Wine Weekend: A Wine Diary

Riesling from Alsace, Piquettes, & Wine Diary

I’ve had quite a Riesling week! Last week was International Riesling Day (yes, there is such a thing) and the team at #DrinkAlsace sent a couple of bottles my way of some beautiful Riesling from Alsace.

If you’ve followed me for a while, you know I love the region! Known for high quality and affordable wines — Alsatian wines are known for being bright, crisp, and fresh—just like a bluebird morning. The temps are cool, but the sun is always shining, which allows for grapes to ripen perfectly without becoming to high in sugar. This effect preserves the acidity, which is why you’ll find many dry, high acid, laser sharps wines from Alsace. This tiny region in France gets an A+ from me for its emphasis on sustainability — many of the vineyards are either certified organic or certified biodynamic. The wine I featured here is produced by Domaine Christophe Mittnacht, one of the regions best known producers, who has been producing biodynamic wines since 1999!

I talk a bit about the region and what makes the wines so great in my most recent YouTube series: Wine Weekend (a daily wine diary), which of course, you can watch below.

I thought about ways I could share wine in longer video format and decided a weekend vlog meets wine diary was a cute way to go about it. Watch my wine adventures, get tidbits of wine advice and recommendations. Plsss let me know what you think with a like/comment/subscribe ;)

Interesting Wine Article

Speaking of sustainable wines… This Punch Drink article claims that piquette is dead. I don’t know if I agree because producers like Wonderwerk regularly sells out of its piquette wines like Luv Yuzu and Free Your Mind Lite.

My take is that some producers are using the methods of piquette winemaking (ie rehydrating already pressed grape skins) as a way to double dip, rather than actually have some fun with it and create something else from the grapes. Infusing it with teas, juice, or flowers gives the byproduct a whole other life. Imagination and the reinvention of what wine was once. The future baby!

Wine Term You Should Know

Brix. Unit of measurement wine folks use to measure the sugar contents of a grape and wine — Number of Brix determines the ripeness of a grape (aka the sugar level), which is a crucial factor in determining when to pick the grapes. Different grapes and wine styles might require varying levels of sugar, which is why measuring the Brix is so important (some might say an obsession around harvest). The difference between 24 and 26 Brix is major so you better act fast! (if you’re in the vineyard).

The level of Brix will also help monitor fermentation. Yeast from the grapes turns sugar into alcohol (the basis of winemaking) and as this occurs, Brix will lower rapidly. You want this to drop below zero and never stop before. Later on in the process Brix will give a winemaker an idea of what the alcohol level of a wine will be. It gets very science-y here so don’t ask me too many questions about it. All I know is that: (Brix) x 0.6 = ABV. Or something like that.

It was named after the guy who invented the measurement (Adolf Ferdinand Wenceslaus Brix) in order to determine the sugar content of any liquid (not just wine).

Wine Diary

All the wines I drank this weekend are listed in my video ;)