FORTIFIED WINES: SHERRY

SHERRY
Formally known as Scheris, sherry takes its name from the town of jerez (de al frontera), and is made in and around the region surrounding the town of jerez de la frontera in south western spain. Within the region there are three main centres of production.

• Jerez de la Frontera
• Puerto de Santa Maria
• Sanlucar de barrameda

GRAPSE VARIETIES FOR SHERRY
Grown on the white coloured soil called albariza, the grapes used for Sherry are the:

• Palomino Bianco
• Pedro Ximenez
• Moscatel Fino

Among these three varieties Palomino bianco is the main grapes which is used for Sherries, while Perdro Ximenez  and Moscatel Fino are usally used to blend with palomino Bianco wines and act as ‘sweetening wines’ to produces sweeter versions of sherry.


PRODUCTION OF SHERRY
The heat and sun of the region allows the grapes to develop the great deal of sugar. The sugar in grapes meant for making  ‘sweetening wines’ are often further concentrated by simply laying them on straw mats in the hot sun to evaporate their water content. The harvested grapes are left in the sun for 12 to 24 hours for between 10 to 21 days in this manner. At night these are covered with straw mats called esparto  soleo to protect them from the night dew.

The very hot climate also produces grapes with relatively low acids and since well balanced wines must have sufficient acid levels, the harvested grapes are actually ‘plastered’ to achieve this. Prior to pressing, the stalks are removed and a small amount of gypsum, the raw  material of plaster of Paris, called yeso by the locals is dusted on the grapes to eventually allow the wines to precipitate tartaric crystal and to increase its tartaric acid levels which provides balance to the wine.

Traditionally the rape grapes are tipped into shallow vats called lagares where men in special nail studded boots called zapatas de pisar would stomp on them, crushing them. This tiring process is carried out throughout the night from midnight till noon the next day.

The free run juices are collected in barrels and the remaining pulps is then pressed to extract the remaining juice. The must (called mosto) is then pumped into large vats and selected cultured yeast is then added.
After some 12 hours, fermentation begins and it carries on 36 to 50 hours at temperatures that very from 25 to 300 C . The fermented wines is then pumped into small oak casks to allow the fermentation to run its full course. At the end of the two months of the fermentation period of time . the sugar in the wine is exhausted and the fermentation stops. With the exception of Pedro Ximenez and muscated the wines are always fermented till dry.

A layer of gray white microscopic yeast (saccharomyces beticus) called ‘flor’ forms a naturally as a thin white scum that floats on the wines in only some of the barrels his film of yeast like organisms prevent the oxidation of the wine allowing the vines to eventually become paler, drier, lighter styles like Fino or Amontillado. Those wines in barrels that do not develop the flor becomes darker and richer tasting destination to become Olorosos.

While there is no way to ensure the formation of the flor, it is possible to create conditions that would encourage its growth:

• Alcoholic strength must be between 13.5 and 17.5%  with optimum concentration being about 15.3% , the level at which the vinegar  producing acctobacter is killed off.
• Temperature of 15 to 30o C .
• Sulphur dioxide content of less then 0.018%
• Tannin content of less than 0.01%
• Absence of fermentable sugars.

The cellar master uses a series of chalk marks on the ends of the barrels to denote the style of wine in each barrel which it is likely to develop into. The wines are classified several times and are marked in the following manner according to the style of wines.


STYLES OF SHERRIES
There are six style of sherry

• Fino Sherry
• Manzanilla Sherry
• Amontillado
• Oloroso
• Palo Cortado
• Cream, Milk and Brown Sherries

Fino Sherry
This sherry is only made when nature blesses the winemakers with the development of flor in the casks. This pale, light and well known style of Sherry is known as Fino.

Manazanilla Sherry
Made  when finos are stored and matured at the coastal town of sanluccar de Barrameda. The finos acquire a salty tang  which is distinguishable on the palate as a style different from regular Finos and is now known as Manzanilla.

Amontillado
For the long period of time these fuller flavoured Finos  and develop into slightly darker wines with fuller flavours and nutty tang, this type of wines are called Amontillados. Their names are derives from the wines of similar character produced at Montilla, which were greatly sought after before jerez became famous.

Oloroso
Wines left on open air do not generally do well and spoil easily, turning into vinegar. The layer of the flor protects the Finos from this fate as it covers the surface of wines where Oloroso do not have this advantage.

Palo Cortado
Palo Cortado is the another type of sherry which is occasionally found. This is very rare style of wine, originally an oloroso, these wine develop Fino characteristics later during the final classification. These are usally rare and very expensive.

