75 Million

Amount (in U.S. dollars) that the famous, historic South Australian wine company, Seppeltsfield, spent to build a “château” in China as a joint venture with the Chinese company, Minquan Jiuding Wine Company Ltd. The new château, based in Henan Province, Eastern-Central China, will be used as a retail and tourism hub. Seppeltsfield makes some of Australia’s most renowned fortified wines. China is now Australia’s top wine export market by value, beating out the U.S.

A chocolate flavor in wine comes from oak barrels.

Answer: False.

Maybe. Okay, we know that “maybe” isn’t exactly true or false, but it’s not definitely clear where a chocolatey or cocoay character in wine comes from. Some of the experts I’ve talked to do say that oak barrels that are toasted at a certain level produce chocolatey flavors in red wine (barrel fermented or barrel aged whites usually don’t display chocolatiness). But other experts note that chocolate flavors can simply be a characteristic of very ripe high-tannin grapes such as cabernet sauvignon and merlot. And still others associate the flavor with a given terroir. (The wines of Rutherford in the Napa Valley are often said to possess a dutched cocoa character). What everyone does agree on is where a vanilla flavor in wine comes from. When most oak barrels are made, the wood is toasted over a fire in order to bend the staves into shape. Toasting causes complex chemical reactions in the wood that result in the creation of various flavors, among them vanillin, a molecule responsible for the flavor known as vanilla. Wines that are not made or aged in new toasted oak barrels almost never taste of vanilla.

Fiasco

Literally, “a flask,” but more often the word fiasco is used to describe the bulbous, straw-encased Chianti bottle that was a fixture of the bohemian lifestyle in the 1960s in the United States. (Memory lane,… Continue reading

75 Million

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