The problem with wine is not how it is made, or drunk, but how it is presented between the making and the drinking. The bigger problem, of course, is the fact that I always find so much wrong with the world of wine (or world in general) but please reader, for a minute, focus.

Let's face it. We will never know enough about wines. We prefer to leave that whole tasting and judging bit to those boys who like to go by the name of wine writers. The rest of us actually have a life. This is perhaps where we are going wrong. Delegation has its downside and leaving things up to people who rarely step outside or get invited to the really cool parties, means that we have a lot of boring unimaginative stuff to sift and work our way through before we can extract anything useful, or shareable in public.

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Posted in: Wine in India, Wine Awareness | Comment (2) >>

Blog: Steven Spurrier

The wine market in Bordeaux, the world's largest fine wine producing region with over 110,000 hectares under vines and a history going back to the Romans, is unique in that its wines are tasted by international professionals only a few months after each vintage and long-ranging decisions are then taken by the estates who have their wines to sell and the international wine

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The thing with wine is that it has a capacity to bestow humility.  I am not talking about drunken antics which make it to all our friends' wall of shame. I am talking about the sheer length and breadth of knowledge that this field accommodates.  A lifetime is too short to learn of your ignorance in the field of wines.

I thought myself to be quite a maverick for already knowing about Nero d'Avola -

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Posted in: Wine Tasting, Italian Wine | Comment (0) >>

Blog: Magandeep Singh

There is more to Italy than pasta and Marlon Brando, and both are more American than anything else. I have often been to Vinitaly in the lovely town of Verona (think Romeo and Juliet) and each time I have come back a learned man. Mostly, they were kind enough to invite me; the learning however was mostly pieced together through my keen and supernatural powers of observation.

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Posted in: Wine Events, Italian Wine | Comment (0) >>

Blog: Steven Spurrier

Last time we looked at the principal white grape varieties - grapes that were once identified with specific regions in the traditional vineyards of Europe, but are now seen in wine-producing regions all around the world.

This time, it's the turn of the reds. It's worth noting that, with very rare exceptions, the pulp of a vitis vinifera grape is colourless. If you squeeze the grape, the juice is clear, because it is the skin of the grape that contains the pigmentation. By macerating the skins with the pressed juice before, during and after fermentation (the process which transforms the grape's sugar into alcohol), that gives the colour.  All red grapes can be used to make a rosé wine, the pink colour coming from a very short maceration period.  The skin of the grape also contains the tannins, which, along with the fruit, allow red wines to age.

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Posted in: Wine Education, Red Wine | Comment (1) >>

Blog: Magandeep Singh

The trouble with Indian cuisine is that it has the most possessive and over-zealous of people to protect it - us Indians. So opposed are we to any form of change or modification that anyone may try and induce in this style of cooking that it is rejected as substandard and compromised even before being given a fair duelling chance.

But then that is true of most countries.

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Posted in: Wine and Food, Indian Wine | Comment (2) >>

Blog: Steven Spurrier

Almost all wines today are produced by a type of vine known as vitis vinifera, which has been refined and developed over the centuries for the production of grapes for wine, rather than for the table. Different families of vines have evolved that carry specific names and these are known as grape varieties, or “varietals”. Wine from a single grape variety are called “varietal ..Read More >>

Posted in: Wine Education, Grapes | Comment (0) >>

Blog: Magandeep Singh

It was while having a shower that I realised that old writers had it easy. Nothing had been written, which left them with the entire fairway to prance about on. The simple probability of stringing a few random words together to end up with a sonnet was much higher then than it is today. The novelty of saying “I Love You” made it easy to get away with forgetting an

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Posted in: Wine in India, Indian Wine | Comment (0) >>

Blog: Magandeep Singh

Wine sparks off so many conversations. Little good comes of them, but many find them healthy. Much like a treadmill really: running without going anywhere and definitely unimaginative as a way to lose calories.

The problem is this: wine suffers from being itself. If it is a reserved and sombre drink then people complain that it is too fuddy-duddy. If it tries to be cool and

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Posted in: Wine Events, Wine Awareness, Indian Wine | Comment (4) >>

Blog: Magandeep Singh

I like crystal ball gazing. It is right up there next to voodoo dolls on my list of Xmas gifts. Don’t snigger; I can cast spells too...

2009 has been a jinxed year so far. Not because of itself but mostly because of all that preceded it. All that commotion and action in the hotels have shown us how much of a dog-eat-dog world we live in. And then the terrorist attacks worsened things. Markets were already low, and now Satyam has just made the equivalent of a substantial chunk of our defence budget disappear.

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Posted in: Wine in India, Wine and Food, Indian Wine | Comment (2) >>