acidity or bitterness. We're going to flip our tongue around and think about the weight or the consistency of the wine.

“ACCEPT WHAT LIFE OFFERS YOU AND TRY TO DRINK FROM EVERY CUP. ALL WINES SHOULD BE TASTED; SOME SHOULD ONLY BE SIPPED, BUT WITH OTHERS, DRINK THE WHOLE BOTTLE..”

-PAULO COELHO, BRIDA

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PAIRING WINE AND

Truffles

What are Chocolate Truffles?

Chocolate truffles are a dessert delicacy that began in Europe. They are mainly made of ganache (a chocolate based cream) and some type of coating. This coating can be in the form of cocoa powder, solid chocolate that is dark, milk

Not a fan of truffles? I get it I am a

or white, or some sort of confection. They

texture, taste and shape type of person

are rolled into imperfect ball shapes and

and any one of those elements can deter

are often given as gifts for special

me from a food I would usually like. Have

occasions.

no fear these tips are transferable to chocolate pairing.

The best gourmet chocolate truffles are the ones with a savory assortment of fillings. Classic chocolate truffle fillings include chocolate ganache, liqueur, different flavors of cream, nougats, and caramel. Modern fillings may be fruit, fudge, marshmallow, or chocolate N O M A D I Cchips. | 24

WHITE CHOCOLATE

White chocolate is delicate and creamy and contains cocoa butter but no actual cacao. Technically, it’s not chocolate, but instead is made by mixing milk solids, sugar, and cocoa butter together to form a creamy confection. Wine pairings: As a result of its delicate nature, it pairs best with white wines that are on the sweeter side. Gewurtztraminer Riesling Moscato For reds your goal is to find a wine that is just as delicate as the white chocolate itself. Beaujolais: The grape variety Gamay has a range of flavors depending on what Beaujolais Cru it’s from. Pinot Noir : A shockingly good pairing, especially for chocolate and wine pairing disbelievers. The white chocolate acts as the fat that delivers sweet flavors of red cherries, strawberries, and raspberries found in the Pinot

MILK CHOCOLATE

Milk chocolate is a creamy mix of cocoa butter, chocolate liquor, and milk solids. A good milk chocolate is usually about half chocolate and half cream. The extra fat from the cream makes milk chocolate one of the easiest “true” chocolates to pair with wine.Since this type of chocolate contains a nice balance between the sweet milk and the rich chocolate flavors, it actually pairs well with a wide variety of wines. Because of its higher milk content, any wine that tastes great with white chocolate will also work with milk chocolate.

Recommended Wines Sparkling wine, such as Prosecco Riesling Gewurztraminer Pinot Noir and Merlot Brachetto d’Acqui: A sweet sparkling red wine from Piedmont, Italy. It is also an excellent pair with chocolate mousse Late-Harvest Red Wines: Port style wines including late-harvest Syrah, Pinot Noir and Petite Sirah. Or Ruby Port: The original Port from Portugal makes for a more spiced and berry driven pairing with milk chocolate

DARK CHOCOLATE

Dark chocolate has a larger percentage of chocolate liquor than other types of chocolates. Manufacturers often list the percentage of cocoa on their labels. Dark chocolate can contain as little as 35% cocoa but it’s easy to find dark chocolate that is 70% cocoa. The polyphenols in dark chocolate mirror those in wine and give both a somewhat bitter taste. It’s also the part of the chocolate that gives you all the health benefits! The bitterness in dark chocolate is what we’ll want to balance out with a properly selected wine pairing.The percentage can determine which wines will pair best. fuller bodies wines such as Zinfandel Cabernet Sauvignon Syrah Bordeaux all work well for dark and bitter chocolate. Pinot Noir and Merlot are great for dark chocolate with a lower percentage of chocolate liquor. Port-style Red Wines

Make your own pairing Since chocolate truffles have a creamy flavor and smooth texture, this changes the nature of the wines that go well with it. No matter which type of chocolate is used, the presence of cream and butter make it almost necessary to find a sweeter, lighter wine to go with it. White wines such as Riesling and Moscato pair with truffles, as do red and white dessert wines. Port wine also goes well with chocolate truffles. If you would like to drink a red wine, choose something on the lighter side, such as Pinot Noir.

