What’s This Sh*t in My Wine?

One of the best meals I’ve had was in a little thatch-roofed shack in Mexico where dogs and chickens had the run of the place. Can you imagine that flying in the States? No-freakin’-way.

In my opinion, we Americans like things too squeaky clean. Half the time you can’t smell the food in front of you for the overwhelming bleach smell of the table that was just wiped down behind you. We’re so obsessed with cleanliness I’m surprised we haven’t come up with anti-bacterial toilet paper. (If it exists, please keep me comfortably ensconced in my blissful ignorance.) We remove the pulp from our orange juice, pasteurize our apple juice, make it impossible to purchase a detergent that’s not anti-bacterial, even make our clothing anti-microbial.

Personally, I think a little dirt strengthens our immune systems. Or at least that’s the excuse I use for not dusting as frequently as I’m led to believe I should.

Wine’s no different. In fact, it may be worse. We may expect a little funk in a well-aged wine. But young-ish wines? People get their proverbial boxers in a bunch (or their panties in a pooch, as the case may be) when they find a little sediment in their wine. And wine that’s a little cloudy? Fuh-getta-bow-tid.

But hang on.

Young wine that’s cloudy or boasts a little sediment is kind of like orange juice with the pulp. A little haze in your wine means it hasn’t been filtered or heavily clarified to have all the good stuff removed. It means your wine is less processed, more authentic. And very often, it means it will have more flavor and a more pronounced bouquet, as well as the potential for a long life.

Sometimes wine may have stem- or shard-like crystal sediment. These crystals, called tartaric acid crystals, are the result of wines undergoing a cold-stabilization process — a process that involves the wine cooling before bottling so that the tartaric crystals fall out and can be separated from the wine. The process does little, if anything, to improve anything but the “aesthetic” quality of the wine.

In an interesting conundrum, though many unknowingly believe these crystals to be an indication of poor quality, in many other parts of the world, these crystals are called “wine diamonds” or “wine stones.” The longer grapes hang on the vine (called “hang time,”) the more the wine-diamond causing acids gather in the grape.

In other words, a cloudy wine and/or sediment found in your glass may be strong indications of a well-balanced, hand-crafted artisan wine and should be embraced. So celebrate. Additionally, It’s believed these crystals are loaded with anti-oxidants. Even if you’re not sporting wrinkles yet, it doesn’t hurt to preemptively load up on them. In fact, they’re kind of fun to gnaw on, in a Pop Rocks sort of way.

While there’s little you, as a wine drinker, can do about the cloudiness of a wine, if the sediment disturbs you, you can take precautions to avoid getting those shards in your glass:

• Decant the wine.
• Pour the wine through a fine sieve or cheesecloth before pouring into your glass.
• Don’t pour the entire bottle, thereby leaving much of the sentiment in the bottom of the bottle. This works especially well if the bottle has been upright for a couple hours before the first pour.
• Get over it.

The good news is, unlike orange juice pulp, there’s nothing in wine — despite its sediment or cloudiness — to get stuck in your teeth. Turning them purple, however, is another story altogether.