Wine and "The Hunger Games"

Books!!!

M'enfin (finally!) I am back. Yeah it took like 2 weeks until I was ready to post something again. After my South Korean Co-worker Choi left I took 4 days off and had some nice Holidays. I needed some time to get my head free and also smell some fresh air after being stucked most of time in the office or at home (chores never waits....). I felt refreshed after these 4 days, however I got another bill to pay. The bill of overdoing it with my body the last weeks. So I didn't feel well and needed some more time to get back. So far I feel much better, still quite tired, however now looking forward to some Easter Holy-Days where I can rest some more. 

During the time after my 4 days of vacation I stayed most of the time (if not at work) at home and read a book. I haven't had the time to read a book or felt in any way to do so for a long time (reading so many publications at work makes you tired of seeing written pages), but after the 4 days I was trying it. I started to read "The Hunger Games". A book which is currently a major movie in the cinemas. To be honest I am not particular interested in books that get hyped up by advertisement or if people say you have to read it. I feel quite rebellious concerning books 'cause everybody has different taste (like with wines). However I must say even tho it is original a book for youngster/mid-adolescents it is really good! I read the first book in 4 days and now nearly reach the first half of the second book. I also watched the movie, which I must say didn't came close to the book, but hey its a movie and making a movie out of a book is - I guess - a very difficult thing. Anyway if you are interested in something easy and fast reading + a good story, then go for it. 

But enough of the book here, lets come back to something also very interesting: wine.
So yesterday when it started to snow again in Helsinki (we got like 20 cm of new snow the last two days) I suddenly felt like I needed something that reminds me of the summer. I picked up a foie gras du canard (its liver pâte from the duck), grabbed some fresh baked white bread and opened up a nice little bottle of Muscato d'Asti (a sweet white wine).

Bloc du foie gras du canard
(block of liver pâte from the duck)

Now here we have something new! What is a sweet wine, what is it good for and whats is a Muscadet? Uff a lot to explain and I try to make it short.
So a sweet wine is a wine that has a relatively low percentage of alcohol and a lot of remaining/rest-sugar. Why low percentage? Easy answer, because the alcohol is a product of the fermentation of the sugar of the grapes by the yeast/fungus and if you have a high rest-sugar in the wine, well then you definitely won't have too much alcohol in it. Also the higher the rest-sugar is in the wine the more toxic becomes the alcohol towards the yeast/fungus during the fermentation; so there is a limitation of the ability yeast to produce alcohol.

But how come that there is so much rest-sugar in it? Well that depends of some factors again. One is that the grapes have lost a lot of water because of some "noble rot" (Botrytis cinerea, a fungus that can infect wine grapes and cause loss of water) or that the weather conditions made the grapes skin fracturing.

Botrytis cinerea on Riesling grapes
(c) Wikipedia, owner Tom Maack

In the first case those wines are called "Auslese-Weine" (sorry only German word for this available). These wines are classified according to their alc/rest-sugar amount and also of the "kind" of berries that were used. The lowest classification is, if I am not mistaken "Beerenlese" and the highest is "Trockenbeerenauslese". Since you won't get so much juice out of grapes which have lost a lot of water already, you won't be able to produce many bottles. Vice versa this means that these bottles are not easy to get and very very expensive. In Germany you can pay between 8 - 20 € depending from which region and the producer (in Alko I saw a bottle of "Beerenlese" for 24 €, Mon Dieu! I don't wanna think of the price for the "Trocken-Beerenauslese"... ca va fait mal (translation: this is going to hurt)). Btw the classification of "Beerenlese and co." is a german one, so you won't find anything like this somewhere else. Of course other countries have different names for this, but the Germans have a lot of different sweet white wines since they are something like World Champions in White wine making. However please bear in mind that these sweet wine's are also called Dessert Wines due to their high rest-sugar. Normally you serve them together with desserts.
Just to mention here there is also something from Germany called an "Eiswein" (engl. translation: Ice wine). Because the grapes of this white wine have lost a lot of water thanks to frost and according to the rules the grapes are not allowed to be harvest before a certain day in January (I think its the 7th...not 100% sure). And obviously this one is even more rarely cause you have to gamble as a producer and hope you will get frost and a cold winter in January, so you won't gamble to high and use just some grape-vines.

But back the Sauternes and Muscadet. The Sauternes is a white wine from the "Sauternes"-region in France, and like with the "Beerenauslese" these grapes have lost a lot of water do to "noble-rot" (B. cinerea). The Muscadet on the other hand is made from grape variety 'Melon de Bourgogne'. However this wine is also sweet but if I a remember it right because the wine will "lay" on the yeast. While the yeast is disintegrated over time some compounds will get into the wine and give it special taste. These wines are a little less expensive than the others mentioned above.

Sweet white wine from
Alko Shop.

So the combination of foie gras and Muscadet is quite common in France (at least in the Southern parts) and both taste: Foie gras very fatty and Muscadet very sweet are quite well fitting to each other. However the Italian Muscato D'Asti (= Muscadet who has some carbon dioxide and sparkles) was from the taste sensation to strong personally. With all the carbon dioxide at the beginning I was not able to enjoy the foie gras. After the sparkling was gone it was very suitable to the foie gras.

Ca sera tous! (Thats all!) for today. Hope you enjoyed it! A bientôt mes amis!