BEVERAGE BLOG ARTICLES

Tea 101

January Is National Hot Tea Month

January is a time for new beginnings, health and the home. It is also National Hot Tea Month so we thought we would give you a primer on tea.

Of historical note, tea is nearly 5,000 years old and was discovered, as legend has it, in 2737 b.c. by a Chinese emperor when some tea leaves accidentally blew into a pot of boiling water. In the 1600s tea became popular throughout Europe and the American colonies. Since colonial days, tea has played a role in American culture and customs. Today American schoolchildren learn about the famous Boston Tea Party protesting the British tea tax -- one of the acts leading to the Revolutionary War. During this century, two major American contributions to the tea industry occurred. In 1904, iced tea was created at the World's Fair in St. Louis, and in 1908, Thomas Sullivan of New York developed the concept of tea in a bag.

All tea comes from the "Camellia sinensis", an evergreen shrub that may grow up to 60 feet in the wild. When cultivated for harvest the tea bushes are kept to a height of about three feet. There are over 3000 varieties of tea each with its own specific characteristics. The naming and growing of teas has many similarities to wine. Just as Bordeaux wine is named after the Bordeaux region in France, Assam is named after the Assam region in India, and Keemun is named after the Keemun region of China. Like wine, tea comes from one bush, and where the tea is grown, the climate, soil conditions, and how the tea is processed, determines the flavor characteristics of the tea.

Tea is harvested after each flush - the sprouting of the top two leaves and bud. The top two leaves and bud are hand plucked and then processed into any of the four types of tea, which are Black, Green, Oolong, and White.

Black tea is withered, fully oxidized and dried. Black tea yields a hearty, amber-colored brew. Some of the popular black teas include English Breakfast, and Darjeeling.

Green tea skips the oxidizing step. It is simply withered and then dried. It has a more delicate taste and is pale green / golden in color. Learn more about Green Tea.

Oolong tea, popular in China, is withered, partially oxidized, and dried. Oolong is a cross between black and green tea in color and taste. White tea is the least processed. A very rare tea from China,

White tea is not oxidized or rolled, but simply withered and dried by steaming.

The main chemical substances in tea are essential oils, caffeine, and polyphenols (known by many people as tannins). The essential oils give us the aroma of the tea, the caffeine stimulates the central nervous system, and the polyphenols account for the much publicized antioxidant and anti-disease properties.

View the Sun Singer Tea Menu...

BARBEQUE & WINE

Nowadays, most Americans celebrate Memorial Day as the official kick-off of Barbeque Season. Get ready to warm up the coals, slather on the sauce, and pull the cork.

June 17, 2008

THE FOUR MOST COMMON DEFECTS OF WINE

One of the most common wine questions I get is, "How do you tell if a bottle of a wine that you got at a restaurant is bad? I never know when to send one back."

Let me start by saying what does not constitute a bad bottle.

A bottle is not bad just because you don't like the wine. There are many variations in wine-making style, so a bottle that doesn't suit your preferences is not necessarily defective. Of course, the sommelier should help you select a bottle that's to your liking, but ultimately only you are responsible for your personal tastes.
A bottle is not bad just because the label is damaged. Most wine travels thousands of miles to get to you, and there are plenty of opportunities for bumping and grinding. Likewise, in a cellar where thousands of bottles are stored together, one bottle can break, leaking wine onto hundreds of others. This does not affect the wine inside the intact bottles.
A bottle is not bad just because it has little crystals accumulated at the bottom or adhering to the cork. These crystals (called tartrate) are a natural by-product of unfiltered, unprocessed fine wines and are totally harmless.
A bottle is not "corked" just because it has bits of cork in it (all this means is that an inexperienced waiter pushed the corkscrew all the way through the cork, thus forcing pieces into the wine) or because it has an unsightly or even moldy cork. The term corked has a very specific meaning, which I'll explain in a moment.

There are essentially four things that constitute defects in a bottle of wine such that you should send it back: It can be corked, oxidized, maderized or refermented.

Corked
Corks are natural products, and some microorganisms like to eat them. A wine is properly said to be corked when it has come in contact with a contaminated cork during the aging process. The results of this contamination are almost always unmistakable: The wine will smell like a wet basement after a flood or dirty socks left in the hamper a little too long: moldy, nasty and not at all enticing to the taster. On the palate, it will be astringent, lacking in fruit, with a raspy finish. Sometimes you may even notice a paint-thinner quality.

Still, when you catch a wine in the earliest stages of being corked, there may be some doubt -- here, all I can say is that the more you taste wine, the higher sensitivity you will attain in identifying corked wines. Also, if a wine is served too cold, you may not catch the telltale aromas on the initial offering. This isn't your fault, and you are still well within your rights to send the bottle back once the defect becomes clear.

You cannot, however, discover a corked wine by smelling the cork. Many fine wines have issued from bottles with funky-smelling corks, and vice versa.

Oxidized
Oxygen is wine's invisible enemy, and when a wine gets exposed to air, it becomes "oxidized." The result is flat, lifeless wine that loses its pretty, vibrant fruit scents and tastes insipid -- it will likely remind you of vinegar. The trained eye will also often notice a certain dullness in the color. In whites, it can be light to dark yellow or even brownish. It is much less obvious in red wines.

