Wine Enthusiast Magazine
SubscribeJudging by the response here on Unreserved to my post about winemaker Randy Dunn’s manifesto against high alcohol and posts elsewhere in the blogosphere, it’s an issue with legs, and not just those streamy things that run down the side of your wine glass.
Unlike Dunn, and many of the other people speaking out against high-alcohol table wines, my problem is not that wines over 14 or 15 percent alcohol don’t go with food. My problem is that they don’t go with my metabolism. I like to have a 3-4 ounce glass of wine before dinner while I’m cooking, another glass or two with dinner, and then another small one after dinner if it’s good enough to savor.
But I have to get up the next morning without a headache and have a good day.
I like to drink about half a bottle, or more, almost every day. If the wine is good, I like to keep enjoying it. I’m not drinking it to brag that I drank it, or cross it off my list of conquests, or merely to wash down my food. I’m drinking it because I love how it tastes, and I love to keep tasting it, interpreting it, seeing if it stays as good as the first sip, and hoping it might get even better after a couple of hours.
This routine worked well a number of years ago when the wine I drank averaged maybe 13 percent alcohol. But now the rich Syrahs and Cabernets that I really love, not to mention Zinfandel and Aussie Shiraz, are more potent. Many, many of them are now 14.5 percent, and that is considered moderate by the winemakers.
But when you consider that going from 13 to 14.5 percent means the alcohol level increased nearly 12 percent,that’s a big change. Really big California wines actually go to 16 percent or more for some Central Coast Syrahs and Lodi Zinfandels, even Santa Lucia Pinot Noir (which then tastes like Syrah) not to mention Napa Cabs. From 13 to 16 is a 23 percent increase.
To get back to the level of alcohol I used to consume, I need to cut out roughly a quarter of my daily consumption, or one of my four glasses of wine. I don’t want to do that.
I support winemakers who pick somewhat less ripe fruit, and make more balanced and appetizing wines. I’d willingly trade down on the super-ripe fruit flavors, and enjoy a modest increase in the savory, herbaceous aromas of wines made from merely ripe fruit, in order to keep my fourth glass.
Filed under: Industry Issues, Restaurants and Food
1 Comment
August 6th, 2007 at 1:52:45 PM
Jim,
There is absolutely no doubt that equivalent consumption of higher alcohol wines will increase you blood alcohol content (BAC). Your consumption seems similar to mine, roughly half a bottle a night. Let’s work out how much alcohol we are consuming with wines of different alcohol content. I’ll use the BAC from Celtic Kane (http://celtickane.com/projects/bac.php) simply because it allows input of a number of variables including alcohol level of the drink, number of drinks, time elapsed during drinking.
Warning: BAC calculators are an estimate only and no one should assume that they are absolutely correct as they do not consider all factors involved.
As a 750 ml bottle contains 25.4 fluid ounces let’s say that a half bottle is 12.7 and if we pour a 5 ounce glass then we would consume 2.54 glasses; these numbers are all for convenience, anyone can add their own numbers to work out their BAC. I’ll use my weight (170 lbs), a metabolic rate of Frequent Drinker, and an elapsed time of 2.5 hours; roughly a glass an hour which is about the speed I drink while having dinner and watching an hour or two of TV or some reading.
If I’m drinking a 13% alcohol wine my BAC would be 0.019. For a 14.5 %er it would be 0.027, and if I’m sipping on a monster Zinfandel or a high octane Shiraz of 16% my BAC would be 0.035. So the difference between the 13 and 14.5 % wines is not that large; for example the time to achieve complete sobriety differs by less than 30 minutes. As expected the 16% alcohol wine will raise my BAC more but I’m still not legally drunk and in less than 2 hours I should be completely sober; with the 13% wine I’ll be completely sober in just under an hour, and in less than 1.5 hours for the 14.5%er. Now if I go overboard and drink 4 glasses at 5 ounces a glass then the 16% will make me impaired at a BAC of 0.084, while the 13 and 14.5 % wines will not. But one would hope that we are talking about daily wine drinking that uses commonsense rather than consumption as the measure of enjoying the benefits of wine.
Of course all this assumes that the wine level on the bottle label is even close to being correct. A wine labeled below 14% can have a 1.5% variation over or under, while a wine 14% and above can have a 1% variation. So a 13.9% wine could be a 15.4%er, a 14.5% wine could be a 15.5% wine.
In my own experience I don’t suffer any ill effects from consumption of between 2-3 glasses of (dry) wine per day; I’m sure everyone’s mileage varies on this point. However I would not drink two to three 5 oz glasses of some of my favorite Australian dessert wines that can approach 20% alcohol, even though my BAC would only be 0.057. The reason? As much as I love them, sometimes too much of a good thing does dull the appreciation.