Tag Archives: Bannockburn

Impact of temperature on wine taste is larger than you think! Part 1 – Red Wine

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Some simple knowledge of wine storage and drinking can greatly enhance most people’s wine drinking experience.  One such area that is easy to understand and can significantly increase pleasure is the temperature at which to serve various wines.  The general rule is to serve red wine at room temperature and white wine chilled.  And sparkling wine, even more chilled!  But what is chilled?  And in fact, what actually is a suitable room temperature?

This will be a two-part blog on the impact of temperature on wine.  The first and simplest post is for red wine.  This will be followed by the impact of temperature on white wine, which is even more profound and important (but no more complicated to understand).

Hopefully, your red wines have been stored suitably at a consistent temperature that is somewhat cooler than room temperature.  I store my reds long-term at 14 degrees Celsius (57 degrees Fahrenheit) and in my apartment Vintec wine fridge at 16 degrees Celsius (61 degrees Fahrenheit).  My room temperature is usually between 20 – 22 degrees Celsius (68 – 72 degrees Fahrenheit).  Therefore, if I am planning ahead, I take my bottles of red wine out of the Vintec at least several hours up to a day before serving them.  This (1) allows the wine to reach room temperature and (2) to by standing it straight up, draw any loose sediment to the bottom of the bottle.

By raising the temperature 4 – 5 degrees (Celsius), you really release the flavor.  The wine goes from being a dormant, tight, flat wine to a more open and interactive one.  The flavors become fuller and more robust.  It is always a good idea to drink red at room temperature if the room temperature is between 18 – 25 degrees Celsius (65 – 77 degrees Fahrenheit).  But what do you do if room temperature is above that or you are outside on a hot day?  If the temperature is only a few degrees higher, then you can still drink the wine well enough.  However, as the temperature starts to approach or go beyond 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit), drinking red wine at room temperature becomes less enjoyable.  This is because it becomes a bit stickier and may even taste a bit cooked.  Additionally, at those temperatures, you are probably looking for something cooler and more refreshing to drink, like a cold beer or a chilled white wine.

Reusable ice cubes – store in freezer

Therefore, if you are outside and it is 30 degrees Celsius or higher, you may want to chill your red wine slightly.  To do this, I would not recommend putting ice cubes into your wine!  This will water down and flatten the flavors. You may however want to put in one or two reusable ice cubes which are plastic encased ice cubes.  Therefore, you can reduce the temperature of the red wine a few degrees without watering it down.

I am currently drinking a very nice 2005 Bannockburn Pinot Noir at room temperature of 23.5 degrees Celsius (75 degrees Fahrenheit) and this temperature is working well.  However, if it was a few degrees warmer, I may consider putting a reusable ice cube into my wine!

My next blog will focus on the right temperatures to serve white wine.  The temperature setting has a far more important impact on white wine than it does for red, and this is true to get the most out of both bad and good white wine!

Pinot Noir with Pork Chops tonight!

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My bride and I have some pork in our diet, usually when having Chinese dumplings or Yum Cha.  Or sometimes we will dice it and stir-fry it for a pork salad or mixed with rice.

However, it has been ages since I have had a man-size pork chop for dinner.  My mom used to make pork chops as regular fair when I was growing up, but I believe it has actually been decades since I have had a pork chop.  We are also having mash potatoes and salad to go with the chops.  I sure my bride will be publishing an upcoming post with the recipe in DAZ in the Kitchen sometime soon!  (in fact, she just posted the recipe and blog entry for great pork chops a bit ago.  Here it is at DAZ in the Kitchen.)

The pork chops are currently slow cooking in the oven for about five hours (and smell great BTW!).  Therefore, I expect them to be juicy and flavorful throughout.  I considered a few options for the wine, include Pinot Noir, a GSM (Grenache, Shiraz, Mourvedre) combination such as a Chateauneuf-Du-Pape Les Sinard, or a true Burgandy Pinot Noir.

A safe choice would have been the Bannockburn Pinot Noir from Victoria, but since this was a new dish and ripe with juices and flavours, I wanted something a little more adventuresome, not an easy, elegant, refined Pinot Noir.  I wanted a big, aged Pinot Noir with complex flavors and big fruit flavors.  A Charteris Pinot Noir from New Zealand could do the trick, but my Pinots from PJ (Chateris) are only three or four years old.  PJ’s Pinot Noirs are big and elegant at the same time and beautifully drinkable now.  However, I like to challenge my Pinot Noirs to age in complexity and show me how good they are in old age!  (Maybe this is a transference to something I am doing as I approach 60!)

