What makes a genuine ice wine? If you want to pick a bottle of ice wine as a smart gift for Chinese New Year, please read the article (in The Beijinger magazine) below written by Edward Ragg. If you cannot see the article below, try download it from here.
Celebrating with Wine
Wine is one of the more enjoyable things we can share with our family and friends: it tastes delicious, it makes conversation lively, and it brings out the best in food. But maybe you’re wondering what kinds of wines are most suitable for sharing and enjoying.
First of all, when you’re sharing it casually don’t worry too much about buying the most expensive or the most famous bottle of wine. The chances are that you’re really there to talk and enjoy things rather than concentrate on the wine (unless all your friends and family happen to be wine geeks, that is!), so a very complex and challenging wine is not the best idea.
What is the best type of wine then? Fresh, fruity and fun is the way to go – we want to make wine part of the celebration and not the focus! 
So how do we pick such wines? In general, wines from hotter areas of the world produce riper grapes with more fruit flavour, and many people find these types of wines easier to enjoy since they have a richer fruit flavour-dimension. Therefore, it’s a good choice to go for wines from such areas as the south of Italy or south of France, Spain’s warmer parts, Chile’s Central Valley or South-Eastern Australia. Another bonus is that wines from such areas are often not expensive, which means that they are suitable for large parties too!
It’s also sensible to go for popular varieties such as Chardonnay, which is easy to drink and often not too acidic, and Merlot, which is plump and warming without usually being too tannic. For sparkling wines, Champagne can also be a bit expensive, so it may be a better choice to go for other sparkling wines such as Prosecco, Cava or perhaps Chilean sparkling wine.
A good choice for friends that are new to wine (or who aren’t sure that they like the taste!) is to choose a wine on the sweeter side. So keep your eye out for such wines as Moscato or off dry (Halbtrocken) wine from Germany. And lastly, for all these wines, try and buy the most recent vintage possible so that the wine is full of fresh flavours and not stale! Happy celebrations!
NV Alsina&SardaBrut Cava, Spain (RMB 150.00)
Available from Ruby Red. Contact Flora on flora@rubyred.com.cn or 13818694364
www.rubyred.com.cn
Many Cavas are a bit boring and flat, but this one from a small producer in the heart of North-East Spain makes a deliciously refreshing and lively Cava which is a great party sparkling wine. It has pleasant yeasty flavours and good complexity with citrus notes and the acidity, while refreshing, is not too high so that you can enjoying drinking it without your stomach becoming too acid-affected (very important for comfort!). It will match well with many, many dishes – so it’s great to bring this particular Cava along for some family-style Chinese cooking. Plus, it’s also great for aperitifs before dinner (at this price, you can even use it for a mixer with some orange juice for a refreshing cocktail!).
Brown Brothers Dolcetto & Syrah, Victoria, Australia (RMB 150.00)
Available from ASC Fine Wines. Contact Ms. Cathy Yao on cathyyao@asc-wines.com or +86 10 6587 3808 ext 215
Firstly, we should point out that Fongyee has worked at this winery, so wedo like their wines! However, we would heartily recommend this wine for anyone looking to entertain friends and family who aren’t real ‘converts’ to wine. It’s designed especially for those who have just begun the journey to ‘wine-wisdom’, so as to be very easy-to-drink and full of rich fruity flavours. It’s just off-dry enough to cope abundantly well with spicy dishes and gutsy food – like your favourite Sichuan or Hunan dishes. It also goes beautifully with zhajiangmian. With a light ‘spritz’ (wine-speak for some bubbles) it is very fun to drink. It’s not serious at all: a pure pleasure!
This month we recommend two fine wines to enjoy for festive occasions:
2007 Alvaro Palacios ‘Les Terrasses’, Priorato, Spain (667 RMB)
Priorat first came to the attention of the wine world thanks to Robert Parker Jr.’s love of intensely concentrated wines. Based on old vine Grenache and from one of Spain’s greatest winemakers, this wine is deep ruby with intense aromas of strawberry, red and black cherry and complex oak notes of cinnamon, vanilla and clove spice. Full-bodied, dry, rich in fruit and with chunky medium to medium-high tannins and high alcohol, this wine has remarkable length. Certainly a special wine for the season!
