Enjoyed some big food and big wine at St. Paul Grill. THanks to Annette for setting that up. This week, we've been envited to Warren/Ruth's place. Entree will be Salmon spiced w/ sorel Vin du jour is Pinot Limit is 10, including the 2 trim and talented folks who will be sharing the bench seat. We have an invitation to Chez Gregory. Limit is 10 for this sit down dinner. The "white" and "desert" options are always open. Warren, Ruth Gregory 651-698-5337 2139 Randolph wrcgregory(a)qwest.net Who/What Bob Cheeses Betsy Salad Warren/Ruth hosts/Salmon w/ sorel Jim/Louise Breads adn ??? Those are the 6 I know of. 4 more spots. BTW, Joe C tells us that Mondovino is opening soon. I'll forward that along in a seperate message. Thanks Joe! Cheers, Jim May 11, 2005 When Velvety Red Is Only Skin Deep By ERIC ASIMOV WHAT color is your red wine? This is not a trick question, like asking about George Washington's white horse. For many wine professionals the color of a red wine is serious business. Implicit in the varied hues are all sorts of clues about the quality and characteristics of the wine. You can tell, as a red wine arcs from bright and brilliant to dull and faded, whether it is young, aging gracefully or over the hill. You can sense whether it has matured in new or old barrels, and whether it's been filtered to the point of sterility. Yet when producers today consider the colors of their red wines, they may think of them more as a marketing tool than anything else. Somewhere along the way consumers have come to equate darker red wines with better red wines. "People are absolutely obsessed with color, and I think it's a mistake," said Neal Rosenthal, who imports wines, largely from France and Italy. "It has been said that the deeper the color, the more concentrated the wine. That's clearly inaccurate." Anyone can confirm Mr. Rosenthal's point by tasting a traditionally made Burgundy or Barolo, wines of intensity and concentration that are from the paler side of the red spectrum. To describe the myriad shades of red, you need a 64-crayon box of terms. Different hues can appear in varying degrees of intensity and luminosity, depending, of course, on the quality of the light and the background. Lighter red wines, like Beaujolais Village or Valpolicella, can be pale ruby, not much darker than the darkest ros�. The darker reds, like young syrahs, petite sirahs and cabernet sauvignons, can be practically blue-black. In between are subtle, incrementally different shadings from copper to crimson. But winemakers today seem to view deep, dark colors as paramount. Indeed, red wines of all sorts tend to be darker nowadays than they used to be. The brick red of a traditionally made Chianti, for one, is just a pale patch on the darker Chiantis that prevail today. California reds have also gotten noticeably darker than they were, say, 15 or 20 years ago. "There's no question that winemakers in Italy are making darker reds," said Burton Anderson, who has written about Italian wines for 30 years. "I've seen it everywhere in Italy over the last 15 years or so, from Barolo to Valpolicella to Brunello to Chianti to the deep south." Mr. Anderson said he believes the darker wines are a byproduct of a trend toward stronger blockbuster styles, which so many critics seem to favor and so many consumers seem to want. To make these wines, many growers favor very low yields from densely planted vineyards. The competition among vines and the low yields produce grapes of great richness and concentration, as well as more intense pigmentation, which contributes to a darker color. Modern winemakers have other ways to get dark colors: clones that produce more richly colored grapes, equipment that prolongs the juice's exposure to pigment-rich skins and limiting the use of sulfur as a preservative. So while a darker color may signal a big wine, it doesn't guarantee one. The context is crucial. A pale garnet may signal a problem in a young cabernet, which is traditionally dark, but not in a Burgundy. "C�te de Beaunes tend to be this beautiful light cherry color, which I think is charming, but nowadays people say it's too light," Mr. Rosenthal said. Like almost every characteristic of wine, color is subject to myth and misinterpretation. Though color may tell more about a wine than the legs that climb the inside of a glass, color offers far less information than a sniff and a taste. As the winemaker for Turley Wine Cellars in California, Ehren Jordan makes zinfandels of rare intensity and power, yet they tend to be closer to cherry red than ultradark. Under his Failla label, he also makes subtle pinot noirs and syrahs. "There's no doubt that people are fixated with color," Mr. Jordan said. "People seem to equate darker wines with better wines. For me it always seems odd, and it's maybe because I like Burgundy and I enjoy pinot noir, and pinot is not about color." For a while, back in the 1980's and early 90's, pinot noir, the grape of red Burgundy, was about color. Many producers back then experimented with an unconventional technique that produced dark wines. They postponed fermentation, leaving grape skins to leach pigment into the juice for an unusually long period, producing a darker wine. But many winemakers turned away from this technique, feeling it dulled nuances in the wine rather than bringing them to life. In California, the dark color of some pinot noirs has led some critics to question their makeup. Josh Jensen, the Calera Wine Company's winemaker, who makes intense, long-lived pinots, said he believes that some producers achieve dark colors by adding other grapes to their pinot noirs. It's legal in California, where a wine has to contain only 75 percent of a particular grape to be named for it, but for pinot noirs based on the Burgundy model of 100 percent pinot noir, this is close to heresy. "I know of winemakers who have admitted adding 5 percent syrah," Mr. Jensen said, without naming names. "Of all the things you can do, that's an absolute no-no." Blending grapes for color's sake is not without precedent. Mr. Jordan has found that in many of the oldest vineyards he uses for Turley, dating back 100 years or more, zinfandel is interplanted with small amounts of alicante bouchet or petite sirah, grapes that produce darker wines than zinfandel. "Why else except for color?" Mr. Jordan asked, suggesting that this was a concern back when the vineyards were planted. "If somebody farmed it for that long, there must be some logic behind it." -- ------------------------------ * * Dr. James Lee Ellingson, Adjunct Professor jellings(a)me.umn.edu * * University of Minnesota, tel: 651/645-0753 fax 651 XXX XXXX * * Great Lakes Brewing News, 1569 Laurel Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104 *