I have had some 2003 and 2004 Pinot Noirs from Blueberry Hill in the Hunter Valley.  As you know, I favor the Hunter Valley for my Shiraz, Semillon, and Chardonnay.  I do not really buy Pinot Noir or Cabernet Sauvignon from the Hunter.  However, I there have been two Pinot Noirs I sampled and liked, including a specially blended (2005 and 2008 grapes) Pinot Noir from Sandalyn in Lovedale and the Blueberry Hill’s Pinot Noirs.  I bought four bottles of the 2003 and also several bottles of the 2004 Blueberry Hill Pinot Noir, but for some reason have never drunk them.

I always pick one of the bottles up and admire the beautiful labels used for the Blueberry Hill wines, but for some reason or another, have put it down and selected something else to go with dinner.  I actually cannot explain this, except to say that I am a creature of habit and only having been to the winery twice, I never got into regular tastings year-in, year-out like I have for some of my other Hunter Valley favorites.  Therefore, my beautiful bottles of Blueberry Hill have sat and collected dust!

If you know your Pinot Noir grape at all, you know many good bottles will go off after 10 years.  I have recently had some magnificent Pinot Noirs which have been 10 – 12 years old and really try to push this limit as the wine grows in complexity and elegance.  However, if you wait too long, it loses its flavor unless you like drinking the flavor of vinegar!  Therefore, if I have a dozen or more of one particular vintage of Pinot Noir, I will sample a bottle every couple of years (and enjoy it along the way!) to be able to determine the best time to drink most of the bottles.

Unfortunately, I did not do that with the 2003 Blueberry Hill Pinot Noir.  When I opened the bottle, my immediate reaction was that the wine was dead, and completely flavorless.  However, this was just from the neck of the wine after removing the cork.  When I decanted it, I could tell the color was still good and had not turned brown.  There was only a very slight indication of that.  And after decanting and pouring a glass (of course into my favorite Riedel Vinum Pinot Noir glass), I was able to nose some remaining fruit.  Upon tasting, I enjoyed plum and a bit of leather taste.  The texture was perfect with fully integrated tannins.

The wine is still very drinkable, but should have optimally been drunk in 2007 – 2009, not at the end of 2012.  The wine is somewhat fragile (notice the loose edge between light and dark red color in the glass in the picture above).  Therefore, while still flavorful, the flavor breaks down quickly in your mouth and does not have much finish.

I can tell this was a good bottle of wine, but should have been drunk when five years old, not at nine years of age.  I will need to drink the other bottles quickly and may use some of them for an educational tasting seminar, in terms of comparing a young, aging, mature and past due wine of the same grape and maker.

This wine is certainly good to drink with dinner and will go well with the pork chops and mash, but I did both myself and Blueberry Hill a dis-service to wait this long to drink it. I will need to stop by Blueberry Hill the next time I am in the Hunter Valley and get a couple of bottles of the current release.  They make a nice Hunter Valley Pinot Noir and not many Hunter Valley wineries can say that!  And thanks to Riedel for their Pinot Noir glass which help funnel and save the remaining flavor of this wine!  It’s a good thing my head isn’t smaller, or I might get it caught in the globe since I really do like to stick my nose in there!

Update two hours after opening bottle and with dinner:  This wine improved significantly, with the little bit of brackish taste having worn off.  It was a real treat with the pork chop and mash!  Well done to the cook and the winemaker!

What to drink with Bangers and Mash?

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We are making up a meal of bangers and mash for this evening.  This is the first time cooking this dish at home and I am really looking forward to it tonight!  And we are also looking forward to spring time, but still in the throes of winter and some warm mash in the tummy will suit me just fine this evening!

Several days ago, I wrote about a ‘medicinal Pinot Noir’ and described what a great Pinot Noir the Bannockburn is.  My first introduction to bangers and mash was while living in Melbourne in 1998, and interestingly enough that was also my first introduction to the Bannockburn Pinot Noir!  I can’t remember the vintage, but it was that tasting that encouraged me to buy two dozen of the 1998 Bannockburn Pinot Noir several years later and for which I am forever grateful.

