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When you’re inviting family or friends, it is not always easy to decide what to cook. But what is even harder is choosing the right wine for every course. There are some classics like white wine with fish and red wine with meat, but when it comes to the dessert we are less sure. So here are some advice to choose a great wine to serve with your dessert.

Fruit dessert

It is quite common to think that white wine goes better with dessert. It is often the case but there are some subtle details to know as there are a lot of different white wines and sometimes a better solution exists. You also have to take into account what you and your guests like, we can give you some advice but it is not a definite rule.

White fruits

To go with a dessert with white fruits like peaches, apricots, apples… whether it is a cake with frozen fruit puree or even a pie, you can choose a white wine and more precisely a sweet wine like a Coteaux du Layon (West of France) or a Sauternes (Bordeaux). You can also choose a champagne, white or pink. The sweet taste of champagne goes really well with fruits.

Red fruits

With a dessert made with red fruits, you can also choose a white wine, sweet as well or a dry white wine if you’re afraid of the taste being too sweet. You can also choose a light red wine because the sweet taste of red fruits goes really well with red wine. Finally, you can also choose a champagne.

Chocolate dessert

If your dessert is not only fruits but also chocolate, like a chocolate cake with fruit sorbet made from IQF fruits, you can serve champagne with it or sweet wine. Again, if you are afraid your dessert would be too sweet, you can choose a light red wine.

When you buy your wine, ask to taste it if possible, you will better know if it can go with what you intend to cook. And trust your instinct!

Côte du Rhône is a wine-growing region in France with the most diverse
wines. The region produces white, red and rosé wines dominated by
Grenache blanc and Grenache. It has great weather and wine-making
conditions for vineyards and production of fine wine. You may find some
wines sleek, modern while others polished and plush. As with any AOC,
strict regulations govern the production of Cotes du Rhône French wines.

Main classification

Côtes Rhône-Villages -the collection
is a southern appellation with a minimum alcohol requirement of 12 %.
The wine label applies to a few villages. The collection of wine can be
sweet or spicy. Other characteristics include richly concentrated but
balanced and an attractive taste with a long finish. Some have a creamy
and velvety taste with elegance and style.

Côtes du Rhône- these wines are from both South and Northern Rhone. This classification can
cover the region as a whole to identify the source of wine. This wine is not subjected to stringent requirements compared to other
classifications. The wines do not fall into any specific content or
geographical descriptions. You will find the variety of wine to vary
from smoky, sweet, herbal, fruity and spicy among other tastes.

Cotes
du Rhône Villages (village name)- these wines display the name of the
village with the label Cotes du Rhône. The classification is defined by
precise geographic limits. Those permitted to put their name on the wine
follow suitable viticulture practices. The wines are well-balanced,
delicate and delicious with good intensity.

Crus- the esteemed
wines are the Crus from the Northern and Southern regions. The wines are
recognized for their village names and are of the highest quality. They
include famous wines such as Hermitage, Châteuneuf-du-Pape and
Côte-Rôtie.

Côte du Rhône Wine Shopping Tips

The variety of
French wine suits a wide range of foods at great prices. Therefore, you
can enjoy your favorite bottle without food or with food such as meat,
salmon, ham, cheese and soups among other food and wine pairings. Wine
enthusiast can find great wines at bargain prices if they searched
harder.

a) Look for 2nd labels and value regions

You may
find these wines at a good bargain. The wines have higher grape-growing
traits making them good quality. In addition, wines from quality
refineries can be sold under a different label. Produces buy grapes from
growers in Côte du Rhône and bottle the French wine using their own
labels.

b) Experiment

Wines from Côte du Rhône come in
varieties and you can choose favorite. This can be achieved by
experimenting with different wines until you find the one you like with
or without food. Some stores may also stock the vintage collection at
different prices.

Champagne
is a sparking French wine made following a strictly defined method from
specific grapes grown in vineyards in France’s Champagne region. It has
long enjoyed a reputation associating it with luxury, starting with its
role in the coronation ceremonies of French kings from the seventeenth
century. Its leading winemakers have exerted considerable effort to
preserving and extending that reputation, ensuring that it became de
rigueur for festivities and celebrations amongst the nineteenth
century’s emergent status-conscious middle class, and retaining that
position ever since.