The goal of a great wine pairing is to balance the tastes (sweet, sour, bitter, salty, etc) in the food and wine so that the subtle flavors can beautifully emerge.

all you need is love. but a little chocolate here and then doesn't hurt.

C H A R L E S

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S C H U L Z

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I LOVE TO COOK. BAKING/DESSERT MAKING NOT AS MUCH, BUT THERE IS SOMETHING ALURING ABOUT THE EASE OF MAKING TRUFFLES. MAKE YOUR OWN TRUFFLES

RECIPES

MAKE YOUR OWN

MILK CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES Yields 30 truffles INGREDIENTS: 8 oz. milk chocolate, chopped 1/3 cup + 2 tablespoons heavy whipping cream 1/2 tablespoon unsalted butter, chopped into small pieces Coating 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa or 3/4 cup finely chopped almonds or pecans

DIRECTIONS: Bring the cream to a simmer in a small saucepan. Add butter and stir until melted. Add chocolate to saucepan. Stir until completely melted and smooth. Remove from heat and pour the chocolate mixture into a shallow bowl. Cool, cover and refrigerate until firm, at least two hours. Roll mixture into 1″ balls. Roll each ball in coating.

MAKE YOUR OWN

DARK CHOCOLATE GANACHE TRUFFLES Yields 15 truffles INGREDIENTS: 200 grams (1 and 1/3 cup) good quality dark chocolate, broken into pieces 120 ml (1/2 cup) heavy or thickened cream 40 grams (1/2 cup) cocoa powder

INSTRUCTIONS Finely chop dark chocolate using a serrated knife and place in a heatproof bowl.

In a small saucepan, add cream and place on a medium heat. Warm until cream is simmering (and hot to the touch) but just before it starts to boil. Immediately pour the warm cream over the chocolate, cover and leave to sit for 3-5 minutes. Then, whisk chocolate cream until smooth. Transfer chocolate ganache to a small bowl, cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge for at least 2 hours to set. Sift cocoa powder into a separate bowl. Once the ganache has become firm, use a cookie scoop to spoon out roughly one level tablespoon of ganache per truffle. Roll smooth using your hands. Drop the truffles into the cocoa powder and roll around until completely coated before removing and setting on a plate. Continue until all truffles are done. Store in the fridge.

MAKE YOUR OWN

CHOCOLATE EARL GREY TRUFFLES Yields 34 truffles INGREDIENTS: 2/3 cup heavy cream 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 4 pieces and softened 2 teaspoons loose Earl Grey tea leaves 6 oz fine-quality bittersweet chocolate (not unsweetened), chopped 1 cup unsweetened Dutchprocess cocoa powder INSTRUCTIONS Bring cream and butter to a boil in a small heavy saucepan and stir in tea leaves. Remove from heat and let steep 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, finely grind chocolate in a food processor and transfer to a bowl. Pour cream through a fine-mesh sieve onto chocolate, pressing on and discarding tea leaves, then whisk until smooth. Chill ganache, covered, until firm, about 2 hours. Spoon level teaspoons of ganache onto a baking sheet. Put cocoa in a bowl, then dust your palms lightly with it. Roll each piece of ganache into a ball (wash your hands and redust as they become sticky). Drop several balls at a time into bowl of cocoa and turn to coat. Transfer as coated to an airtight container, separating layers with wax paper. Cooks' note:• Truffles can be made 1 week ahead and chilled, or 1 month ahead and frozen in an airtight container.

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VP Mini Magazine February 2021 Images Pexel

Editorial & Writing Chanile Vines

recipe Epicurious

SPECIAL THANKS Davids tea Live TONIC BLOOM DYMON Wine Cellar CItizenne style mime et moi to contribute contact: Chanile vines chanile@vinesplay.com

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