August 2007

Dear Friends of Monolithos,

This month’s newsletter will examine some factors influencing the most “mystifying” aspects of wine appreciation – that is, the ability to predict the ageing capacity of a wine.

It is widely acknowledged that there is no precise way of doing this. Instead, it is a “best guess” scenario, based on one’s ability to analyze the clues found in wine tasting.

Like everything else, wine has a finite lifespan. Wine is almost (but not quite) unique among foodstuffs, in that it has the capacity to improve with age. The factors that allow a wine to age are quite complex and poorly understood. Only after the grapes are harvested and the wine processing and winemaking decisions have been made, can the wine ageing cycle begin.

Of course, viticulture and winemaking techniques will affect a wine’s ageing potential. For example, the separation of the skins from the must can be done at any time during fermentation. If the separation is done shortly after the beginning of fermentation, the result is a good red colour with a minimal amount of tannins, and the wine may be consumed very young. If the extraction of tannins is high, the wine will require longer ageing.

There are many types of grapes, many methods of production, a great variety of storage conditions and an overwhelming number of personal preferences. Mature wine is a delight. Wine held too long is wasted. It is a shame to devote years of effort to cellaring, only to have your wine die in the bottle because you didn't enjoy it when it was ready.

Broadly speaking, there are three stages of wine ageing. The first stage is oak or barrel ageing where the water, alcohol and acid present in wine extract chemicals, sugars and flavours from the wood. This stage can take anything from one week to two years, and the rate of extraction drops off hyperbolically with time. We shall elaborate on the barrel issue in one of our next newsletters.

The second stage of ageing is bottle ageing, where slow, chemical reactions combine with chemicals in the wine to produce new flavours that were not present when the wine was bottled. Wines that are meant to be aged a long time have a high level of tannins when they are bottled, from the time it was in contact with the grapes skins and oak. These tannins help preserve the wine, but over time attach themselves to chemicals in the wine and settle out. Because of this, tannin is known as a fining agent. Wines with high levels of tannin taste bitter (like chewing on a used tea bag) when they are young and become smoother or more mellow as the tannin level drops. Some of the sharper/harsher flavours present in young wines are removed by the tannin and settle out as well.

The third stage of ageing occurs once you open the bottle and expose the wine to air. Some wines benefit from this more than others, and some people decant wines into wide-mouth carafes to "allow the wine to breathe". The breathing process allows strong odours to bleed off, and oxidizes the wine by bringing it into contact with the oxygen present in air. Too much breathing time, or leaving wine in a half empty bottle for several days, can ruin the wine through too much oxidation.

Perhaps the most significant stage of ageing starts once a wine is produced and bottled, that is when the bottle-ageing process begins. Wines in the bottle age through a series of complex chemical processes, some catalyzed by the presence of oxygen and some catalyzed by various enzymatic changes in the wine’s chemical structure.

Most white wines will intensify in colour from a very pale straw to a deep gold, sometimes ultimately to brown. Red wines, which may start life almost black, change over time to purple-red, brick-red and, like a very old white, eventually to tawny-brown. Red wines can become incredibly complex and velvety, with those astringent tannins from their youth softening to smooth silkiness.

The four most significant inherent qualities that provide clues to the ageing potential of a wine are the amount of alcohol, acid, fruit and tannin (for red wines). Furthermore, the ageing capacity of a wine is influenced by a number of factors, such as the oxygen absorbed during processing and bottling, the size and fill of the bottle, and the storage conditions of the wine.

High alcohol (above 13.8% to 14%), will give a wine a certain “hotness” and it will taste slightly sweeter. High alcohol is a major concern. It is not intrusive as long as there is a lot of fruit to go with it. In evaluating young wines, we may come across and be impressed with a wine sporting 14.5% alcohol that seems to have enough fruit to age for 8 to ten years. If we are wrong, however, the fruit will diminish in a few years, but the alcohol will still be 14.5% and the wine will be out of balance. High alcohol wines often do not age well.

The big breakthrough in understanding wine ageing has come in the way tannins are managed by winemakers. Tannins are important for ageing because they act as a natural preservative, preventing oxidation. The tannins can either come from the grapes themselves or from being aged in wood, usually oak. Grape tannins come from the skins and pips of the grapes, and are what you taste on the finish of most red wines. Grape tannins are better than oak when it comes to ageing, hence grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon, with thicker skins, have a better ageing potential.

