Does anyone ever do this with a high end wine? If served the diluted version blind… how many geeks would pick up on the diluted version as ‘flawed’ - and what would the giveaway? Anyone do a blind tasting of diluted reds?
I’ve seen the joke a few times… dilute down the 15.5% monster to 14%. Seems like only adding ~10% water would do the drink. I imagine this isn’t too much different than melting a couple cubes in a bruiser of a wine, which I’ve done here or there (for example, when ordering a glass off a list and it shows up alcoholic and room temp).
I usually have some tartaric acid at home and will add a 6 g/L solution to red wines occasionally if they are hot and flabby. Works best with overly alcoholic zins in my experience.
Since you’re asking seriously, it deserves a serious answer
Philosophical questions aside of what a wine is and how much “manipulation” they can(or should!) take once bottled……
The mechanics of the approach come down to a question : whether you think wine is a simple gustatory product, where pulling one gross lever - dilution - like for your eyes with an image in photoshop “brightness”, or your ears with a stereo “volume” - is all that is needed to fix “problems”
I can see situations where diluting the wine could improve it from a bad situation, but to suddenly make it really good or even great? Nah. (or extremely unlikely)
This is interesting. My first thought on reading the OP was that a high ABV wine is likely out of balance in other regards as well and simple dilution won’t fix any of that.
Much simpler to not buy the stuff in the first place!
I imagine not great, because it would be diluting concentration of flavor and aroma (many people believe great wines should have concentration). But its plausiblea wine could become better for it
A bit of a side note, but there is a funny story of Preston Van WInkle walking into a bar and asking for ORVW 10 over ice, with a splash of water and a lemon twist, and the bartender telling him he cant give it to him like that. He brought over each part separately for him to do it himself, and eventually takes his credit card, finding out who was ordering.
I’ve experienced it in Predappio, Emilia-Romagna, where you get just one glass, and that is used for a mix of wine and water. I’m sure a dying tradition.
Well this quite different also, but as a kid I stayed with a French family for a few weeks and they diluted wine for their younger children at dinner. I think it was about 50/50 wine water but it was a very long time ago. As a teenager I was allowed a single glass, undiluted.
I know a few people ITB that like to make their own blends, not with water but by mixing different wines. One of the perks of having too many samples shoved your way
I’m not a fan of the idea of someone doing it just to lower the alcohol level, either. However, to satisfy their curiosity, I think folks should at least try it on a small glass to see what effect it has on their experience. If they like it better, go for it. Heck, try orange juice as well if you really don’t like the bottle you’ve opened.
Many years ago, I worked at a winery that bottled right after a pad filter. The winemaker used water to flush the wine through, bottling a few cases with a significant portion of water. We would taste through to find out where to cut off the salable bottles. While not poisonous, a tiny amount of water certainly changed the character of the diluted wine.
Aside from the cultural aspect of most Europeans diluting their wine with water/ice, especially in the day during summer, it’s nothing new for wineries to do it as Jancis wrote about over 20 years ago. Adding water to wine | JancisRobinson.com
Simply adding ethanol to a low ABV wine would not bring up the glycerol level (and other, lesser, parallel compounds created during fermentation) in proportion to the alcohol. It wouldn’t emulate a higher starting sugar level.
Such an interesting discussion - and I love it when folks ‘experiment’ with wine.
If someone wants to add water to a wine to see if it is ‘better’ to them, go for it . . . The same as if they want to serve it more chilled than others would want to or warmer than others would do, or in a Libby glass or tumbler vs a fancier glass etc.
Will it ‘dilute’ the wine? Maybe it will or maybe it won’t - one would have to try it to see for sure.
I love the Pappy story above - many would find this ‘blasphemous’ but at the end of the day, why should we care what others think?
