Tips for cooking with wine

1). Choose a wine with characteristics you want in your dish.  A smooth Cabernet for a duck sauce or a buttery Chardonnay for a rich chicken dish are good choices.

2). Look at using wine for 50% of the liquid in a slow cooked dish, halving the amount of stock needed.

3). Marinating meat in wine makes it more tender and cuts down on the cooking time. The leftover marinade can be used to pour over the meat and vegetables while cooking.

4). Sticky whites can be a great marinade for fruit salad, in home-made gelati, or just on ice-cream.

5). Try muscat in chocolate fondue.

6). Riesling oyster shooters make a great starter to a dinner party.   

13 Interesting Wine Facts

1). The flavour of red wine mostly comes from the skin of the grape, whereas the flavour of white wine comes from the flesh.

2). The best reds therefore tend to come from healthy vineyards with very small berries; the more skin per litre of wine, the more flavour, and less chance of harsher tannins affecting the wines' smooth finish.

3).  Grapes are the most planted fruit crop in the world. At last count there was about 20 million acres planted worldwide.

4).  The white dusty look on red wine grapes is a harmless wild yeast that is attracted to the berries.

5). Wine evaporates inside oak barrels, sometimes up to 10%-15%

per year - winemakers call this the "Angels Share".  At Koonara, all of our wines are named after angels - we figured that if that's their share, the rest is their gift to us.

6). The sugar in grapes is what ferments into alcohol.  A "dry" wine means there is little or no residual sugar left in the wine. "Sweet" wines still have some (or added) sugar in them.

7). Sugar added or left in red wines often mask green characters or faults, but also reduce the different flavours. The best red wines which will last the longest are ones which taste sweet, but have no residual sugar.

8). The average age of a French oak tree harvested for use in wine barrels is 170 years.            

9). French hogshead Oak barrels hold 300 litres of wines, and cost around AUD$1200 dollars each.

10). As early as 4000 B.C, the Egyptians were the first people to use corks as stoppers.  They were also the first to make glass containers, around 1500 B.C.

11).  Cork is harvested from a full grown cork tree every 9 years

12). In the year 2000, Americans spent $20 billion on wine. 72% of that was spent on California wines.

13). The rate of wines spoiled by cork taint can be between 2% and 10%, and gives the wine an off-flavour and smell similar to wet cardboard.

8 tips to cellaring your wine:

1). Wine is best stored at 12 - 18ºC. Try to keep it at a constant temperature, and avoid areas that can get too cold or vary temp. like outdoor garages. Anaerobic reactions

2). Watch the humidity; Corks can dry out and leak, so store them on their sides to keep corks wet.

3). Foam boxes can be a good makeshift cellar to help keep wines temperature even.

4). Cling wrap  or unscented hairspray is good for keeping labels in top condition. Keep any special boxes they may have come in - if you want to sell it at a later date, this will help with price.

5). The best white varieties to age are Riesling, Semillon, and late harvest sweet wines. Generally no longer

than 10-15 years, longer under a screw cap.

6). Try a few wines before cellaring just one variety or region; Shiraz from one region can sometimes taste similar to a Cabernet Sauvignon from another.

7). Don't be afraid to ask your wine shop owner for advice on the best wines for cellaring; quite often they get to taste more wines than many show judges.

8). If you have an expensive bottle and you plan to cellar it for a long time, don't be afraid to put it into a screwcap bottle; if it already has TCA (cork taint), better to know now - it may not age as fast, but it could be hard to get a replacement bottle in 10 years.