Ok I have to admit I admire your inner sense of blending here is impressive And it brings to mind a hero
Seriously lots of things I never thought About…but 10% wine in Canadian whisky can’t be right…can it?
The folks down South America are known to blend coca cola with red wine for a bit of a cocktail, I think your approach is far classier. And probably better for both your taste and health than sweetish plonk (like Apothic)
I had to double check on the added wine in Canadian whiskey.
“Canadian whisky can contain up to 9.09% added flavoring, as long as it’s a spirit aged at least 2 years in wood or a wine.”
No idea about legality in the US.
In the EU adding Port to any wine would cause it becoming EU TABLE WINE and means losing any indication of origin, maybe except for Portugese dry red wine becoming Portugese table wine. So commercially nonsense.
However adding teaspoons of Port to cheap red wine would increase alc content and sugar - and altering the aroma, but not (necessarily) make it “better”.
However if you feel you like it better then - ok for you.
Welcome to the forums! Hopefully you’ll join us, share, and feel welcomed into this community. While I do not add port to my table wine, I have in the past added a few drops of Pinot Noir to a Champagne to see what the impact is on the Champagne. Especially when the Champagne is already a blend with Pinot Noir or all Pinot.
What got you interested in wine?
What are some wines you find exciting right now?
Like adding red wine to orange soda for a summer treat…
TTT
Nope. You can blend wines from different countries. Not wine and fortified wine. In table wines the alcohol must come from grapes (and possible chaptalization), not from fortification.
Jennifer, you’re not the first to do this! We Brits are necrophiliacs when it comes to wine, but sometimes in the olden days before wine was “ripe”, old bottles were just a little too old - so adding a dash of port is a well-known remedy to liven up an old claret. I think I read about this first in an article by Hugh Johnson but I’m not sure.
I’ve done it on a couple of occasions a very long time ago, the last of which was on opening a bottle of Gazin 1964 I had bought for my brother’s birthday - it was his birth year. The wine was fine but fading fast, so I added a dollop of port and hey presto, it was perfect!
We’ll see, that’s good to know. I feel like I am in fine company now.
In other news, I finally picked up some liquid smoke today (hickory and mesquite) and tried adding a few drops to my scotch clone (vodka plus 4 drops dry sherry, 2 drops lbv port). The results were not so great, so I mixed them together, added a dash of Behrnes Reaper Pepper Salt, and promptly died.
Anyone know where I can get some liquid peat smoke?
Jennifer, this thread reminded me of one I started a few years back, probably at why is it considered forbidden to add flavorings into wine.
Particularly considering that there are some wines that are widely admired for flavors that are external to the grapes and barrels. For example, Heitz Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet, which had a distinct eucalyptus flavor that came from a row of eucalyptus trees on the upwind border of the vineyard and the oils that blew from the trees onto the grapes. And wines from the Rhone Valley in France taste of garrigue, a type of lavender plant that grows widely there, and the frequent strong winds there blow those oils onto the grapes.
My question was why is added flavor from outside the grapes and barrels considered not only okay but desirable in those instances, but it would be considered a horror if a winemaker added those things into the wine intentionally? And you can’t really even say it’s natural in the former case – eucalyptus trees are not native to California, and the trees on the border of Martha’s Vineyard were planted there by farmers (albeit not with the intention of flavoring the wines).
There isn’t really any answer or conclusion, but it made for an interesting discussion.
Well, maybe it has something to do with wine being the blood of christ. But then, why is it OK to salt crackers?
It’s not forbidden, which I think got noted in that thread. Labeling laws were a reaction to bastardization and part of a move towards quality. It’s entirely legal to add fruit, herbs, spices, etc., but the label has to disclose that. These things are made. There are apparently some marijuana-infused wines (certainly not rare on the non-commercial side). There are a couple hops-infused wines. The question is market acceptance and relative quality. Stuff like peach-chardonnay is popular at a low price point. But, try selling a really good Syrah or Sangiovese you make compared to equally good Cab or Pinot. Try selling a new proprietary blend. How about a masterful vintage blend.
This thread allows me to purge myself of a dark secret. My wife tends to like red wines with ample fruit – think southern Rhones, Languedoc-Roussillons, most Spanish, many Tuscans & southern Italian reds, zins, fairly modern-styled Bordeaux, etc. I drink broadly so these make up some portion of our cellar. But I also drink a lot of wine that is much less fruit-forward, e.g. Loire cab francs as an archetypal example. Coravin comes in handy for both of us to get what we want. But sometimes I’ll have a bottle of “my” stuff open, and she’ll want a glass, and in these situations lately I’ve found that small dose of crème de cassis (which we keep on hand to make kirs royals from lower-tier NV champagne), around a teaspoon, can impart just enough fruit and sucrosité to change her assessment from a bleh or a meh to an mmm, not bad. Basically, a red kir.
How sacrilegious! But pragmatic ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
Scott Harvey uses Port in his Inzinerator and One Last Kiss wines (and the Menage a Trois before it). He used to also use it in his red label “Mountain Selection” wine range but stopped doing that. If I remember what he told me, it’s about adding a dose of fruitiness and richness to the palate. I consistently found that I preferred the wines where he didn’t add the port, but obviously some others think differently.
Also, his Forté port is delicious.
Do you tend to like wines with a bit of sweetness to them?
Jennifer when I try to “feel” the mouth feel you are seeking by adding the savory richness of Port to an acidic lean wine I end up with Australian wine. Some are expensive and highly rated and horrible, some are beautiful and under the radar and inexpensive, most have a flavor of strawberry or similar that comes from a combination of the warm climate and the vinification and especially the type of oak. I’m a fan, most of my wine friends are not. I’d try a Rosemount Balmoral syrah for $30 or an Alto Moncaya Veraton for under $30 which is Spanish but made by my favorite Australian winemaker , some of his wines sell for $600 or so.
This is correct. Many Canadian whiskeys are barrel-finished and legally this allows you to directly add a portion of the liquid itself to the finished spirit. So if you are making a Port cask barreled Canadian whiskey, you can add some liquid Port directly to it up to the allowed maximum.
And before any Scotch and Irish whisky, brandy, rum, Calvados and Cognac snobs on the board go aghast, please try not to pretend that the same method isn’t used on other spirits. The only difference is our Canucklehead laws are honest about it by legally stating it.
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I completely understand where Jennifer is coming from. When I first started drinking wine, I actually managed to simulate a Sauternes by blending white Vidal cewine, pure homemade Vanilla extract of my own making, and a touch of liquid smoke. You’d be surprised at how shockingly close the result was.
Point is, one can naturally doctor an inferior wine to make it much more palatable. However, this would also require using superior ingredients to compensate for what one doesn’t enjoy in the original wine. The cost is sometimes better spent on just buying better bottles of wine.
I appreciate and understand where Jennifer is coming from and will try it myself just for the sake of curious interest. But I can eventually see her like myself slowly morphing into a wine aficionado who no longer needs to do such wine doctoring as she finds more and more wines that she enjoys right out of the bottle. Welcome to the board and the journey, Jennifer.
No one drinks Kir or Kir Royal?