ask a sommelier
I was thinking of cellaring Champagne and was wondering if there were any special considerations in comparison to still wine.
— Gail Cormier
Dear Gail,
Ah, Champagne— nectar of the gods. I personally have never met a bottle of champagne that wasn’ t screaming“ drink me please.” That said, let me note how impressed I am by your willpower in wanting to cellar these lovely wines.
The biggest consideration in cellaring Champagne is having bottles that should be cellared. The truth is, much of the Champagne produced is made to drink as soon as it is released to the marketplace, and it really requires no cellaring. It is important to note that lighter-style non-vintage Champagne and most non-Champagne bubblies( bubbles from other parts of the world) will not benefit from aging at all and are probably best drunk up within a year or two of purchase.
Some grower Champagnes, vintage Champagne, and the luxury Cuvées can really benefit from careful cellaring, however. In time, they will evolve an almost ethereal richness and complexity. Keep in mind that the trade-off may be some loss of carbonation over extended time. As with still wines, you want to lay them down in a cool, dark area that has little, if any, temperature fluctuation.
I will keep my fingers crossed for you in hopes that your willpower remains better than mine.
— Saralyn Mehta
Is it okay to store wine bottles with screw-tops upright?— Diane Nelson
Dear Diane,
When it comes to storage, whether the wine us under screw-top or cork, give your wine the mushroom treatment: cool, dark, relatively humid and quiet.
With various closures, we can ask the same general storage question: how can the seal fail? For cork, the seal can fail if it dries out, so storing the wine on its side is good. For screw-top, the seal can fail by trauma, such as bumping up against another object, or by pressure, which might occur if the wine is stored upside down or even on its side for long periods of time. With that in mind, I would recommend that screwtop bottles be stored heads up. And remember the mushroom treatment!
— Sylvia Jansen
Within the Prädikat system, apparently, German wines can become“ declassified.” For example, they are legally Auslese but on the bottle it says Spatlese. This happens in especially warm years. Is there any way to easily tell if a wine is declassified or not?
— James Gosselin
Dear James,
Top quality( Prädikat) German wines are classified by the measured sugar concentration of the grapes at harvest. The lowest Prädikat level, Kabinett, gives the lightest wines; Spätlese gives classic styles; and Auslese wines are concentrated and rich. In warm vintages, naturally higher sugar levels may preclude production of lighter wines and producers may use sweeter, riper juice to meet market demand for lighter categories.
I asked Rainer Lingenfelder, owner / winemaker of Lingenfelder Estate in the Pfalz region of Germany, if it’ s easy to spot a“ declassified” wine. The answer is complex. If all German wines were fermented dry, then the alcohol level of the wine would indirectly indicate the starting sugar concentration and, by comparison to published
Prädikat sugarlevel tables, one would know the wine’ s true category.
But many German wines contain residual sugar( i. e., grape sugars not converted into alcohol) and the relationship between alcohol and starting sugar concentration is no longer valid. Therefore, the short answer to your question is no, there is no easy way to tell; you would have to ask the producer directly if a wine was“ declassified.”
— Gary Hewitt
If you have questions for any of our Sommeliers, please submit them to www. banvilleandjones. com / cellar. apsx
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