Dear EC Kraus,

I really enjoy the wine making information in your newsletters. I bottled my first wine, a California Merlot, last Oct. It aged in 6.5 L carboys and had 8 months of French oak chips. I racked it twice. It is still a bit young, but interestingly, if I decant the wine and drink it 24 hours later, it is a much better wine. Can you speculate as to why letting it breath for 24 hours improves it so much?

Thank James

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Dear James,

What is really going on when a wine "breathes" is it is being introduced to fresh air again, something that it hasn't had contact with for quite some time. By pulling the cork and simply letting the bottle stand or by pouring the wine into a carafe, the air will start a mild oxidative process that will soften the rough edges of the wine's tannins. It also allows time for any odd gasses to escape that may have developed during aging. Allowing a wine to breathe has also been known to intensify both the flavor and bouquet of a wine--something that can be a problem for wines that have not been fully aged.

While allowing time to breathe can benefit some wines, for most it will have no benefit at all and for others it may even bring damage, particularly with older wines whose flavor structure has been known to collapse very shortly after decanting. The wines that are most likely to benefit from breathing are younger, heavy reds that have not yet had time to take complete advantage of the aging process. These are the types of wine a typical person that's into wine making would have.

How long you should let the wine breath is another question. Usually we are talking minutes not hours. More than likely 60 minutes would have been just as good as the 24 hours you mentioned with your Merlot. As a general rule-of-thumb the younger the wine the more time it may need to take full advantage of breathing and vice versa, but to say a wine needs 24 hours is excessive by any perspective. Think in terms of 10 or 20 minutes.

With all this being said, unless you have previous experience with decanting a specific wine, giving it time to breath is a crap shoot. In the case of your Merlot, you have specific experience with it, so I would not hesitate to let it breath for 30 minutes and see what you think. In the case of an unfamiliar wine, if it is white, breathing is pointless; if it has been aged more than 4 years, not necessary; and if it has been aged 8 or more years, risky. Stick with the red wines that are heavy in tannins and short on aging. Happy wine making.

Best Wishes,
Customer Service at E. C. Kraus

Tuscany is a region located just northwest of Rome. Its rolling hills and majestic olive groves offer as a dramatic back-setting for wine-rich towns such as Florence and Siena.

If you have never had a Super Tuscan wine then you are definitely missing out on a wonderful experience. Even

A fortified wine is a wine to which brandy has been added. Brandy, being a distilled product with an alcohol level around 40 percent, will raise the finished alcohol level of the wine.

From a traditional standpoint, fortification was done to make the wine more stable during long trips by ship or by cart. The wine's alcohol level was raised to around 17 to 22 percent with the addition of Brandy. Un-fortified wines are normally only about 10 to 13 percent alcohol. The higher alcohol level acted as a preservative, diminishing the chance of spoilage during the long journey.

The big three fortified wines that most people have heard of are: Sherry, Madeira and Port. All three are Old World wines: Sherry originating from Spain, Madeira and Port from Portugal.

Since the advent of sanitizing products and the development of various other preservation techniques, higher alcohol levels have not been needed to keep a wine stable for well over a century. However, these wine styles have still lived on.

The next blog entry will be on how the home winemaker can fortify their own wines.

The Wine Lover's Page has always been our favorite website for keeping up with the wine trends of the day. Their finger always seems to be on the pulse of what's really going on in the wine community. One of their site's strengths is it's no-nonsense approach to keeping up with and explaining the relevant. You won't find any fluffy articles that talk down to the reader. Big words are

not used as "braggary" but only when necessary, and their tone is down-to-earth. As they like to put it, their web site is in the "no-snob zone".

One of the features on the site is their "Online Wine Tasting Course" where you can "Learn To Taste Like An Expert". I mention this because I found the course to be perfect as an introduction to wine appreciation and wine tasting. It will take the intimidation right out of you.

It's basically a series of 13 short chapters that walks you through the fundamentals of tasting, as well as give you a brief overview of the various different styles of wine. And here's the best part, it's free! You don't even need to sign-up. Just go to their web site and go through it at your own leisure.

When it comes to grapes and their various wine styles there are all kinds of funny words, with awkward spellings, originating from languages other than just plain English. I'll be the first to tell you that I--still to this day--can not remember how to say many of them.

Talking with a wine-snob is where these words can get very frightful. A wine-snob can throw these words at you like flying daggers. They enjoy watching you squirm as you are huddled into submission, not by their knowledge of wine necessarily, but by their ability to say words. The intimidation factor can become quite intense.

