The Likes of Which I’ve Tasted Before

posted by mark in Website Updates, Snooth

It’s Friday afternoon and the Snooth team is settling down from the bustle of the day to enjoy its Friday wine tasting. Today’s bottle will be partially in celebration of a new feature.

As of this morning, Snoothies have the capability to post multiple tasting notes and ratings of a single wine. This is especially useful if you want to track how your taste or a particular wine is evolving. All of this will of course tie in nicely with the Average Rating over Time graph already on the detail page.

The Lees’ Knees

posted by mark in Snooth, Wine

A friend of mine pointed me at a crossword clue … 4 letters, “dregs from wine fermentation”, starts with L. I had no idea but she figured it out to be “Lees”. As I’d never heard of the stuff before I figured I’d scrape the bottom of the wine barrel to find out the dirt on it.

Lees is made up of the pulp, yeast, and grape skins that float to the bottom of the wine barrel as wine is fermenting. The separation of the wine from the Lees (a process called Racking) is a pivotal step in forming the flavors of the wine.

As the wine rests on the Lees it undergoes Malolactic Fermentation which leaves the end product much more buttery. During Malolactic Fermentation the strong Malic Acid in the wine softens to Lactic Acid. Most red wines are left on the Lees to undergo this process. White wines are often racked earlier to keep them more tart, but some white wines are similarly allowed to soften. It’s up to the winemaker to decide how the wine should use the Lees. Whatever they do decide will play an important role in how the wine ends up tasting.

As for my awful pun in the title of this post, I don’t believe the Lees have such an appendage, however perhaps the legs do?

Does anyone have any other good wine crossword clues?

Mind The Price Gap

posted by mark in Snooth, Wine

Tom Wark over at Fermentation wrote a good post yesterday about a study that shows test subjects preferring wine from a more expensive bottle regardless of the quality. His point is well taken… no one finds this surprising. We’re conditioned to think of expensive wine as de facto good.

Of course it’s more complicated than that and incorporates the entire experience of wine. Last night I quipped to an acquaintance of mine that even a good bottle taken whilst someone repeatedly kicks you in the shins is likely going to end up tasting mediocre. Of course, pair the same bottle with a romantic dinner, your favorite person and good music and the result is likely to be different. Again, no surprises.

One of the powers of the community we’re building is the exposure of those bottles which combine cheap and good. You may have already been able to use Snooth to find great italian wines for under 20 dollars. Or maybe you’ve used our QPR sorting feature to chase down a bordeaux that won’t break the bank. I hope you have, but there’s one more question. What prevents the predisposition of “pricey == good” from tarnishing the community’s opinions at large?

The answer comes in bulk. With so many ratings in one place we can hope to reason with those unfortunate souls who are consistently duped into following a price tag to the pour house (ha). And if you do spend a few extra bucks (and I sometimes do, believe me) and you don’t think the wine is very good, listen to yourself. You’re probably right, and you can do someone else a favor by warning them off a potentially poor purchase.

As for me, tonight I’m going to drink some well priced wine. Tomorrow I’ll spend the difference.

For Your Eyes Only

posted by mark in Website Updates, Snooth

When I first started tracking my reviews on Snooth I was a little self conscious. I didn’t know much about wine and writing a review to post on the web was slightly intimidating. Honestly, I became comfortable very quickly. Even if my reviews are still not going to win any awards, I’m quite happy that they might be helpful to someone else in the community.

But I can understand how someone might want to keep notes for themselves and not have to worry about other people reading them. Well, now you can make a note private, which means that you can see and edit it, but only your score will show to other users of the site. You can find this option on the form where you create/edit your reviews, on the wine details page.

Pop!

posted by mark in Snooth, Wine

As I nurse my New Year’s hangover and remember the signature sounds of the holiday — the count-down, the cheering and yelling of “Happy New Year!” to complete strangers, and of course, the popping of a cork — I’m drawn particularly to the cork. As New Year’s is such a wine holiday we wine drinkers of the world get a chance to share our passion with a lot of folks who may not normally hear a bottle of sparkling wine opened.

In the interest of some light New Year’s reading I looked up some info about cork. The wine bottle cork that we know and love is made of bark from the Cork Oak tree. The tree can be harvested for its bark every six to nine years.

Although one of the primary uses of cork is as a closure for wine bottles, it is also used to make cork board (duh), and woodwind instruments, and to build houses. It has even been used in rockets because it is resistant to heat.

The cork in a wine bottle can be made of a naturally cut solid piece of cork bark, but it can also be put together from a bunch of smaller cork bark pieces. This second option produces a cork of lesser quality, but as it is cheaper it makes sense to use it in bottles that will be opened within one year.

Although I’ve never seen a synthetic cork in a bottle of bubbly it is definitely possible and will likely become more prevalent as competition for organic cork increases. Yes, the synthetic cork’ll still pop!

But what about the screwcap? Is this even a viable option to close in all those bubbles? My guess would be no, but does anyone know for sure?

And hey, it’s New Year’s day! Mimosas, anyone?