What is it with all the fruit wine concealed as red wine?

[scorecard]

16 hours ago, 1BADDAT said:

That is not true.  They have Jacob's Creek from Australia at many 7-11's i've been.  It is like 5-600 baht a bottle though.

 

Not the main point but don't expect the 7/11 staff to have any knowledge whatever about wine in general let alone the subject of the thread.

[55Jay]

I was pleased to see Yellowtail (Shiraz and Merlot) in Villa Market down in BKK, think it was 700 Baht each.  Didn't notice the screw cap (no cork) until I opened them at the last house party, and there was something a bit "off" about them.  Wives thought it was real high brow stuff, drank both bottles, then switched back to their Spy/Smirnoff sweet drinks. 

[xylophone]

47 minutes ago, Oxx said:

 

You appear to be confusing sulphur, an element used as a fungicide, with sulphite which is an antioxidant used to stop wine in the bottle oxidising.

 

Never heard of sulphur being added during crushing.  It just doesn't make sense.

 

And secondary fermentation is stopped by filtration, removing all yeast cells from the wine, not by adding sulphur.

No confusion from my perspective as I've actually stood there and watched the sulphur being added during the crushing!

 

And this from "the Oxford companion to Wine": – the term sulphites is therefore used on wine labels as an inclusive term for free sulphur dioxide, sulphurous acid, bisulphite ion, sulphite ion, and some forms of complex sulphites.

 

Sulphur has been used as a cleansing agent and wine preservative since antiquity.

 

In the vineyard sulphur products are widely used to protect vines against powdery mildew and downy mildew.

 

Sweet wines need higher levels of sulphur dioxide to inhibit possible fermentation of the residual sugar.....

 

And secondary fermentation can be stopped by filtration and removing all yeast cells, however it is still a common practice to add sulphur to some wines because of the inability to possibly remove all of the yeast cells and because wild yeasts can also cause a problem.

[topt]

1 minute ago, 55Jay said:

Didn't notice the screw cap (no cork) until I opened them at the last house party, and there was something a bit "off" about them

Screw tops supposedly better at keeping the wine "fresher" - or less chance of an off bottle.

Many, many wines even at higher price points come with screw tops and have done for quite a few years now.

 

More likely the way the wine has been kept.........

[topt]

2 minutes ago, topt said:

Screw tops supposedly better at keeping the wine "fresher" - or less chance of an off bottle.

Many, many wines even at higher price points come with screw tops and have done for quite a few years now.

 

More likely the way the wine has been kept.........

Interesting article here from earlier this year.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/07/27/quick-screw-satisfying-pop-oxford-university-lift-lid-best-wine/

[55Jay]

4 minutes ago, topt said:

Screw tops supposedly better at keeping the wine "fresher" - or less chance of an off bottle.

Many, many wines even at higher price points come with screw tops and have done for quite a few years now.

 

More likely the way the wine has been kept.........

Thanks.  I'm not a connoisseur and wasn't aware of the shift to screw tops.  When I was a kid, screw tops were always associated with the cheap stuff..... good stuff had a cork.  LOL.   

[giddyup]

5 hours ago, impulse said:

 

In fairness, jacking up the price of wine is a political no-brainer since most "ordinary people" will never buy any.  Not much chance of any popular backlash outside the expat community.

 

Which doesn't mean it doesn't stink...

Is that like a bar jacking up the price of their beer to compensate for when they don't have any customers?

[55Jay]

Not available in Thailand, but what do you in-the-know wine guys think of this? 

 

http://www.pearsonbrotherswinery.com/

[owl sees all]

14 minutes ago, topt said:

Screw tops supposedly better at keeping the wine "fresher" - or less chance of an off bottle.

Many, many wines even at higher price points come with screw tops and have done for quite a few years now.

 

I also read that the best way to keep wine was in a bag that collasped as it was emptied. To stop any air from getting in after it was opened.

 

When I was Laos a few years back I found just what I was looking for; the collaspable bag wine. Only a quarter of a million Kip for 5 litres. Could not go wrong with this I was thinking

 

I bought one and took it to my hotel room. It was <snip> putrid!!!!!

Edited August 26, 2017 by owl sees all

[impulse]

6 minutes ago, giddyup said:

Is that like a bar jacking up the price of their beer to compensate for when they don't have any customers?

 

Only if they get together and all the bars on the street raise them in solidarity.  (Or in collusion, depending on how you view that kind of thing)...

[Youbloodybeauty]

35 minutes ago, 55Jay said:

I was pleased to see Yellowtail (Shiraz and Merlot) in Villa Market down in BKK, think it was 700 Baht each.

Hmm 700 baht :|
In Sydney, Yellowtail is our go to wine at A$7.50/bottle at Dans.

Edited August 26, 2017 by Youbloodybeauty

[owl sees all]

12 minutes ago, impulse said:

Only if they get together and all the bars on the street raise them in solidarity.  (Or in collusion, depending on how you view that kind of thing).