In general, wines gain complexity and lose fruitiness as they age. Tannic red wines also mellow and become softer as they age. Once a wine reaches maturity, it will usually plateau before slowly going downhill. Different grapes make wines with different ageing profiles. As an example, most Cabernet Sauvignons will age for longer periods than, say, most Merlots.

Acid too can act as a preservative, although like tannin, the ability of acid to aid in the ageing process is due largely to the amount of balancing fruit in the wine. This is especially true for white wines that have little to no tannin present. Wines high in acid but also possessing a strong core of fruit are excellent candidates for ageing. Over time as the fruit begins to fade, the acid will act to maintain the structure of the wine, thereby allowing the wine to age more gracefully. Age-worthy wines may, in fact, seem too acidic when young, but the acidity will reduce over time and the wine can come into balance as long as the other elements are there and the wine has plenty of fruit. The combination of alcohol and acidity (and in some cases sugar) acts as a preservative, and will prevent microbiological spoilage of a wine stored in a properly sealed container.

Oxygen poses the greatest threat to properly aged wine, since too much oxygen can greatly accelerate the ageing process. Bottle fill is important because the fill or ullage (the distance between the bottom of the cork and the top of the liquid level in the bottle) is an indicator of the amount of oxygen present in the bottle, which in turn will greatly influence the ageing of the wine. Less fill, or more ullage means that more oxygen is present within the bottle. Too much ullage, marked when the fill of the bottle is below the midpoint of the shoulder of bottle (the shoulder is the upper curved portion just beneath the neck of the bottle) is also a sign that the bottle has probably seen dramatic and rapid temperature changes during its storage, which can also act to prematurely age, or even spoil fine wine. Remember that wine in half-bottles will age more quickly than in 750ml bottles.

The French drink a lot of wine, and spoilage of newly bottled wine was a problem that greatly concerned them in the mid-1800s. Thus, the great French scientist Louis Pasteur was asked in 1863 to find out why some wines tended to go bad soon after bottling, and he found that too much contact of the wine with air promotes the growth of vinegar-producing bacteria. Yet small amounts of oxygen also allow wine to mature. Apparently, there is enough oxygen dissolved in wine to last it for many years, even when wine is stored in an airtight bottle. This dissolved oxygen reacts slowly with compounds in the wine to mature them, and may continue to react after maturity to cause the wine to deteriorate.

For many years of bottle ageing, no material is known to be better than cork. However, after a long time the corks may deteriorate and fragment, causing the wine to leak out and allowing air to enter. Very expensive wines, which are aged by collectors for many years, must be opened and re-corked after 25-30 years.

Another concern is that higher temperatures will result in undesirable chemical reactions taking place that were either too slow or non-existent at the lower temperatures. This is as important an issue as speeding up changes that have a desirable effect on the bouquet of a wine as it ages. Bottle ageing of wine is a result of many chemical changes taking place over time. Each of these reactions occurs at a certain speed or rate, and each reaction is affected differently by temperature changes because each has a unique natural energy barrier that must be overcome for the reaction to occur. Of course, very high temperatures for even relatively short periods can lead to nasty reactions, producing compounds with foul odours and “off-tastes”. This situation undoubtedly prevails at temperatures above 32°C (90°F). Excessively high temperatures for several hours will surely have a detrimental effect on a wine’s chemistry with the production of off-flavours resulting from oxidation and other undesirable reactions whose rates have been dramatically increased by the higher temperature.

Serious wine collectors store their wines in wine cellars or use special home storage systems for wines they buy specifically to age. Storing wine in particular conditions can also affect the rate at which wine ages. It has been observed that the lower the temperature, the slower the maturation. The proper storage of your wine bottles is as important to long-term ageing as any of the other aspects that can influence how a wine ages.

Wine intended for ageing should be stored under the following conditions:

. The temperature should be between 10°C (52°F) and 12°C (55° F).

. The temperature should be constant without fluctuation.

. The storage area should be dark and free from sunlight.

. The storage area should be free of vibration.

. The humidity should be between 50% and 70%.

. Bottles should be stored on their sides so the corks can remain damp.

Most wines on the market today are designed to be ready to drink when you purchase them and do not need to be aged. A wine may survive for a long time in the bottle and still be drinkable. Almost all wines, if properly stored, tend to improve somewhat with age. But there is too much emphasis placed on ageing wine. Every wine has its natural life span: it improves during youth, reaches its prime, and declines in old age. About 75% of the wine produced in the world is as good when a year old as it is ever likely to be and will only deteriorate after its third birthday. A light, fresh style does not require ageing. In some respects, many of today's best reds are never better than when they are first released, when the fruit is robust and strong and the winemakers' artful seasoning with new oak and blending of the best cuvees of wine from the estate are so apparent.

