Seven colours
Strictly speaking, white wines do not exist, just as the color white does not exist. We use the term white wine for wines that are pale greenish-yellow in color, typically young ones. Yellow wines are the oxidative wines from the French Jura region. Amber wines are whites produced through extended maceration, much like red wines, while rosé wines are made from red grapes but vinified using white wine methods. Most wines made from dark-skinned grapes are red, but since there are varying degrees of darkness among them, the term black wine can be applied to those made from the Georgian Saperavi variety or the French Malbec from Cahors in southwestern France.
Seven wonders
There is something magical about the number seven. There were seven wonders of the ancient world, there are seven seas, seven continents, seven colors of the rainbow, and seven days in the week. Seven dwarfs accompanied Snow White, and after seventh glass of wine, standing at the bar it's not easy. There are also seven deadly sins in Christianity, though we won’t get into those right now... Yet, it is a sin to believe that bad wine makes for a good gemišt or spritzer. So, here are six more, making seven in total.
Bad wine is better with water
Man has never come up with anything smarter than the gemišt, legendary is sentence of Štef Šagovac, a wine-loving companion who, like the rest of us lucky few, never had to drink bad wine. Bad wine is simply bad; it is good for nothing. Thank God, such wines are becoming increasingly rare. The gemišt is the simplest of cocktails, yet an extraordinary one, requiring a specific type of wine: light-bodied, lower in alcohol, and notably fresh. It also calls for a specific mineral water. In several evaluations of waters for gemišt that I have participated in across Croatia and Slovenia, Radenska emerged as the best among those in plastic bottles, while Kiseljak and Jamnica stood out among the glass-bottled options.
The older, the better
The older the wine, the better. Not necessarily! Old wine is like old people. Simply put, it is old. Among people, there are those who age gracefully and those who merely grow old. For decades, Sean Connery became more charming with each passing year, yet even he eventually aged. Similarly, there are wines that age beautifully over decades, while others were extraordinary in their youth but, by their third year, weren't even fit for cooking. Every wine, just like every person, is at its best at a certain stage of life, while at another, it is not quite as good.
Room temperature
Red wines are served at room temperature. Of course not. That rule held true a few centuries ago, when the rooms of the castles inhabited by wine drinkers were kept at 15 degrees in winter. They simply couldn't heat the rooms any better than that. Today, we easily heat them to 22, 25, or even 28 degrees and it is hard to imagine a wine that would taste good at that temperature. Perhaps mulled wine.
Dom Pérignon
Come quickly, I am tasting stars! Pierre Pérignon allegedly exclaimed those words upon tasting the first sparkling wine. Well, actually, he didn't. That is one of the great myths of the wine world. The quote attributed to the Benedictine monk, after whom today's most famous Champagne is named, first appeared in a newspaper advertisement in the late 19th century, whereas Dom Pérignon lived from 1638 to 1715. Another myth is that he was blind, he reportedly wasn't, and a third is that he was the one who invented sparkling wine. He certainly wasn't. A record of sparkling wine dating back to 1531 was discovered in Limoux, a small town in southwestern France near the Spanish border, a place where excellent sparkling wines are still produced today.
The screw cap is for cheap wines
At the renowned Bordeaux estate Château Haut-Brion, a portion of the 1972 and 1973 vintages was sealed with screw caps. When opened in 1978, the wines were found to be identical to those aged under cork. They did not abandon corks, however, due to image concerns, specifically the realization that buyers of their rather expensive wines would not welcome such a revolution. The New World of wine, particularly New Zealand and Australia, faces no such dilemmas, leading to an increasing number of screw-capped wines in those regions. And Croat played a role in thi: Georg Fistenich, owner of the New Zealand winery Villa Maria, was the first in the world to switch to screw caps for his entire range of wines. In Croatia, the excellent Bolfan Vinski Vrh winery in Hrašćina was the first to adopt this practice.
White wines are acidic, red ones are not
Wine acidity is arguably the most important measurable parameter, as it ensures freshness and longevity. It depends not on grape color, but rather on the harvest timing and winemaking techniques. There are dozens organic acids and a number of inorganic ones, with almost all of them being desirable. Lactic, malic, tartaric, and citric acids are the most prevalent, while volatile acids, of which acetic acid accounts for up to 99 percent, are undesirable. It is this acid that can turn wine into vinegar, whether white or red.
Higher alcohol, better wine
The 2018 Egon Müller Scharzhofberger Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese, a wine that has long ranked among the world's most expensive, contains only 5.5 percent alcohol. This Trockenbeerenauslese (a selection of dried berries) is, naturally, a sweet wine, and sugar and alcohol levels are generally inversely proportional. In the finest wines, parameters that can be expressed numerically are of little consequence: quality is defined by the harmony among them all.