Water into wine 19 March 2008

A radical suggestion about freshening-up those heavy wines...

From Clive Sindelman:
Tired of high alcohol red and white wines that taste and feel like like cordial I recently began experimenting by adding a capful or two of natural bottled water to glasses of wine that cloyed like Lecol syrup. Miraculuosly, the wines became palatable, more elegant and food friendly without losing their flavour and character. I urge you and your readers to try out this little experiment. The risk of being called a "Philiswine" is far outweighed by the tasting pleasure you'll derive. If it makes you feel better use Evian.

Clive - could you perhaps tell us which wines you tried this trick on? Reds and whites both? Given that many Californian wines are apparenlty now 'humidified' before bottling, to arguably good effect, I can't see that a touch of post-bottling dilution would be unacceptable. Presumably the difficult bit is to get the proportion just right – to find one of those 'sweet spots' they talk about when it comes to de-alcoholising wines by any means (reverse osmosis, etc). Perhaps you hit on the right amounts by accident in your experiments; or have you also had some failures, where you just ruined the balance of the wines? I do hope some winemakers respond to this. Some must surely have experimented a bit with dilution in their cellars, even if to add water to the commercially released wine would be illegal in this country.... — Tim James

From Real Wine Drinker:
What an amazing discovery! We have been drinking our white with ice for years. I refer to your middle of the day bottle in our heat and not to your more serious encounters. More people would drink wine if it is promoted as your everyday drink of choice and not this holy liquid about which only a few people in magazines know anything about.
 

From Clive Sindelman again:
I've tried it on most red and white SA wines I've drunk in the last month, simply because almost all of them cloyed. I won't list the names but needless to say they are well known and all tended to have alcohols of 14% or higher. The results with chardonnays and sauvignons were particularly pleasing. By doing it 5 ml at a time per 150 ml glass it's easy not to muck it up, as the dilution is a small 3-8%.
I prefer the term 'balance point' to 'sweet' spot – because that's exactly what it cures. Interestingly the minerality seemed enhanced. Roll on reverse osmosis?

From Tim James again:
Roll on, rather, better vineyard management as the best means of alcohol reduction while achieving ripeness. I think, though, it's a pity that dilution is not allowed as a means of alcohol reduction if all those other high-tech methods are allowed (see our interesting discussion about alcohol reduction when it became legal a few years ago; going in search of that article to make the link, I noticed the remark there of Waterford winemaker Francois Haasbroek that 'the removal of alcohol or addition of water means one thing: you got it wrong in the vineyards'.).

This evening I tried Clive's experiment with the open bottle I had (from our New releases tasting, to be reported on soon) of Simonsig's Frans Malan Cape Blend 2004 – a quite serious, expensive wine, which is certainly good of its type, though surely no-one could deny that it is big, bold (14.5% alcohol declared) and sweetish in suggestion. With a little water in the glass, it did lose a bit of concentration, but it certainly, to my mind, gained in drinkability. In particular, the note of hot sweetness in the finish was much diminished. How disconcerting. I shall try this more – until I get, no doubt, assassinated.