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| Casa Belfi rosso frizzante Veneto NV Viteadovest “Ghammi” Terre Siciliane 2021 Jutta Ambrositsch “Rakete” Austria 2022 Domaine des Ronces Pinot Noir Côtes du Jura 2021 Birichino “Buraribi” California 2023 |
| A full-bodied red wine, served too warm, may collapse into a miserable heap of syrupy goop. No one’s idea of a fun time. The same wine, served too cold, might become a dumbed-down, muted echo or even caricature of what it could be, and if a wine can take us places, this wine only takes you to a featureless waiting room. Conversely, a lighter-bodied red wine might be merely meh when served at warm room temperature with each sip leaving you wanting to drink it cooler. Serving the same wine, cool, on a sweltering summer night is akin to throwing a switch, for only then does the wine awaken and begin to show its ultimate form, and take us here, and there. On a hot summer night, even when safely ensconced in our air-conditioned nightmares we continue to feel the beastly heat deep in our souls, but I am here to tell you that a glass or two of a cold light red, low in extract, low-ish in alcohol and served straight from the refrigerator, can help to assuage the beast. The temperature of a wine profoundly affects its rheology, but the rheology of wine is also affected by the temperature out of doors, and our emotional temperatures.
For this week’s tasting we are pouring five wines that are low in extract and relatively low in alcohol (three of the wines clock in at 11 percent or under). To start things off we are tasting a fizzy, dry, super-light and slightly spiced red from the Veneto. Next, a juicy, low-extract, unoaked, low-tannin nero d’avola from the northwest of Sicily made, and then two light reds, one a traditional co-plantation/co-fermentation from vineyards situated within the city limits of Vienna, the other a delicate pinot from the very east of France, against the Swiss border. To finish, a wine named after a folkloric dog-faced Japanese firebird, fated to wander the forgotten byways of the earth, mostly at dusk. |