Well, now you can "sound like" you know what you're talking about too. Below is a list of the more common wines you will run across along with their proper pronunciations. Learn how to say these words and not only will you be the impressive winemaker in the family, but you'll be the wine expert too.

This is a story of two wines, Syrah and Shiraz, and how they both are the same, yet different, at the same time. On the surface it seems to be somewhat of an exercise in semantics, with their names being the only difference, but after taking a closer look, it starts to become clear that there is much more to the story than just names.

Syrah and Shiraz teaches us a lesson, one that illustrates how a grape's environment and the way in which it is processed can influence the outcome of a resulting wine.

Any wine expert will tell you that Syrah and

Shiraz are two varietal wines that are made from the exact same grape. If you analyze the DNA of each of the grapes used to make these wines you will find that there is no difference between them.

Then Why The Two Names?
The French refer to the grape and the wine they make from it as Syrah. Other parts of the world such as: South America, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and parts of the United States refer to the grape and the wine as Shiraz.

But there is something more than just a difference in name. There is a difference in style as well. While both wines are very assertive red wines, a Syrah tends to be a little more elegant and complex. It usually has more of a smokey, earthy character with flavors of plum and spicy pepper. A Shiraz on the other hand is more crisp and fruity, less layered with slight, jammy flavors of berry as compared to a Syrah. This is a very wide generalization of each wine, but even so it would be safe to say that if you tasted both wines side-by-side you would notice more differences than similarities between the two.

So, Why Are These Wines Different?
While the grape remains the same in each wine there is so much else that is different. The soil, the climate, the cultivation, and the fermentation all vary to make a Syrah a Syrah and a Shiraz a Shiraz.

While different soils can not assert their own character onto a grape, they can guide the way in which a grape develops its own flavor. This is referred to as the terroir. The French vineyards are heavy in limestone which can hold moisture better and deeper than most soils. This forces the vines to get more of their nutrients from deeper soils. The result is a wine with more layered, complex flavors.

The French are not allowed to use irrigation or fertilization on their vines either. This stems from governmental laws designed to keep the grape production limited. This leads to stressed vines with fewer berries, but with each berry packing more flavor.

This is all in contrast to places like Australia, South Africa and New Zealand where Shiraz grapes are produced in sandy soils with plenty of fertilization and irrigation. The cultivation is abundant. This creates a wine with a more even character than a Syrah and with the ability to mature more quickly.

The Syrah is also grown in France's cooler climate. This lends to the plum-like, smokey character of this wine. This is in comparison to Shiraz which is grown in warmer climates which makes the wine more jammy and berry-like.

Even the rate of fermentation plays some role in the flavor development of the wine. A Syrah is fermented more slowly so as to increase the time the pulp can stay on the fermentation. A Shiraz is fermented at a faster, more-normal rate which helps to make the wine, in general, more fruity.

One of the biggest debates going on in the wine community these days is whether corks should be dropped in favor of the screw cap. The screw caps seems to be a hard pill to swallow for many wineries, but

there is a growing group of studies that suggest the screw cap is the way of the future.

Many wineries in Australia and New Zealand have already embraced the screw cap stating that the elimination of possible cork taint, alone, is reason enough for change. Some of these studies are also showing that quality is improved when wines are stored under screw cap, whites improving more so than reds.

But opposition to this move comes by way of a plea for esthetics. Market competitiveness causes hesitation among wineries fearing their screw-capped wines will appear cheap and not sell as briskly as the corked wines of their competitors.

Some U.S. wineries are closing their bottles with both cork and screw cap. One such winery is Tablas Creek Vineyard in Paso Robles, CA. Their philosophy states what is right for one wine may not be right for the next, making closures--in effect--a question of flavor design.

The results of one study can be found on "California Wine And food's" website. The Hogue Cellars did a 4 year trial study for natural cork, synthetic cork and screw cap. The results of this study are disclosed there.

We hear it all the time, "I can't drink wines with sulfites because I'm allergic to them. They give me a headache". Not so fast. Research has all but debunked the sulfite/allergy connection. Here is a great article I ran across while surfing around the net, "Red Wine Headache."

No one is doubting that some people do get headaches when drinking wine, but the reason as to "why" is still not clear. However, one thing is certain. It is highly unlikely that sulfites are the cause.