History
Benedictine monks created the first sparkling wine in the region in the
sixteenth century. Glass-making and bottling techniques at the time,
however, meant that pressure from its effervescence frequently resulted
in exploding bottles and prematurely popped corks, with vintners
consequently often losing 20% to 90% of their cellar. In the seventeenth
century English glass-makers developed bottles that were equal to the
job. In 1844 someone invented the wire muselet that holds the cork in
place, and by 1850 winemakers were producing 20 million bottles
annually.

What It Is
Champagne is now made mostly by blending multiple grape varieties from
multiple vintages. Producing non-vintage wine ensures brand consistency.
The blending of varieties, usually chardonnay, pinot noir, and pinot
meunier, is part of the art of this form of French wine making. Although
pinot noir and pinot meunier are red-wine grapes, méthode
champenoise avoids contact with the skin during fermentation,
thereby producing white wines. These red-skinned grapes add backbone and
length to the blend, while the chardonnay provides it with its biscuity
flavour and acidity.

Special Types
A prestige cuvée is a proprietary French wine that its producer
presents as the top of its range – and prices accordingly. The original
one was probably Dom Pérignon by Moët & Chandon in 1936. Blanc de
noirs, meaning white of blacks, are white wines made entirely from
red-skinned, or black, grapes. They are often pale yellow in colour.
Blanc de blancs, meaning white of whites, are made from
Chardonnay grapes blended from different vineyards. Rosés, also called
pink Champagne, are usually made by adding a bit of still pinot noir
wine to the blend.

Champagne Culture
Champagne is best enjoyed from a glass called a flute, which has a
long, thin stem supporting a narrow, tall bowl that helps to maintain
the bubbles. The optimum temperature for serving it is from 7° to 9° C,
and sommeliers usually chill it in a specialised ice bucket, preferably
silver, before serving. It’s best to open the bottle by gripping the
cork and slowly rotating the bottle to prevent the cork from shooting
across the room and wasting wine, and to pour slowly down the side of a
tilted flute to preserve the bubbles.

Champagne Wine Champagne Wine Champagne Wine

Perhaps the
most renowned of France’s wine regions, Bordeaux produces about
one-third of the top-quality French wine. In addition to the Bordeaux
appellation d’origine contrôlée, or AOC, about 60 of the region’s
sub-regions have their own AOCs. Bordeaux is by the Atlantic Ocean in
south-western France. Its more than 8,500 chateaux produce approximately
850 million bottles of wine annually, or about a quarter of all AOC
French wine, in about 120,000 ha of vineyards. Approximately 89% of the
wine Bordeaux produces is now red. In addition to enormous amounts of
everyday table wine, Bordeaux wines include some of the most prestigious
– and expensive – in the world.

Terroir
Terroir refers to the special characteristics that a particular
place’s climate, soil, geography, geology, and other environmental
factors provide to such produce as wine grown there. The concept plays a
central role in Bordeaux wine production, as its premiere estates
endeavour to make terroir-driven wines that express their origins, often
using grapes harvested from a single vineyard. The region’s geological
base is limestone, resulting in soils rich in calcium. It centres on the
Gironde estuary and its tributaries, and its best vineyards are
situated on well-drained gravel soil close to one of these rivers. Its
proximity to the Atlantic provides it with an oceanic climate ideal for
viticulture.

The Black Grapes
Wine-makers usually blend red Bordeaux wine, often called claret in the
UK, from more than one grape variety. The Bordeaux appellation permits
the use of cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet franc, petit verdot,
carménère, and malbec as black grapes. Cabernet sauvignon, which is
Bordeaux’s second-most common grape, tends to be predominant in blends
of Médoc and other appellations on the estuary’s left bank, with smaller
proportions of merlot, Bordeaux’s most common grape, and the region’s
third most common grape, cabernet franc. Merlot tends to dominate the
blends of the appellations on the right bank, although some are mostly
cabernet franc. The proportions for most red Bordeaux wine blends is
about 70-15-15.

The White Grapes
White Bordeaux wines, like their red counterparts, tend strongly to be
blends. The appellation permits the use of sémillon, muscadelle,
sauvignon blanc, and six other, rarely used, varieties of white grapes.
The most popular blends are about four-fifths sémillon and one-fifth
sauvignon blanc. Muscadelle, sauvignon blanc, and sémillon are the only
grapes used to make sauternes.

