(1) How To Taste Red Wine

Easy-to-understand video on the 4 S’s: See, Sniff, Sip, Summarise!

(2) How to Open a Bottle of Wine Like a Sommelier

Quite a funny guy showing how to open a bottle - the way to impress chicks!

(3) Wine & Food Pairing Tips

For the geekier wine noobs!

As promised, the Venn Diagram to help you to remember the different style of the French!

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Recently we have attended a short course on French Wine at Wine For Asia Singapore. Picked up an interesting way to remember the different styles of the French wines — using Venn Diagrams!

See below for the taste profiles for the French Whites!

Look out for our next post on the taste profiles for the French reds!

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Have you ever been offered a really bad wine yet the host wanted you describe it to the rest of your friends? Here are some ‘cool’ descriptors. Finally you can describe a wine without betraying your own conscience and offending your host!

Use them in different combinations!

Look out for our next post on how to describe any wine… confidently!!!

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As promised, here is quick guide to the grape varietal, Pinot Noir!

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Pinot Noir (read Pee-no Nwar) is a black grape variety, mainly used to make red wines. It performs best in cool climates, where it can maintain its crisp acidity, while developing into a complete complement of flavour components. The ancestral home of Pinot Noir is Burgundy in France.

You may be surprised that one of the three main varieties to make Champagne is Pinot Noir. However, it is best-known for producing great wines from Burgundy, New Zealand and Oregon, USA. Its cool-climate affinity also makes it popular in Germany, where as Spatburgunder (literally “Late Burgundian”), Pinot Noir is the most widely plant red grape. In Austria, it is called Blauburgunder (literally “Blue Burgundian”).

Pinot Noir is characterized by low to moderate tannin, high levels of acidity and pale to medium colour. Its aromas when young include berries (raspberries, cherries, strawberries) and red flowers. As it matures, it may take on earthy and rustic characteristics that are described as “forest floor”, “leather” or “barnyard”.

As a variety, Pinot Noir is genetically unstable and highly prone to mutation. Hence, it has spun off some popular genetic mutations, including the white varieties Pinot Grigio/Gris and Pinot Blanc. 

Take a look at the next post for a fact sheet on Pinot Noir!

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The Wine Unplugged had recently organised a Pinot Noir sharing session with our members at a community centre. 

Not the typicall classroom style but it was fun! Look out for this space for the notes we have prepared!

Dear all, sorry for the delay for the final part of Bordeaux 101! We will cover 2 regions on the Right Bank. Here we go!

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Saint Emilion

This part of Bordeaux nestles in the hills, twenty miles east of Bordeaux city. The best vineyards are perched on top of a limestone plateau and its surrounding hillsides, or on a gravel outcrop near the eastern border of Pomerol. The wines of Saint Emilion are widely enjoyed on account on their forward fruit (high Merlot content) and lack of searing tannin in youth (low Cab Sauvignon content). The number of chateaux in this relatively smaller region is huge, producing three million cases a year.

Pomerol

Although there is no classification system, there are but a handful of great chateaux making incredible wines. The most famous is Chateaux Petrus, one of the few wines in Bordeaux made from 100 percent Merlot. Most Pomerols are very high in Merlot content, up to 80 percent in most cases. Therefore they exhibit plummy, chocolaty and spicy overtones. With such high proportions of Merlot, the wines tend to drink well even in their youth. These wines are highly sought after and, on the account of the limited volumes, the prices of Pomerols tend to be rather punishing.

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