Wine Oracles Look Into Their Crystal Balls for 2018
Predicting the future of anything can be a fool’s game. Just ask the political pundits still smarting over the results of the last presidential election.
Of course, that doesn’t stop people from trying. Or people asking them. Or people believing them. So we paged through the predictions of a raft of assorted wine sages, oracles and soothsayers to discover what developments 2018 will bring to the world of wine. In 12 months we’ll know if this was a fool’s game too.
One prediction that seems to crop up every year is that we’ll be drinking better (is somewhat pricier) wine, especially in the $10 and up category. We’ll be drinking more interesting wine too, many experts say. Growers and winemakers will ramp up their exploration of lesser-known varietals from not the usual suspect wine regions. Think reds and whites from Eastern European countries like Croatia and Hungary, as well as value Bordeaux and sparkling wines not from France’s Champagne region.
Rosé is predicted to continue its march to greater popularity, with more and better-quality pinks coming to the market. Look for red blends to increase their market share, and for Carmenere, the lusty red wine of Chile, to show up more often on restaurant wine lists.
Whatever the varietal, oracles predict we’ll be drinking more organic, biodynamic wines, also wines with more balanced, less aggressive flavor profiles. Wine in a box? Or in a can? Well, yes. Those too. Expect better-quality wines in those convenient, if unconventional, packages, helping to shed those wines’ reputation as cheap swill for the dull of palate.
On-line ordering should be bigger than ever too. Even though Amazon Wine shut down at the end of 2017, no one expects the Internet retailing behemoth to abandon its efforts to disrupt the wine sales market, especially given its recent purchase of Whole Foods. The oracles haven’t figured out just what that disruption will be but think two words: free shipping.
Skip the Flu Shot, Drink Wine
It’s getting to be that time of year again, time for fever, chills, headaches, stomach upset, and general feeling like crap, aka, the flu.
You could get a flu shot, load up on Vitamin C or encase yourself in bubble wrap, hide under your bed and not come out until springtime. Or, according to researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine, you could drink more wine.
Yes, along with the benefits of consuming moderate amounts of fermented grape juice like reduced risk of heart disease, diabetes, cataracts and stroke, wine can also help your immune system resist the flu and, if you get it anyway, help reduce the severity of its symptoms.
It’s all about things called flavonoids, which are metabolites derived from plants that act as antioxidants. Wine has lots of them, and when these flavonoids interact with the microbes in our digestive tracts, the result can jack up the body’s immune system to fight off infections, or in this case, the flu.
Now, the university’s study was conducted only on mice, not on people. But those results were pretty impressive. And, really, would you rather have somebody stick a needle in your arm of sip a glass of good Cabernet? In medical terms, that’s called a “no-brainer.”
Great Wine… It Really Is All in Your Head
What is it that makes expensive wine taste better?
Is it the lovingly grown grapes, planted in gold-plated vineyards and kissed by the breath of virgins in the glistening dew of morning? Is it the sheer brilliance of the winemaker, an alchemist who possesses an enological Midas touch that turns mere grapes into Chateau Lafite Rothschild? Or is it the magic of that all-encompassing if enigmatic term “terroir,” which is French for, We don’t really know what it is but it does make for really great wine?
Actually, it’s none of the above. It’s your brain. Specifically, your brain under the influence of, well, money.
That, at least, is the conclusion of a study done by the University of Bonn and the global business school, INSEAD. It involved more than a dozen people, each given three tastes of wine costing about $14 a bottle. The first taste they were told the wine cost $3.50, the second $7 and the third $21, though in fact it was the same wine every time. Not surprisingly, they found the high-priced wine tasted best.
Researchers focused on two areas of the brain: the pre-frontal cortex, which seems to conflate price with quality, and the ventral striatum, which seems to get goosed by higher prices and apparently encourages people to think the wine tastes better than it is.