When having bangers and mash, the mashed potatoes feature prominently as do the sausages (we will also have a side of salad with caramelized balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing).  The mash is creamy in texture and when mixed with butter and truffle oil, it deserves to be matched with a slightly lighter red wine such as a Pinot Noir or a Cabernet Sauvignon.  Many Shirazes could overwhelm the bangers and mash and we would not want that.  (However, the 1998 Tyrrell’s Vat 9 is such an elegant and slightly thinner textured Shiraz and would go beautifully!)

Therefore, I selected the 1997 Lindemans St George.  I was tempted to open a bottle of the 1996 Lindemans St George which is even better than the 1997, but that seemed too elegant for a simple meal of bangers and mash.  The 1997 St George would be considered an off year compared to the brilliant 1996 and 1998 Lindemans St George.  One of the reason I choose the 1997 Lindemans St George is I thought it was more suitable than the 1996 or 1998 Lindemans St George when matched to the food, and the other is that it will not last as long and  I have about two dozen of the 1997 Lindemans St George and only four of the 1996 and six of the 1998 Lindemans St George which will last another six to ten years.  I am guessing I need to drink all of my 1997 Lindemans St George within the next several years.

When decanting the wine, I noticed that the tannins were well deposited on the side of the bottle and there was a lot of tannin.  The wine seemed a bit tight upon first opening it, but after 20 minutes, it opened up and became smoother.  This wine is still surprisingly robust, yet very mellow with little fruit flavours, maybe just a hint of blackberry.  It does have some light smokey and leathery smells.  The grapes come from the Coonawarra region in South Australia where a number of great Cabernet Sauvignons are grown.  Overall, this is a very nice wine, but not a great wine.

The wine should match up very well with both the mash and the sausages.  I would explain what flavoring is in the sausages, but frankly we forgot what type of sausages they were when we froze them, so will have to find out upon eating them!  But I know the wine on its own is great to drink and it is a great match for the buttery mash with truffle oil, so I expect the meal over all to be outstanding!

A Medicinal Pinot Noir this evening!

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I am still a bit unfit, from having been quite sick with a viral infection in my lungs (of which I still have some remnants) and now have a bit of a toothache, even though rubbing the tooth will alcohol really does seem to make the pain subside!  Therefore, I have opened a ‘medicinal’ Pinot Noir for the evening.  It is lighter in taste and more elegant than a Cabernet Sauvignon or a Shiraz – I can actually visualize drip-feeding a Pinot Noir directly into my blood stream!  I also know my bride is bringing home some beautiful leftover pasta from an amazing lunch she had with co-workers today.  The pasta is a spaghetti with blue swimmer crab and tomato, and could have gone nicely with an aged Riesling, but I really wanted my ‘medicinal’ Pinot Noir tonight and believe it will match extremely well with the pasta.

I have opened a bottle of the 2006 Bannockburn Pinot Noir from the Geelong area in Victoria.  Year-in, year-out, Bannockburn makes exceptional Pinot Noirs.  I was first introduced to the 1998 vintage of this wine which was an exceptional and unusual Pinot Noir.  I finished off my last bottle (thank God I had two dozen to last!) about a year ago and it was still magnificent.  Very few Pinot Noirs will last this distance, but the 1998 Bannockburn Pinot Noir just went on and on! 

This wine (the 1998 vintage) is very complex, full flavored and combines berry flavors with some musky, almost musty flavors but in a very positive manner.  This wine would go very well with a mushroom ragout, eggplant or any other dark vegetable.  I can see myself smoking a fine Cuban cigar while sipping this wine!  The 2006 is similar, but a touch lighter and not quite as complex.  However, it is still a truly wonderful wine.  I purchased two dozen of both the 2005 and 2006 vintages of the Bannockburn Pinot Noir, but enjoy the 2006 more.  It will also last longer.  However, taste is a matter of ‘courses for horses’ and I know several people who prefer the 2005 vintage.

The 2006 Bannockburn Pinot has a very light but tart chokeberry or elderberry taste combined with flavors from the dark, moist forest floor.  Yet, the different flavors are highly integrated, the texture smooth and perfectly balanced, making an excellent wine.  I am drinking it on its own as I write this and it fills the senses!  It also is serving its purpose as a medicinal wine to reduce the ache in my tooth and pick up my spirits overall!  I am excited to have this wine with dinner in about 30 minutes!

A lot of people rave about New Zealand Pinot Noirs, but I need to look no further than Geelong, Victoria for my favorite Pinot Noir in Australia and New Zealand.  (I have had slightly better Pinot Noirs from France, but at two to three times the price of the Bannockburn.)