Cream , Milk and Brown Sherries
These are the sweet sherries that are usally based on the Oloroso and sweetened with sweetening wines made from Moscatel and Pedro Ximenez.

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Information about fortified wines

FORTIFIED WINES

Fortified wines are that wines which ahave been strengthened (fortified) with the addition  of a spirit during its production. While most still table wines have strength of 8 to 15% alcohol by volume, fortified wines contain alcoholic strength between 16 to 21% alchol by volume.

The added spirit  is usually a local brandy made from wine or from mare. The brandy has an affinity with the wines, and is also cheaper to use since surplus wine is always available in for distillation into a spirit.Produced in many part of the world, in any country or area where brandy and wines are made, the range of fortified wines ranges from very sweet Malmsey Madeiras to veey dry Fino Sherries. They also may be based on red or white wines and eventually made into a golden brown or pale amber wine.
The fortified wines of the world includes the following 

• Sherries
• Port wines
• Madeira
• Marsala
• Malaga

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WINES OF ITALY

The ancient Greeks used to refer to Italy as Enotria – the land of wines. Truly, the tremendous and very varied range, styles and sheer number of wines produced in italy boggles the mind. Today, there are an estimated 2000 types of wine, though most of them are ordinary wines for everyday drinking, there are an increasing number of world classed wines now being produced by moderm viticulture and vinification methods. Italian producer have moved so rapidely that they have created wines of undeniable class in every region such as north and south also.


ITALIAN WINE LAWS
The wine industry in italy has managed to make great progress in the past 15 years. According to new law in 1992, the effort of the italian government to effectively control and regulate the often chaotic and archaic italian wine laws now seems within reach. In line with the rest of countries in the European Union, Italian wines are classified in a system known as the DOC system. The requirement of the system are similar and in line with those of the other member of the European Union.

The categories in this system are

• Vano da tavola
• Vino da tavola con Indicazioni Geografica
• Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC)
• Denominazione di Origine Controllate e Guarantita (DOCG)

Vino da tavola
The simply and most basic level in the italian wine law classification.

These table wines are equivalent to French vins de table and Germany’s Tafelwein. The quality of these wines can vary greatly. In their pursuit to make better wines, some younger winemakers have tried newer techniques and used non-traditional grape types with excellent results. Excellent wines like Sassicaia and Tignanellow are actually rated as vino da tavola though they certainly deserve atleast a DOC status. However, since they are made from or blended wih non-traditional grape varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon, they do not qualify for DOC rating and are relegated to table wine status. However, these well made wines enjoy international recognition, high price and request despite being da tavola.

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GIN

The origin of the GIN can be traced back to 1650 when it was invited by a physician and professor at the leyden University in the Netherlands. His name was Franz de le Boe, otherwise known as Dr Sylvius.

Interested in the medical properties of alcohol, he decided to experiment by adding juniper beeries to a neutral spirit. He did this in an effort to create a medicine for those suffering from kidney ailments aas juniper was well known for its diuretic properties.

He named the mixture genever, from the French word for juniper- genievre. This spirit was soon the range all over the Netherlands and by 1655, it was being commercially produced by the Bols firm.

By 1742, Gin had became the national drink of the masses in England. Its popularity and infamy had became so wide spread that many of the social ill of the time were blamed on it.
Alcoholism and general public drunkenness was caused by gin and several attempts by the government at that to outlaw gin proved futile.


Gin, as a spirit, found much attention and limelight again during the American Prohibition. During this rather dry and lawless years in the USA, much illegal and dangerous versions of gin were produced, some ever using methanol. These gin were termed bathtub gain as they were sometimes literally produced by mixing a neutral spirit with juniper berries in a bathtub.

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WINE AND FOOD

Wine is the potable alcoholic beverages which are obtain from the fermented juice of fresh grapes. Like all successful partnership, the pairing of wine should allow each component to express the individual qualities of express the individual qualities of each partner. Thus in paring food and wine, one should seek out food and wines whose qualities complement each other. In order to do this one must be aware the flavour of each component. This type of components is quiet difficult to make because food and wine is not just a single flavour nor a set of flavours, for example a wine may be fruity, light, or dry, and a dish may be spicy, acidic or sweet.

The main thing to be very careful about is the taste and smell because every people have different thresholds of perception of various tastes and smells. If one person especially have sensitive to a particular characteristic or taste such as acidity, sweetness, bitterness or spicy, then their olfactory Perception of the dish or wine will be somewhat different from others. There are the simple guideline that should be observed such as old often associated with wine and food pairing “ red wine for red meats and white wine for white meats”. Red meat are those meat which are stronger tasting, include meat like beef, mutton, duck, and game venison and pheasant. Whereas the white meat are those meat like milder-tasting and include veal, lamb, chicken, pork as well as fish and seafood.

