Everyday Drinking_ The Distilled Kingsley Amis - Kingsley Amis [95]
WINE—ADVANCED
1. Having satisfied himself that the wine is not cloudy—a sign of trouble—he studies the colour. With reds, a purple tinge indicates a young wine, brick-red a more mature one. With whites, lightness, perhaps with a greenish tinge, indicates youth, straw colour is standard, yellow may well mean age, but depth of colour also indicates degree of sweetness. Any hint of brown in red or white may foreshow bad quality.
2. A woody or metallic smell suggests a fault in the cask. A vinegary smell calls for no great powers of reasoning. But other acid smells are harmless, and chemical smells from disinfectant agents often go away after a few minutes. All the same, I would avoid (where socially possible) any wine with an unexpected smell, not to speak of a disagreeable one.
3. Tartaric and malic. There may be traces of citric and more than a dozen other acids.
4. It may sharpen the flavour, though not everyone cares for its bitterness or famed “mouth-puckering” effect. “Plenty of tannin” is a fashionable commendation. Also a preservative, lengthening the period of improvement in bottle. Often artificially introduced into poor wine.
5. (a) Mostly dry white wine—some red—from the district of Chablais near Lake Geneva (Switzerland).
(b) Bulgarian Muscat. You hardly need telling that this is the generic name for sweet white wines made from the Muscat or Muscatel grape.
(c) The same, from Romania, Yugoslavia, etc., named after the variety of Muscat grape.
6. (a) Red wine from an area so named in northern Italy. (Paradiso is next door.)
(b) White wine, dry and sweet, some red, from the Rust area in east Austria.
(c) The standard red produced by the Turkish state wine industry.
7. (a) South Africa
(b) US (California)
(c) Germany
(d) Austria
(e) Germany.
8. (a) France
(b) South Africa
(c) South Africa
(d) South Africa
(e) Wales (Dyfed).
9. (a) Burgundy (Beaujolais)
(b) Loire
(c) Rhône
(d) Mosel (Saar)
(e) Lombardy.
10. (a) Saint-Julien
(b) Margaux
(c) Pauillac
(d) Saint-Estèphe
(e) Margaux.
All of these four names are within Haut Médoc.
WINE—FRANCE
1. In alphabetical order:
Alsace Bordeaux Burgundy Champagne
The Loire The Rhône
2. (a) “Appellation (d’Origine) Contrôlée,” Means that the wine comes from where the label says it comes from. Also some assurance that it has been properly made and is up to strength.
(b) Similar, but not so strict about area and other things.
3. A “country” or local wine coming from a general region. Inferior to the other two, with nothing especially authentic or esoteric to them. Worth trying for curiosity’s sake, says Hugh Johnson. Well yes.
4. (a) Completely dry, unsweetened (of champagne). But very little wine so marked is in fact totally without added syrup.
(b) Cool, chilled, not ice-cold.
(c) Slightly sparkling, with a “prickle.”
(d) (Fully) sparkling, but never applied to champagne. One of the minor airs that overpriced stuff gives itself.
(e) White wine made from black grapes. This is theoretically possible if you whip the skins out the moment the juice is removed, but in practice such wines are pale pink.
5. “Pourriture noble” or noble rot, the result of attentions of the fungus “Botrytis cinerea.”
6. From the shape, but surely not the size, of Marie Antoinette’s breasts. I find this story tempting but implausible.
7. Well, because after a few months in store each bottle has yeast and sugar added, causing the famous second fermentation with resultant bubbles.
8. By no means. Some of the wine, not worth giving the expensive treatment described above, is marketed in its original still form. I have met people who say they like it. There are still reds too, of which the best is supposed to be Bouzy.
9. Jeroboam 4 bottles
Rehoboam 6 bottles
Methuselah 8 bottles
Sennacherib 10 bottles
Salmanazar 12 bottles
Balthazar 16 bottles
Nebuchadnezzar 20 bottles
10. There is one French exception, Muscat d’Alsace, bone dry but with all the rest of the grape still there, a remarkable experience. Sadly, André Simon found it underbred.