Overseas Roots
In the late nineteenth century a non-indigenous insect called phylloxera
devastated nearly all of Bordeaux’s vineyards. Since the pest was
originally from North America, viticulturalists saved the Bordeaux
French wine industry by grafting surviving local vines to American
rootstock resistant to the pest. All Bordeaux vines are now a product of
these grafts. Fortunately, rootstock does not affect grapes’ character
or flavour.

Wine Bordeaux Wine Bordeaux Wine Bordeaux

In
the course of history Alsace has sometimes been part of Germany,
sometimes France, and its wines have characteristics in common with
other wines in both countries. Now definitively part of France, it is
one of its smallest wine-producing regions, but the wines are almost the
world’s finest. This is a fascinating region to explore, visiting
attractive villages and vineyards between Strasbourg and Mulhouse,
tasting vin d’Alsace (Alsace wine) as you go.

The great wines of Alsace
Most of the Alsace wine is white, with distinctive aromative flavours.
About three-quarters of the wine produced in the region is Appellation
d’origine contrôlée (AOC), and much of this French wine is, like German
wines, made from single grape varieties, notably Reisling, which
produces a fine dry french wine comparable with the Reislings of Germany
and Austria. The Sylvaner grape is orginally from Austria but has been
grown for many years in Alsace. It produces a fresh and delicate white
wine with a light-green tinge which is a good accompaniment for fish and
shellfish. Particularly popular on the export market for alsace wine is
the strongly aromatic Gewürztraminer, which is good to drink with spicy
Asian food. About a quarter of the wine produced in this region is
exported, especially to the United States as well as other European
countries, including Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands as well as
neighbouring Germany.

Dessert wines of exceptional quality from Alsace
There are a number of fine french wines made from grapes picked when
they are over-ripe and have developed botrytis cinerea (noble rot). The
high natural sugar content ensures the production of dessert wines of
character. The grapes are hand-picked to ensure maximum quality. The
relatively low rainfall and good record of sunshine in the Alsace region
in the late autumn favour the production of these designated “vendages
tardives” and “sélection de grains nobles” wines from
Gewürztraminer,Pinot Gris, Riesling or Muscat grapes.

A wine-tasting holiday in Alsace
Combining sight-seeing with visits to vineyards and wineries makes for a
fascinating holiday for the wine-lover. Travel between the Vosges
mountains and the river Rhine south from the cosmopolitan city of
Strasbourg down the 120 kilometres of the Route des Vins, pausing to
explore villages of half-timbered houses such as Riquewhir, known as the
pearl of the vineyards. Visit producers where you will be able to taste
french wines of the region, and purchase bottles of those you like best
to take home and enjoy.

Wine and meal
pairing is completely a matter of individual taste. Although the
traditional rule of thumb that the more robust and full-flavoured a red
wine is the heartier the foods it complements generally holds with most
people, when it comes to detailed meal pairings it’s noteworthy that
wine writers tend to disagree with each other often. This shouldn’t be
surprising, as no two people have exactly the same sense of taste. Each
wine lover should therefore discover for herself or himself what
pairings they themselves enjoy, but for beginners a few guidelines would
probably be helpful to point them in the right direction.

Traditional Local Meal Pairings
One thing to take into consideration, especially with so-called Old
World wines, is their place of origin, as over the centuries winemaking
traditions and culinary traditions evolved together, as most people
consumed both locally grown food and locally made wine. Italian red
wines, for example, go wonderfully with such Italian dishes as sharp
cheeses and spicy sausages, salami, and cured meats – not to mention
pasta in a sauce laden with anchovies, peppers, and garlic. The red
wines of such regions as Provence, the Rhone Valley, Greece, and
Bordeaux, furthermore, make excellent meal pairing with those regions’
lamb dishes.