2006 Allegrini Amarone della Valpolicella, Veneto, Italy (1, 290 RMB)
Available from Pudao Wines. Contact Jim Yang: jim@pudaowines.com
Valpolicella comes in four styles of which Amarone is perhaps the most famous, a wine based on the Corvina grape and made from grapes that have been painstakingly dried before fermentation. From Allegrini, one of the top producers in the region, this wine is very deep ruby with an incredible nose of dried red cherry and black cherry, almonds and complex savoury aromas. The palate is remarkably rich, full-bodied, dry with high alcohol, chewy high tannins, well-balanced high acidity, lovely dried red fruits and wonderful length. Pudao also offers a more affordable Amarone from Corte Giara, also produced by Allegrini, at 699RMB.
Wine judging can be fun, exhausting, exciting and frustrating all at the same time! But what do most wine judges look for when deciding what wines are good?
It’s actually nothing to do whether we like the wine or not but it’s about the quality of the wine: and
there are a few simple ways to as
sess the quality of a wine. It’s call BLIC (sometime you can add an E onto the end too). What does this mean? It is the factors we look for when judging.
First is Balance: do the flavours, the acid, the tannin and alcohol all fit together? Are they in harmony? Then is it Length: how long do the flavours last in the mouth? Are they pleasant or does the wine leave a bad taste? The third is Intensity: wines should not be too weak, yet they should not be too thick or intense either.
Fourth comes complexity: one of the most important factors, the best wines should be complex.
Last, one can consider Expression: does the wine show well where it is from, what grapes it is made from? If so, it also has great typicity or expression. All these factors come together in a great wine. And yes! You can argue a lot about them as well, but that’s part of the fun!
Last month, I went away to judge two wine competitions- the Hong Kong International Wines and Spirits Competition and the Melbourne Royal Wine Show and judged over 1,400 wines in the space of about two weeks! The two events had very different styles and aims, and I thought I would introduce our readers a little bit to the world of wine judging.
The Hong Kong wine competition is open to wines and spirits from around the world. The first two days are spend judging the wines on a 100 point scale to achieve bronze, silver or gold medals – only about 40% of the wines achieve a medal and less than 5% get gold. The wines are arranged by category (for instance, New Zealand Pinot Noir) which enables the judges to correctly asses the wines according to their origin and grape. The last day (for me the most exciting) is spent in food and wine judging. This year I was on the Peking Duck panel (again!) and spent the day trying over 80 different wines with Peking Duck – of course we spit out the wines, but the more calorie-conscious of the judges spit out the food too!! The aim of all of this is to give consumers a better idea of which wines on the market are best and the results can be viewed here.
The Royal Melbourne Wine show is very different – it is an agricultural product competition and the aim is to help Australian winemakers to improve the wines that they make, so it’s only open to Australian wines. It’s a tough competition, starting at 7:45 am with the bus trip to the judging and sometimes you have to taste 40 Cabernet Sauvignons at about 8am in the morning. But the atmotsphere is intense and serious and this is a great chance to discuss the future of Australian wine development. It is judged on a 20 point scale and all winemakers who enter their wines are given their s
core, so if you give a wine only 10 points – that’s really telling the wine maker that his/her wines are terrible! The results of the competition can be found here.
In all this judging, it’s easy to get tired out and your mouth really hurts from the acid and tannin… I have special tooth mousse that I use to help my teeth recover and I try and eat some fatty alkaline food (like cheese) after a day of tasting to help neutralize the acid. But it is very fun and fascinating and allows a wonderful look into the HUGE world of wine!
Fongyee
This is a grape you may have never heard of or tasted, but nearly every time I show it to people, it receives a warm welcome. Torrontés is one of the star grapes of Argentina and it’s a result of a natural crossing between the famous Muscat of Alexandria grape and a more obscure local grape. It has inherited its parents lovely floral, fruity and enticing flavours and can provide an excellent partner for Dongbei and other full-flavoured cooking. I had a bottle recently paired with youpochemian which was a very enjoyable partnership.
