With the lingering taste of her 2015 Musigny still resonating on my palate, I see a fragment of the puzzle, a brief glimpse into the essence of her wines: strength that gives way to fragility, power that still highlights delicacy and lightness, love that translates into beauty.
For example, in Mrs. William Parkes's Domestic Duties; Instructions to young married ladies, she informed her readers that "To possess the skill of a connoisseur in deciding upon the various flavours of wines, their strength and body, is not desirable for a female". Obviously, knowledge of wine was only suitable as a male area of expertise.
In a delicate Riedel glass designed to display wine's strengths, the bouquet and flavor are rich, dense, concentrated, sumptuous.
Alcohol consumption was determined from scores pertaining to the consumption of beer (light, medium, and full strength), wine (red, white, and fortified), wine coolers, spirits, and liqueurs.
There are one and a half units of alcohol in a small glass (125ml) of ordinary strength wine (12% alcohol by volume).
So next time you see a traditional cider at a hefty 7% ABV, don't think of it as super-strength beer, but rather more akin to a low strength wine.
The wine list's strength is its selections from Tuscany and elsewhere in Italy, as well as a few bottles from France and the West Coast, priced from $16, with many in the $20 to $40 range.
The problem comes down to the mechanics of a system known as en primeur – effectively a kind of futures trading where customers commit to paying up front for a wine on the strength of tasting an unfinished sample, receiving the bottled wine a couple of years later.
There are one and a half units of alcohol in a small glass (125 ml) of ordinary strength wine (12% alcohol by volume) or a standard pub measure (35 ml) of spirits (40% alcohol by volume).
