As history continues to be made every day, leisure activities such as those associated with wine travels and tours continue to gain in popularity. These are not activities that were originated in today’s society. Wine travels and tours were most likely part of medieval society.
Certainly the varieties of wines were less, but people still traveled to partake in or purchase their favorite wines. Many would take tasting tours around the facilities that would make their favored brew. Because of this tasting tour, many a wine enthusiast perhaps finished their day with pain or death on the jousting fields.
Wine travels and tours is thus a whimsical expression that describes folk’s endeavors in traveling in chase of their favorite wine and touring the facilities that make it.
The Wine Tour – grape selection
Truly the best part of wine travels and tours is the wine sampling. This is when you actually get to taste the wine that you have traveled for. Hopefully this is a good experience. But sometimes, unfortunately, the wine you taste in the tour is not worth the travel time. This is when you hope that the other component of the wine tour in wine travels and tours takes precedence. This component is about the process. Perhaps it starts with selecting the grapes, collecting them and transporting them to the processing site. Today the processing site is where most of the cool technology is in use.
Wine Tour 2 – processing plant
The processing plant that is used in a large number of the larger “jug” wineries is actually pretty interesting. If you have an engineering orientation it might actually make your wine travels and tours expedition worthwhile.
Large, perhaps even massive, steel containers of fermenting wine are seen everywhere. Thousands of gallons, perhaps more than an average wino drinks in a lifetime, surround the touring enthusiast. Even if the wine is awful it may make the travel worthwhile, and you will continue on your wine travels and tours to other destinations.
Better wine typically is made in smaller lots and often wooden barrels with infrastructure that is perhaps less cool, but more demanding, of the wine maker. As you progress in your wine travels and tours, you will find the wineries you will eventually seek, and the taste and quantity of the wine you consume make the coolness of the plant irreverent.
The Travel Home
All good things must come to an end. Traveling home is the final component of wine travels and tours. This can be a time of great celebration or complete desperation. If you have spent your lifesavings on traveling and partaking in wine tours, hopefully you selected well. It is also hoped that the wine tours project developer who designed your vacation understood your needs. However, a life of wine travels and tours is like a game of golf. In golf, one good shot brings you back for more. In your experience of wine travels and tours, one good bottle will keep the search alive for the bottle of wine that defines your life.
Filed under Wine and Cooking, Wine Country Tours, Wine Tours Argentina, Wine Tours Australian, Wine Tours Bordeaux, Wine Tours California, Wine Tours Europe, Wine Tours France, Wine Tours Italy, Wine Tours Melbourne, Wine Tours Napa Valley, Wine Tours New York, Wine Tours South Africa, Wine Tours Sydney, Wine Tours Texas, Wine Tours Tuscany, Wine Travels and Tours by on Dec 20th, 2007. Comment. 
Any wine fan will tell you the importance of getting some air into your wine to let it open up and for many years a decanter has been used to achieve this, but with the Vinturi white wine aerator you don’t need to do this anymore. Lets have a look at why it is so important to be able to let your wine breathe properly and also lets look at how you can achieve this aeration in seconds with the Vinturi.
When someone says they will let the wine breathe in the bottle -the amount of breathing it does is very little as the surface area of the wine does not get enough air into it.
When you pour wine into a decanter the surface area is increased and the wine is exposed to more oxygen. This exposure to oxygen lets the chemical reactions in the wine that were happening during the wine making process to start back up again and this is what gives wine its aroma and taste. Many wine actually do benefit from aerating and breathing and if you are using a Vinturi white wine aerator, as opposed to taking an hour or more with a decanter – the aerating of your wine is almost instantaneous.
Many wine bars and also cellar doors at wineries now use a Vinturi white wine aerator to aerate their white wines whilst being poured. It gives the consumers or the customers the chance to taste the wine the way it was meant to taste without having to wait for an hour or so for it to open up whilst being decantered.
So the next time you are out drinking wine at your favorite bar – have a look and see if they use the Vinturi – they probably do it without you even noticing. It is really good to let your wine breathe and you can benefit so much more from just letting your wine get a bit of air inside. With a Vinturi wine aerator you can get air inside you wine without having to wait an hour for the decanter to do its job
Filed under Wine and Cooking by on May 17th, 2012. Comment.
The majority of you know me as a defender of Old World wine, however you most likely do not realize that I am very keen on the wines of South Africa. I have always enjoyed them because I believe that they consistently supply an intriguing mix of new world grapes with enough old world earthiness, complexity, and structure (think acidity, tannin, etc.). I do, nonetheless, struggle to place South African wine in the “New World” wine category.
Why? Well, it was in 1659 that the first grapes were cropped in the Dutch Cape Colony (present day Southwest S. A.). Twenty-six years after, in 1685, Simor van der Stel established the Constantia vineyards in the Dutch Cape Colony, and Louis XIV reversed the Edict of Nantes. It was only three years after, in 1688, that about 200 or so French Huguenots relocated to the Olifantshoek Valley (named after the elephants who once roamed there). Today it is known as the Franschhoek Valley (“French Corner” in Afrikaans), baring witness to the French settlement.
Viticulture was present in S. A. before those French emigres arrived on the scene, and there were numerous additional reasons that led to South Africa’s achievements in the wine world. But the reality of the situation is that without French understanding, the young “wine industry” (if I could even call it that) of the Dutch Cape Colony wouldn’t have matured. Wine production would have most likely remained isolated to Constantia (a source of excellent cool climate whites & deliciously sweet dessert wines), and had it spread it probably would have simply remained a novelty.
The French laid the bedrock for the fame and quality of today’s South African wines. Naturally, plenty of wineries in the Cape still have French names. This serves as a reminder of the contribution the French made to South Africa’s now famous wine-making industry.
Thank the Lord for the French! Dieu merci, pour les Francais! For, without them, would we enjoy South African wine?
Nic Haegeli still considers himself somewhat new to the wine business, but he now has a few years of experience as a wine manager at Colonial Spirits of Acton. With a BA in History and a Master of Public Policy in International Relations, Nic never envisioned himself working with wine. But he did grow up in Alsace, France… So it is sensible when you know where he is from.
Nic would like to invite you to come by our liquor store in Acton, MA for one of our frequent wine tastings. If you can’t stop by the physical store, then please consider our online liquor store. Colonial Spirits Delivers offers wine delivery and Champagne delivery anywhere in Eastern Mass!
Filed under Wine and Cooking by on May 17th, 2012. Comment.