Wine Culture - Wine is an alcoholic
beverage typically made from fermented fruit, usually
grapes. The word comes from the Latin word vinum,
meaning vine.
Colour, scent and taste change during aging. The speed
of these mutations depends on wine chemical characteristics,
above all preserving elements as alcohol, tannins
and acids: the more preserving elements are inside
a wine, the more the same wine can age.
You can find alcohol and acids in all kind of wines,
but you can normally find tannins only in red ones;
for this reason reds are more suited to age.
These chemical features are connected to a series
of vinegrowing and winemaking elements as, for instance:
kind of grape, vintage, origin place, vineyard position
(grapes that ripen better can give more aging suited
wines).
We need to store wine in a good way if we want to
age it.
The perfect (and idealistic) conditions of wine storing
are: bottles in a horizontal position; temperature
(without swings) of about 50°-59° F (10°-15°
C) (to avoid to speed up ripen); umidity of 50%-70%
(to avoid dry cork and, on the opposite, mould cork);
no light and vibrations (they change wine itself);
no bottles near strong odors (odors can pass through
the cork).
The more you go away from these idealistic conditions
the more wines tends to deteriorate. For this reason
some restaurant make special wine rooms or buy special
wine refrigerator.
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