Unfortunately, the study doesn’t indicate what cork dorks can do to keep their brains from messing up their palates, except perhaps to pay more attention to what’s in your mouth and less to the price tag on the bottle.
New Technology Promises Instant Aging, No Hangover
“Time flies,” as the saying goes. Except when you’re waiting in line at the DMV, on hold with your favorite cable TV provider, and aging wine and spirits.
Well, California-based Cavitation Technologies can’t help you with the first two. But giving wine and hard liquor the benefits of years of patient aging in a couple minutes? They think they’re on to something.
That “something” is a countertop box that resembles a home kitchen coffeemaker, which the company hopes to soon put into production and make available at your local big box retailer. You simply pour the wine/spirits into the machine, click it on, wait a couple minutes and then pour it out.
The idea behind the as-yet-unnamed invention is hydrodynamic cavitation, which is a pair of big, scientific-sounding words that, according to the company, involves using pressure and temperature to affect changes red-white wine, vodka-bourbon-rum-what-have-you at the molecular level, mimicking the process of barrel aging while, not at all incidentally, removing such impurities as methanol and butanol that can cause the dreaded too-much-to-drink hangover.
There does seem to be some confirmation of hydrodynamic cavitation’s promise beyond the company’s claims, as in the past few years a vodka and gin that had undergone the process each won awards at prestigious national wine and spirits competitions.
When this miracle box will be ready for mass marketing and what it will cost are still up in the air. But better booze and no hangover is definitely something worth waiting for.
Vintners Keeping Their Fingers Crossed After California Fires
After October’s devastating fires that ravaged the Northern California wine country, vintners, growers and most wine industry analysts are cautiously optimistic about the health of the 2017 vintage.
More than 20 wineries in Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino counties were impacted by the fires, everything from total destruction to minor cosmetic damage. No estimates on the number of vineyard acres that burned are currently available, but growers note that even in dry seasons, grapevines are as much as 50 percent water and acted as natural firebreaks to keep flames from spreading even further.
Some vineyards did burn, though, and others may have suffered heat damage; it’s too early to tell the extent and severity. Fire-damaged vines may not produce grapes for a year or two following the event but growers say even vines regrafted on undamaged rootstock will begin producing after that.
What nearly everyone in the wine business is fearful of, however, is smoke taint, the nasty flavor of smoke permeating grapes. Though 85 to 90 percent of the region’s grapes were already in fermentation when the fires struck, the remainder (mostly Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah) probably were affected to some degree by smoke, which could render them virtually unusable.
Whether grapes already in the winemaking process could be ruined by smoke taint is a question right now no one can answer. For an industry that contributes some $27 billion annually to the economies of Napa and Sonoma alone, there’s an awful lot riding on that answer.
Spanish Winery Has the Blues. . . Literally
So you’re in your local wine shop, trying to decide what to buy. . . Red, white or rosé?
How about blue?
At least that’s what GIK winery is hoping. Yes, in the interest of attracting the segment of the all-important Millennials who believe that three colors of wine just aren’t enough, the Spanish producer is expected to introduce its sweetened, neon-blue wine to U.S. consumers sometime before the holidays.The stuff is already available in Europe, where three bottles cost around €36. (You can pre-order a three-bottle package here for $48 on the winery’s U.S. website: https://bluewine.us/).
What’s the wine made of and how does it get to be blue? Well, it’s a blend of a rotating cast of red and white varietals, from Syrah to Macabeo, dyed electric blue with pigments of red wine grape skins and an organic compound called indigotine, typically used as a food dye. It’s plenty sweet too, though with a relatively low 11.5 percent alcohol content.
What does GIK Blue taste like? Damned if I want to know. But according to a brave taster named Ashley quoted in Cosmopolitan magazine, “It really tastes like a blue raspberry Jolly Rancher. I can't imagine drinking a whole glass of this without my teeth falling out.”
Honestly, it gives me the blues just thinking about it.