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The Art of Tasting Wine with James Flewellen: Wine Diamonds in White Wine

Published by James Flewellen + Tuesday, May 28, 2013 Permalink 0

Wine Diamonds in White Wine

There are a number of legitimate reasons for sending a wine back at a restaurant: the wine could be oxidised, be contaminated by ‘cork taint’, suffer from excess volatile acidity, or have unpleasant Brettanomyces aromas. One common cause for complaint, however, is the presence of tartrate crystals or ‘wine diamonds’. Wine diamonds in white wine are a natural occurrence.

These are clear crystalline deposits found usually in certain white wines, especially Riesling. They are either potassium bitartrate (a.k.a. cream of tartar) or calcium tartrate — both found naturally in grapes, and which follow through to the final bottle in the winemaking process. They are certainly not tartaric acid, sugar, or bits of glass! These wine diamonds are perfectly natural and completely harmless. In the glass, they sink to the bottom and will barely impose on your enjoyment of the wine. Or, the wine can simply be decanted, with the crystals remaining in the bottle.

Wine diamonds in white wine left over from a glass of excellent Austrian Gruner Veltliner.

These crystals can be removed before bottling, however it is an involved process involving chilling the wine and passing it through filters. This is energetically expensive and the filtration process can remove flavour compounds that give the wine its complexity and character. Producers of fine wines prefer to mess with the wine as minimally as possible to deliver the best possible quality to the consumer.

So if you do see some wine diamonds in your wine, this is not a cause for complaint. Rather, be assured that the winemaker cares about his wine so much that he has chosen not to remove them to deliver the best possible wine to you!

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James Flewellen is The Rambling Epicure wine columnist. James is a biophysicist at the University of Oxford. Originally from New Zealand, the huge range of wine James discovered in Europe spurred his interest in all things vinous. He became involved in the University’s Blind Wine Tasting Society and has recently completed a two-year term as its President. During this time he represented the University in a number of domestic and international wine tasting competitions, winning several awards. He is currently completing the WSET Diploma in Wine and Spirits. James has a passion for wine communication and education and runs the Oxford Wine Blog and wine tasting courses through the Oxford Wine Academy.

Jonell Galloway: Cooking Schools: A Practical Hands-on Way of Learning a Language

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, February 7, 2011 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

When you learn French in school, you learn how to say “the past recaptured,” “finding time again,” and other such useful Proustian phrases, but you don’t learn how real people talk today, as in, “I would like a dozen of those luscious dark chocolate religieuses, please.” School vocabulary is often formal and outdated, and omits teaching you useful, everyday phrases.

When I arrived in France, people would kindly smile at my textbook phrases. I quickly caught on that when they smiled, it was best to just ask them how they would say it, in plain French, because I sounded like Proust, which makes an ordinary French person want to go to sleep.

This applied in particular to the most ordinary, commonplace words. I had read Flaubert, Maupassant and Proust, but sometimes didn’t know the words for the simplest objects.

My best example is café au lait. For some reason unbeknownst to me, when you order café au lait in a café in France, you call it café crème. There is no logic in this, because it doesn’t contain an ounce of cream. It is made with steamed milk, just like the café au lait you make at home. It’s the same thing, but you call it by another name, depending on the context.