Muscadet. Do I Taste Seashells or is it Just a Fluke?

Chapter Sixteen. Part Twelve.

The Muscadet wine region surrounds the French city of Nantes, where the Loire River meets the Atlantic Ocean. This is the westernmost of the Loire Valley appellations and is the home to the Melon de Bourgogne grape. As the name implies, Melon de Bourgogne originated in Burgundy but despite the other half of its name, it has no connection to the cantaloupe.

All Beaujolais Is Burgundy But Not All Burgundy Is Beaujolais

Chapter Sixteen. Part Nine.

Every November Beaujolais Nouveau simultaneously arrives at wine shops, supermarkets, restaurants and bars all over the world. This special day reminds my generation of a simpler time, a time when we drank cheap, unpretentious wines and missed work the next day. Beaujolais Nouveau has lost much of its appeal but it’s still a fall tradition, an autumnal ritual, a seasonal custom that ranks right up there with getting a flu shot.

A Look At French Wine Laws

Chapter Sixteen, Part Two.
France has hundreds of wine appellations that are broken down into three quality levels; Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AC or AOC), Vin de Pays (VdP), and Vin de Table (VdT). These designations are controlled by the Minister of Agriculture, under the auspices of the Institut National de l’Origine et de la Qualité. Rather than adopt the logical acronym INOQ, the organization retained an earlier acronym INAO (for Institut National des Appellations d’Origine) so they wouldn’t have to replace the stationary.

When it Comes to Wood, Size Matters

Chapter Thirteen, Parts Three, Seven & Eight.

Surrounded by botti with Filippo Fedriani at Marchesato degli Aleramici in Montalcino.

Different wine regions use barrels of varying size to fit their needs (and maybe their warehouses). The volume of the popular Hogshead barrel seems to vary with every industry, but for wine it has come to mean a 63-gallon barrel, while the uniquely named butt barrel holds two Hogsheads or 126 gallons. The winemakers of Bordeaux find a barrel holding 59.4 gallons is perfectly suited for Cabernet and Merlot based wines. In Montalcino, where tradition dictates that Brunello di Montalcino be aged in cask for three years, wine is matured in large Slovenian casks called botte, or the plural botti, a term presumably derived from butt (those are 6 words I never imagined myself writing). Smaller barrels have a stronger impact on wine, so most Brunello producers use botti because they feel three years aging in small casks would produce overpowering oak flavors in the finished product.

Pass The Toast – The Maillard Reaction in Wine Barrel Toasting.

Chapter Thirteen, Part Four.
Not long after Kikunae Ikeda discovered umami, a French physician by the name of Louis Maillard (pronounced my-ARD) described the chemical reaction that takes place when amino acids combined with sugar are exposed to heat. This transformation, once known simply as browning, is now called the Maillard reaction. (It is rumored the original name, browning, was named after Maillard’s cook, Dorothea Brown.)¹

The Maillard reaction is what turns toasted bread a golden brown and creates the seared crust on protein rich foods like steak or chicken. I think my neighbor was grilling some protein rich food last night because I heard him say, “Hey Carter. Get your dog out of Maillard!”