Concluding this short analysis, one can deduce that age is widely overrated in wines. A very small proportion of wines benefit from extended bottle maturation, and even fewer absolutely require it. But it is these few which can benefit magnificently from 20 years of bottle ageing, that cause people to associate age in a wine with quality. In cellars across the globe, there are probably large numbers of wines that would have been much better enjoyed by their owners if drunk in their youth. Some wines are genuinely long-lived. However, not every wine will taste heavenly after 10 or 20 years. Most will become oxidized, and taste abominable.

Wine News and Information

Drinkers in English-speaking countries are more frequent consumers of wine than those of other major export markets, according to a new report from Wine Intelligence. A survey of 11,000 wine consumers in 11 countries found 56% of those in the UK were most likely to drink wine two or more times a week, followed by Australia on 55% and the US on 54%. Frequent consumption was less prevalent in Denmark (38%), Japan (31%) and Finland (24%). "Among wine drinkers in the English-speaking markets, wine tends to play a more central role," said Richard Halstead, operations director of Wine Intelligence. "It's being drunk at the end of the day or with a meal, and has become less of an occasion-led drink. In somewhere like Japan, wine is much more for formal occasions and for on-trade venues where people go maybe once a week." Only around two-thirds of consumers in Germany or Switzerland ever drink wine in the on-trade, compared with scores in the nineties or high-eighties for all the other markets covered. The strength of Riesling in the German market singled it out as the only one where Chardonnay was not the most preferred grape variety. Eighty-one per cent of wine drinkers in Australia, and 80% in the UK and Ireland, had drunk Chardonnay within the past six months. The report describes Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio and Riesling as "distant runners-up". In reds, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon shared popularity across most major markets, with Shiraz the next most popular in Australia, Denmark, Ireland and the UK, and Pinot Noir taking third spot in Switzerland, Finland and Canada. Wine drinkers in Japan have a narrower repertoire to choose from compared with other markets.

The EU's wine reform proposals – including allowing blends from grapes grown in different countries – have been branded “dangerous” by AOC producers. The European Commission recently set out its proposals for a major overhaul of the European wine industry, which include offering producers over €7,000 per hectare to uproot vines, banning chaptalisation (adding sugar to wine), and major changes in labelling rules. The package will cost €1.3bn per year, and will come into effect in 2008-09 if approved by EU member states.

The proposals also aim to make producing varietal wines easier by authorising blended wines to be made from the same grape grown in different EU countries. More producers would also be able to list the grape variety and vintage on wine labels, even if they do not currently have designation of origin (DO) status, such as France's AOC. However, producers of DO wines said the proposals are “dangerous”, as the location where the grapes were grown could become the sole factor in awarding DO status.

Monolithos Monthly News

Spraying continues every three weeks until the end of August, or two weeks before harvesting. Spraying allows the plant to fight off grape berry moths, spiders, wasps and weeds. Also powdery, downy mildew, and grey rot are prevented.

At the winery wine-making equipment is cleaned and maintained and prepared for the processing of this year’s crop. Roughly three to four months after flowering of vines, the grapes can be harvested.

We are pleased to inform you that as from this month, Monolithos wines are available at the Sunrise Beach Hotel in Protaras. The hotel enjoys one of the most privileged beachfront locations in Cyprus, sitting on a long stretch of fine, golden sand that meets the calm, clear blue waters of the eastern coast of Cyprus. The large terrace of the Panorama Restaurant, with magnificent views of the sea and pool, is a popular location for dining. The restaurant offers a wide choice of specialities from all over the world. Dinner is frequently accompanied by the tunes of live music and themed dance shows. The Hotel’s tavern, just a few steps from the beach, is decorated to resemble a traditional village tavern and specialises in Cypriot cuisine. It also has a large terrace overlooking lush gardens and the sea. Monolithos Cabernet Sauvignon is becoming a hot favourite among local and foreign guests of the hotel.

We thank you for your continued support, take care and remember that:

"There can be no bargain without wine." (Latin saying)

If at any time you are passing near the village of Pachna and wish to visit the winery or purchase any of our products, Martin Wood will be pleased to meet and assist you at his “Fig Tree Villa” in Pachna, so do not hesitate to phone him at 25-816212 or 99-165995.

Regards from all of us here at Monolithos