Pairing As An Art Form
Today’s art of meal pairing has only been around for a relatively short
time, but provides wine lovers with the opportunity to experiment with
cross-cultural wine-and-food combinations. The main idea is to find
combinations of such elements as flavour, texture, aroma, and visual
appeal in both the wine and the food that optimise the pleasure of the
overall sensual experience at the table. It’s also fun to find agreeable
wines to enjoy with foods not usually thought of in terms of wine
accompaniments, such as hamburgers, which pair marvellously with such
red wines as barbera, cabernet sauvignon, gamay beaujolais, syrah, and
zinfandel – and for a culinary experience to savour try pairing a spicy
Thai crispy-duck stir-fry with chianti.

Breaking The Rules For Fun And Pleasure
Although many wine writers stand by the traditional rule of never
drinking red wine with fish or seafood, some now suggest that people try
such combinations as pinot noir with scallops, salmon dishes, and tuna
and swordfish steaks. Similarly, try breaking the rule of pairing white
wine with soft cheeses by pairing gorgonzola with merlot or brie with a
rich, fruity port at the end of the meal. Remember, the most important
thing is to choose a wine you enjoy. If you dislike the wine that the
rules decree for a meal pairing, it’s not for you, and if you like one
that the rules say you shouldn’t, forget the rules. The point is to
enjoy the experience.

People often fail to consider the advantages of Rosé wine over red and white
varieties. It is generally light and fragrant, and so ideal for drinking
with a summer lunch, or as an apéritif.It is now available from many of
the major wine-producing areas of the world, and french wines now have
to compete with quality wines from other parts of Europe, California and
beyond.

Wine-making methods in the production of Rosé
Although it is done occasionally elsewhere, the mixing of red and white
wine to make a rose-coloured drink is forbidden by law in France, except
for pink Champagne. There are two other ways of producing Rosé: skin
contact and saignée. In the production of red wine, the skins of black
grapes are kept in contact with the juice. If this contact is for no
longer than a couple of days, the colour will be lighter. This is the
skin contact method. In the saignée or “bleeding” method, some of the
juice is drawn off from the red wine early in its production and
fermented separately. The Blush wines from California are made using
this method, and perhaps the best-known of these is White Zinfandel.

Grape varieties
The french wine Tavel, from the right bank of the Rhone between Avignon
and the Pont du Gard, is world-renowned and is made from Cinsault and
Mourvedre grapes. The former are said to give a strawberry flavour. It
is best drunk young and chilled. Grenache is another variety used to
impart the taste of strawberries. This is amongst the grapes used to
make Côtes de Provence french wine, of which 80% is Rosé. There is close
control over the grape varieties used in production of certificated
Appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) french wines, a system used in
France to guarantee quality of food and drink from the country. Côtes de
Provence AOC designation also requires 20% of the blend to be made
using the saignée method.

When to drink Rosé
Whether you have purchased a bottle of french wine or, for example, pale
pink-coloured Pinot Grigio from Sicily, you will find that it is best
drunk cold after it has been in the fridge for a couple of hours. It is a
drink for a sunny day, and can be enjoyed both before and during a
meal. Enjoy it outdoors with a picnic or BBQ, but AOC french Rosé will
not be out of place on the table at a wedding meal, as it is a fine
french wine.

Winemaking is a very popular pastime and a cheaper way to acquire high quality
labels for bulk storage. Whether its red or white, anyone with the right
equipment can learn how to produce some wine.

Firstly, you need the right equipment.

Winemaking Equipment

1. Glass Containers and Bottles.
You can also choose a plastic container or jug. Ask if the container and
bottles are air tight for storing your wine when it’s ready.
Additionally, you need a funnel and corking tool.

2. Rubber Stopper and Commercial Airlock.
Acquire a rubber stopper and drill a hole in it and a commercial airlock
to ensure that sanitisation is secured while the pipe is in use.

3. Siphon.
Ask about vinyl tubes for when you need to effectively siphon out the
liquid at the end of the process without sucking up any sediment in the
bottle.

4. Plastic Stirrer.
Ensure you buy a plastic and long stirrer that can fit easily into the bottle for stirring.

5. Iodophor Sanitizer
This is crucial to the winemaking steps as you will need to clean all the chemicals off the equipment.

6. Other needed equipment for properly knowing how to produce wine includes a hydrometer, finings, and a filter when siphoning.

The Winemaking Process

1. Sterilise all the above equipment when you begin. Rinse all the items and keep them in a sterilised area for the steps ahead.