However, a more accurate, though less elegant guideline might be ‘full flavoured wines with rich tasting food and delicate tasting wines with delicate tasting food’. The intensity of flavour that each component should be considered when pairing wine and food rather than its colour.

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INTRODUCTION OF VODKA

A historical record shows that vodka has been produced & consumed in Central Europe as early as the 12th century. Before the Russian Bolshevik revolution of 1972, vodka was relatively unknown and unheard of Russia and Poland.

The word vodka is said (by the Russians) to have been derived from a Russian term for the distilled spirits – ‘Zhiznennia voda’ or ‘water of life’. Very much a like the latin term ‘aqua vitae’ was used in western Europe for other spirits. The word vodka is believed to be derived from the Russian word ‘voda’ or the polish word ‘woda’, both of which mean approximately the same things. which means ‘dear little water’. It was known that first time vodka was made from whatever raw materials that was plentiful. In the early days distillation were based on wine, not grain, & therefore end result would have resembled a crude brandy rather than a pure spirit that is the vodka of today.


DEFINITION OF VODKA
Vodka may be define as neutral spirit which are distilled and filtered or treated with a charcoal or any other materials so as to be without distinctive character, taste, aroma or colour.
The clear, colourless and tasteless spirit we now know as vodka was first made in a laboratory in St.Petersburg in 1810 when a scientist accidentally discovered that activated charcoal was capable of absorbing fumes, odurs and flavours.

By 1818, a Russian named peter Smirnoff had founded the first distiltery in Moscow and had began to filter grain spirits through charcoal to produce the type of clear, colourless neutral spirit we now known as vodka.

However, attempts to introduced the spirit to the American market did not meet with much success until 1948, by coincidence rather than design. A restaurant owner was trying to introduce ginger beer to the United States. Experimenting with ways to server it, he added vodka and lime juice and named the cocktail Moscow Mule. Its neutral nature lent itself to almost any mixture of juice and soon many vodka-based cocktails were being served all over the nation. Some of these cocktails are still popular today, cocktails like Bloody Mary, Vodka Martini and the Screwdriver.

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INTRODUCTION OF BEVERAGE: BEER

BEER
Beer is the fermented beverage that derives its acoholic content from the conversion of malt sugars into alcohol by the action of brewer’s yeast & it is the flavour with hops. Historical relics & records tells that beer were made by the ancient Sumerians and Egyptian from 6000 years ago through its history probably goes back even further in time.

THE INGREDIENTS FOR BEER
In order to produce beer, the following ingredient are needed which are given below.

• Malted grains and cereals
• Water
• Sugar
• Yeast
• Hops
• Malted grains and cereals.

Plant use to store energy in the form of sugar in fruits or as starch in grains & cereals. The alcohol in the wine is produced by the action of the yeast on the sugars in grapes juice. In beer the source of the sugar is stored in the form of starch contained in the grains and cereals. Whereas starch cannot be convened directly into alcohol, through the time and experimentation man has learn to convert starch into sugar.
The process of converting starch into sugars is called Malting and is done in four stage which are given bellow.

• Steeping
• Sprouting
• Kilning
• Milling

STEEPING
In this stage the grains are steeped or completely immersed in the water for two days unless it is thoroughly soaked.

SPROUTING
The moisture grains are spread out on the floor in a warm chamber with high moisture levels. The grains germinate or sprout. On this stage the sprouted grains are termed green malt. The green malt requires energy to grow and produce a chemical substance or enzyme which is called amylase. This enzyme converts the stored starch into soluble sugars which the green malt uses as energy to grow. All these soluble sugar, dextrin and maltose can be fermented, whereas starch in the original state cannot be convert.

KILNING
The green malt, is placed in a klin (it’s a furnace or oven for burning baking) and roasted. This is used to convert sugar stored in the sprouted barley grains which may now be termed malt. The temperature and the degree of the roasting is important as it determines the desire amount of flavour and the colour of the malt. Malt may be roasted until light, dark, or black depending on what each brewery requires.

Milling
The kilned(roasted) malt then goes to the mill room, where it is ground into a meal or grist. The extraction of these sugars is carried out in the brewery to provide the basis for fermenting alcohol in beer. Beer makers prefer to use the finest malted barley as the basis for their beer. The best malt for beer production are those made from barley with very little plant protein. The low protein contain reduce the problem of cloudiness in beers which can occur if varieties like the high protein six-row barley are used. The cereals , usually corn or rye are called adjuncts and are used to make lighter-bodied beers and also to allow producers to lower costs of production since they cheaper than malted barley.

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