Bars & Pubs

Put your question to Richard Ehrlich, the Wine Professor.

Does breathing a cheap wine really do much for it?
‘Breathing’, or opening the bottle and letting it sit on the table for a while, doesn’t do much for any wine whether cheap or expensive: too little wine is exposed to air for appreciable changes to occur. Aeration, the term that we professional wine-dorks like to use, is a different matter. Air contact breaks up some of the compounds that make a wine taste rough, or give it a tough, ‘chewy’ texture. Anyway, aeration is just a fancy word for pouring wine into a decanter (or a clean jug) – or into the serving glasses. Pouring through a funnel increases the aerating power, as does pouring from a height – six inches or so, if you haven’t already drunk too much.

Aeration won’t turn a frog of a wine into a prince, but in young, full-bodied reds it is definitely worth doing. Fifteen minutes of waiting time is all you need after pouring. But again: don’t expect miracles. For that you need a deity, not a decanter.
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My grandson was born in 2006. I’d like to buy some 2006 wine which will still be worth drinking in 2027, for his twenty-first. Any suggestions?
Hmm. Tricky. Very little wine is made for long keeping, and wines made for drinking after 21 years are über-expensive. Also, as it happens, 2006 was not a bumper year for them (less than awesome vintage in Bordeaux, no vintage Port). What’s more, even if you buy wisely, the wine may be past its peak by 2027. And finally: you would have to find perfect storage conditions for the wine.

If I were in your position, I would set aside a sum every year – whatever I could afford – and, on his eighteenth birthday, buy the young man membership to the Wine Society (01438 737700/ thewinesociety.com), a member-owned cooperative and one of Britain’s best merchants. Lifetime membership currently stands at £40. I would then use the rest of the dosh to buy wine. The Society is renowned for customer service and will give sound advice. I wish my grandparents had done this for me when I was two years old.

Is it true that the protein in wine comes from the frogs and bees that are crushed with the grapes?
Think about it. The frogs make a special trip from their watery habitats to the dry earth of the vineyards, often travelling up steep slopes in places like the Mosel Valley of Germany. Then they hide until the harvester (human or mechanical) comes along, and leap onto the basket/sack/plastic tub/ conveyor belt. After the truck-ride to the winery, they sit happily before being dumped into the wine press or de-stemming machine. Bees just fly onto the bunches in the winery and await their demise.

Okay, enough of the heavy-handed jokes. The short answer is – no. Why would a frog be there in the first place, since frogs like water and vineyards are dry places? Bees do congregate in wineries. (Free grape juice! Let’s party, dude!) But if any are unfortunate enough not to fly off before the grapes go into the machines, they might make up perhaps one or two billionths of the crushed mass. Sorry. Château Ribbit sounds like a myth to me.

Is the origin of Vin Santo really from the Greek island Santorini, but later produced in Italy?
There’s disagreement about this. The island’s wines were exported to Venice, which had a long relationship (political and economic) with Santorini from the thirteenth century onwards. But the Greek wine’s name is a shortening of the island’s name, and some people think that the Italian version (meaning ‘holy wine’, and made principally in Tuscany) is an independent creation. What’s indisputable is that they are the same type of wine, made from grapes that have been dried on mats to evaporate some of the water and concentrate the sugar. Santorini is better known now for its dry whites, while the sweeter Tuscan versions of Vin Santo are – when they’re well made – some of the region’s greatest hits.

Is it true that the bigger the punt, the better the wine?
The punt is the indentation in the bottom of a wine bottle, and with one exception it has no reason to be there at all. The exception is sparkling wines, which are sometimes stacked stopper-to-base during one phase of wine making and therefore need a nest for the tip of the bottle. Other bottles may not need one, but most do have them. Surveying the bottles in my hallway for evidence, I got a sense that more expensive wines often have deeper punts. It’s probably more an affectation than a sign of quality, however. And it uses more glass, making the bottle heavier, more expensive and more carbon-consuming. So perhaps the answer is: more expensive, yes; better, not necessarily.

Put your question to Richard Ehrlich, the Wine Professor.