The best Argentinean Torrontés comes from very high altitude vineyards (above 1500m) where its fresh acidity and liveliness can express itself and the key area is Cafayate around the area of Salta. This is a grape variety that needs screwcaps to keep its lovely fruitiness and make sure to buy the youngest vintage possible! Until recently, it was quite hard to find in Beijing, but there have been some arrivals that will give you a great choice for this grape: see below but also check out ASC’s Lo Tengo, Mercuris’ Argento Torrontés Reserva, and the newest arrival: Summergate’sTrivento Torrontés.
Dominio Del Plata, Mendoza, Argentina
Crios de Susana Balbo Torrontes RMB192.00
Available from EMW Wines. Contact: Selina Tian, Email: selina@emw-wines.com
This is a classic lively aromatic Torrontés, made by a family owned winery which offers outstanding value in their entry-level Crios range. This is a fresh and very enjoyable wine with heaps of fragrant fruit on the nose, including peaches, lychees, grapes and apricots and a balanced comfortable mouth-feel. It will pair well with any fragrant dishes such as many Chinese cold dishes, but also has the strength of flavour to balance strong tastes like Hunan food.
Edward has begun teaching the first ever wine class at Tsinghua University.
Founded in 1911, Tsinghua has been celebrating its 100th anniversary this year and remains China's leading university of choice.
Of the approximately 10 million school leavers who take the Chinese College Entrance Exam each year, Tsinghua takes only around 3,000 students (those achieving the highest scores in this exam typically opting to study at Tsinghua or nearby rival Peking University).
A former Captain of the Cambridge University Blind Wine Tasting team, Edward has been working to realize a wine class at Tsinghua since 2009, where he teaches as an Associate Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures (est. 1926).
A pilot course was taught in 2010, but as of the Autumn Semester 2011 Wine Culture & Appreciation (00641442) has become an official part of the Tsinghua curriculum as an Undergraduate Elective course aimed at reaching as wide a cross-section of Tsinghua students as possible.
Students will experience a 15-week course of 2-hour lectures covering:
The types and styles of wines
The global history of wine production
Viticulture
Vinification and maturation
The packaging, marketing and distribution of wine
Wine tasting: a systematic approach to evaluating wine
International white grape varieties and their classic wines
International black grape varieties and their classic wines
Sweet wines and their methods of production
Sparkling wines and their methods of production
Fortified wines and their methods of production
Wine in China: recent history and contemporary wines
Wine and Health (including gastronomy and matching international wines with Chinese cuisines)
Wine and the Enivironment
Wine samples have been generously donated by international wineries from across the world, importers in mainland China and individuals in order to ensure students get to taste directly the wines they are also studying in class.
Special thanks must go to the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures and to the many donors who have sponsored wine samples and other materials for this initiative.
If you are interested in supporting the Tsinghua University Wine Class or require further information, please contact Edward on edward@longfengwines.com.
2009 Tyrrell’s Lost Block Semillon, Hunter Valley, Australia (223RMB)
Available from Everwines. Contact, Jenny Zhang: jenny.zhang@everwines.com
This wine is currently on special promotion (down from 254RMB)! Light to medium green in colour, the nose offers lovely lemon and lime citrus fruit with a strong mineral aroma. Classically dry on the palate with refreshing high acidity, lovely lime citrus and mineral flavours, this is very drinkable with its lower alcohol and lovely length! A wine that is superb with seafood, especially oysters (raw or cooked), sashimi and sushi as well as crab, prawns or lobster!
2003 Château La Rame, Sainte-Croix du Mont, France (525RMB)
Available from Wine Culture. Contact, Sheila Fay: sheila.fay@wineculture.com.cn
Making a Sauternes-style wine is labour intensive and requires very careful winemaking as you process nobly-rotten grapes! This is an attractive medium gold colour with a beautiful nose of candied fruits (preserved lemon, dried apricot, raisins) and honey, all balancing with spicy botrytis aromas. A rich but well-balanced palate with marked residual sugar, refreshing high acidity, lovely candied fruits and flavours of honey and ginger spice, this is a wine of remarkable length which can be drunk now but will age beautifully as well. Don’t think of this as purely a dessert wine – as many desserts can be too sweet for this kind of wine. It is brilliant with cheeses, especially blue cheese and paté, especially foie gras.