2. Place the funnel into the container, and add the concentrate.

3. Add about 3 litres of water to the container.

4. Take a separate jug and dissolve sugar in a jug of warm water. If your concentrate has sugar, do omit this step.

5.
Top up the solution with water to fill up the container to about a
gallon (4 litres). Now, add the yeast that should have accompanied your
concentrate.

6. Your commercial airlock is prepared for the
container; simply insert it to seal the container. Do not leave the
bottle there though; you need to take hydrometer readings to check the
sugar level. As a guide: dry 0.990 – 0.996, medium dry 0.996 – 1.009,
and sweet 1.009 – 1.018.

7. Store the container in a warm area of
your house until the fermentation period has passed. Then move it to a
cooler area where it will slowly clear.

8. Wait about a week and
the siphon from the container into the bottles. Fit the corks, add your
labels and shrink the caps. You now know how to produce wine and it is
ready.

Now rinse and repeat literally and make your next lovely
vintage. Soon, you will enjoy making wine so much, your house will have
plenty of choices for guests and parties.

HOW TO PRONOUNCE FRENCH WINE NAMES

French wines are considered to be some of the best in the world, but when
faced with an extensive wine list, for those of us who do not speak
French like a native, ordering can be quite a daunting task.

How to Pronounce French Wine Names like a Sommelier

Well, let’s start with the Sommelier. So – Mel – Ee – Ay. Perhaps that’s a
bit basic, but at least you won’t get a red face when you summon him to
ask for a nice Chateau Neuf Du Pape.

There are so many wonderful
French wines that it’s possibly best to acquaint ourselves with the
most widely available and popular, for the time being.

Burgundy and Bordeaux OR Bur-Gun-Deh and Bor-Doh.

Burgundy and Bordeaux are two of the most famous wine producing regions in
France. And as Bordeaux is the largest it is a good place to start.
Bor-Doh is probably the easiest and most accurate way of pronouncing
Bordeaux. french.about.com/od/vocabulary/a/audiodictionary.htm is quite a
useful tool to give some idea of how certain words should sound.

Graves is a well known Bordeaux wine. Unlike the English word grave, as in a
burial site, the ‘A’ in Graves is pronounced ‘aah’ as in ‘apple’. It is
in fact named after a certain type of gravel brought by rivers from
higher ground and on which the vines are grown. Hence the name
‘Graves’. Another is Medoc. In this case the ‘E’ is said like an ‘A’
like so..May-doc. Perhaps the most well known Medoc of all is Chateaux
Margaux. Ernest Hemmingway famously named his daughter after this wine.
Indeed it is pronounced as the girl’s name Margot or Margo. It is
interesting that another famous wine Petrus, Pay-Troos (as in goose)is
also from this area.

Burgundy produces so many wonderful wines
that it is difficult to decide what to include! However, the most
famous French wine of all is held to be Romanee Conti or Ro-Ma-Nee
Con-tay,so as a starting point it is ideal. French wine names, like
Chablis a famed dry white, pronounced Shah-Blee show that French wines
are not always difficult either.

French wine is such a huge subject, I hope that this has given you the urge to learn more. Try a nice glass of Beaujolais, another famous export of the Burgundy region..
Bo-jo-lay, try softening the ‘J’ to almost ‘sh’ with a ‘z’ zsh. Perhaps
a Fleurie, Flerry which rhymes with berry, or the best beaujolais of
all Gamay, Gah-May.

How to Pronounce the French Wine names of other regions.

With some of the more difficult wine names, such as Chateau Neuf du Pape
from the Cotes du Rhone region it is simply a matter of breaking the
words down. Cotes (as in coat, overcoat) Du (rhymes with too or two)
Rhone (rhymes with bone) and Sha-Toe-Neff Du (as above) Pape (
pronounced pap,sounds like slap) is useful as a guide.

The Loire Valley is worth mentioning for Sancerre, Son (as in don) Serre (the ‘c’
is not hard like in cheese but soft as in cerise, and if you can roll
the ‘r’s’ so much the better), also Fitou, Fee-Too and Chinon,
pronounced Shee-Non.

There are many, many French wines worth
mentioning, hopefully this will inspire you to master the pronunciation,
and perhaps sample some more of them.