Maderized
Heat is another destructive force exerted on wine, usually as a result of bad storage. When one says a wine is "maderized," it has been literally baked (this often happens in the holds of cargo ships as they cross the oceans in summertime). It actually tastes like Madeira and is reminiscent of almonds and candied fruits -- admirable qualities in dessert wines but unacceptable in dry wines. You may also notice, in the unopened bottle, that the cork is pushed partly out of the neck (due to expansion within).

Refermented
Fine wine is a living thing, the product of controlled fermentation. Occasionally, some residual, dormant yeasts will wake up, and a wine will undergo a second fermentation after it has been released and shipped. This manifests itself as effervescence, or fizziness, on the tongue. Of course, this is desirable in champagne (which is purposely refermented in the bottle in order to create the bubbles), but never in fine still wine.

It's difficult to learn to identify these flaws just by reading about them. Only experience and time will give you the training you need to spot every defect. But if you think a bottle is bad, ask the sommelier for confirmation. Don't be afraid -- at any reputable establishment the sommelier will not take a rejected bottle personally (not that you should care if he or she does). It is, after all, a statistical certainty that a certain percentage of wines will go bad through no fault of the restaurant.

If you get a 'corked' wine, you should return it to the store from which it was purchased or refuse it at the restaurant. Do make sure that you check the wine when it is opened and before it is poured around the table. Wineries and stores are less likely to accept the return of an empty or nearly empty bottle with your claim that it was bad. The tasting ritual of a freshly opened bottle of wine developed over the years to allow the host to check and make sure that bad (corked) wine was not poured for guests.

April 8, 2008

WINES FOR PASSOVER

Passover, an eight-day springtime festival, commemorates the Exodus of the Jewish people from Egyptian bondage. Based on the injunction against eating or possessing leavened bread for eight days, Passover involves a unique set of kosher laws. Kosher consumers are most careful about what they eat on Passover. In fact, people who do not observe kosher year-round do so on Passover. According to some accounts, 40% of the kosher market revolves around the Passover holiday.

Passover’s restrictions guard against eating food products containing any edible fermented grain products known as chometz. Included in this category are wheat, barley, oats, spelt or rye which have been leavened due to contact with water. People of the Jewish faith are expected not to derive any pleasure or benefit whatsoever from chometz. Furthermore, they may not own chometz or have chometz in his possession.

Ensuring that foods are kosher for Passover is even more difficult than during the rest of the year because many of the ingredients that are routinely used and produced under kosher supervision are not kosher for Passover. Barley, wheat, rye, oats, and spelt are permitted only for the baking of matzoh and matzoh meal products. Flour of these grains is mixed with water and baked in less than eighteen minutes under rabbinic supervision. Furthermore, American Jews of Eastern or Western European descent avoid legumes such as soy, peanuts, and peas, as well as corn and rice.

Not only do foods require special preparation in order to be acceptable for use during Passover, but all equipment used for the production of kosher for Passover items must also be kosher for Passover. Even foods and household products which meet the strict, year-round dietary regulations, and are considered kosher, are nevertheless often unacceptable, or require special preparation for Passover use in the Jewish home in order to be kosher for Passover.

In order for a wine to be kosher, it must be created under a rabbi's immediate supervision, with only Sabbath-observant Jewish males touching the grapes from the crushing phase through the bottling. While all wines require some sort of mold (yeast) for fermentation, kosher for Passover wine must be made from a mold that has not been grown on bread (such as sugar or fruit) and must exclude several common preservatives, like potassium sorbate. Sometimes the label will say "mevushal" or "non mevushal." Mevushal means the wine has been flash-pasteurized to 175 degrees Fahrenheit (79.44 C) and may be opened and served by a non-observant person.

April 1, 2008

WHY DECANT?

This question has been asked in almost every Wine 101 class that I have taught. So here is a brief explanation to help demystify this practice. I would say that decanters are probably the singular thing you can purchase to drastically change the wine you drink. Robert Mondavi once said in an interview in Wine Spectator magazine that, “I think all red wines should be decanted, regardless of age or wine type.”

Decanting a wine serves two purposes: the main purpose involves separating sediment from the wine. This was done in the past with a candle next to the neck of the bottle to help see when sediment was about to come out. After some practice you can do this without the candle.

This gentle decanting is recommended for a mature wine (one that is at its peak), especially vintage Port, that have thrown sediment, to prevent the sediment from being stirred up each time the bottle is tipped. If you know you will be drinking a wine of this type you will want to stand the bottle upright that morning or even the day before. This will allow time for most of the sediment to settle at the bottom of the bottle. You will want to use a vertical decanter. The action of pouring the wine out of the bottle and into the decanter is usually gets just enough oxygen through the wine to wake the wine up from its slumber. The vertical decanter has a smaller surface area allowing less oxygen into the wine so that you may enjoy it longer.

The second purpose of decanting is to get oxygen into the wine. If you have a young wine (one that has not yet reached its peak), then decanting the wine serves as an artificial aging of the wine. Vigorous decanting aka ‘splash decanting’, can also be a good idea for these younger, closed-up and/or tannic wines that become more expressive after one or two hours' exposure to air. You will want to use the ship style of decanter with the larger base. This will allow for a greater surface area and thus a higher wine to oxygen ratio.