If I run a bar I'd have a free hour first thing every night. After that hour was thru I'd open up the single malts and the low khow wines. Make a fortune!!

Edited August 26, 2017 by owl sees all
added more content

[topt]

27 minutes ago, 55Jay said:

Not available in Thailand, but what do you in-the-know wine guys think of this? 

 

http://www.pearsonbrotherswinery.com/

Only what I can read from the link. Doesn't seem to use grapes, main part is honey but not enough to legally qualify as a mead so more like a fruit wine like my neighbours parents used to make when I was a kid. No info on alcoholic strength and text suggests it is sweet............

Not my cup of tea at all

[JohnLick]

We went for holiday to Europe this year. First time for my Thai gf

 

Even drinking 80 thb bottles was a paradise-like feeling

 

Several months after return she won't drink wine here... because as she say "this is not wine" :-D

[oldhippy]

I would not mind buying fruit wine if the taste were ok.

I have tried several, and the taste was always worse than very cheap real wine - I mean cheap in Europe.

[pauleddy]

You can normally read the small print, and it will say wine+cherry juice 5% or some crap. Also, the price is always less than 400b. Anything even semi-decent Chilean starts at 550-600. Hard to find good French less than 1000.

[binjalin]

4 hours ago, xylophone said:

Not so straight forward I'm afraid........ there are wines bottled in the country of origin, such as Australia, France and South Africa which are already mixed with fruit juice before they are exported to Thailand.

 

Good thing is that on just about all of the back labels there is a description of the grape used and that it is mixed with fruit juice, clear for all to see. This is the same as the boxes/casks which are imported, BUT anything "produced" here by Siam winery (the Montclair people as well as a host of others) does not have this clear description, but hidden away on the back label are the words "fruit wine" and that's your lot!

 

Then of course you have the wines in the same category which are sold in the Wine Connection and these are grape juice which is mixed with fruit juice and bottled in Vietnam, and then exported to Thailand.

 

If you want to know the ins and outs of this whole business, including posts by a wine importer and very knowledgeable TV member, then look in the Montclair wine thread – – – so much more to read about this subject.

I never said that - whoever you are quoting it was not me (ChidlomDweller  I believe). Please be more careful although I accept it was an innocent slip 

 

 

Edited August 26, 2017 by binjalin

[zyphodb]

2 hours ago, owl sees all said:

 

I also read that the best way to keep wine was in a bag that collasped as it was emptied. To stop any air from getting in after it was opened.

 

When I was Laos a few years back I found just what I was looking for; the collaspable bag wine. Only a quarter of a million Kip for 5 litres. Could not go wrong with this I was thinking

 

I bought one and took it to my hotel room. It was <snip> putrid!!!!!

When I last went to Savannakhet for a visa I took a chance & brought back a 5 litre box of Chilean Merlot in my backpack, it was the nicest wine I've drunk in 6 years.....

[owl sees all]

11 minutes ago, zyphodb said:

When I last went to Savannakhet for a visa I took a chance & brought back a 5 litre box of Chilean Merlot in my backpack, it was the nicest wine I've drunk in 6 years.

Well done. I'm not that lucky with wine. I make my own now!

[zyphodb]

^ ^ ^  And as I'm sure you know just as illegal as what I did, can't have home brewers challenging the Thai alcohol monopoly....

[ChidlomDweller]

6 hours ago, xylophone said:

Their Montepulciano d'Ábruzzo at 549 is a lovely wine for the price.

Ha!  I thought that sounded familiar.  Went to check my cupboard and that's the one I've been drinking the past 2 months.  They have in Central for 499.  It's slightly on the too light and sweet side, but in Thailand you can't be picky at that price.  

 

Big C also has decent wines just under 500, like Gossips.  

[xylophone]

3 hours ago, 55Jay said:

Thanks.  I'm not a connoisseur and wasn't aware of the shift to screw tops.  When I was a kid, screw tops were always associated with the cheap stuff..... good stuff had a cork.  LOL.   

Like you, when I was much younger the cheap stuff came with screw tops and then it was usually sweet!

 

However moving onto the cork scenario, screw tops were never considered as serious options until too many wines were spoilt by faulty corks, through something called trichloroanisole which was a reaction between the cork sterilisation process and something within the cork bark. This was when a wine was called "corked".

 

When it started to affect too many wine producers and many producers were complaining that around 10% of their production was affected and therefore useless, other means of sealing the bottle were considered and further investigated. One Italian winemaker tried to sue the cork manufacturer because he believed that up to 90% of his wine was affected.

 

The screwtop or Stelvin Closure was being trialled in the early 1970s as a bit of a joint venture between a Swiss and Australian company and it certainly caught on and a few years later it now acts as a stopper for many wines worldwide, even some of the more salubrious ones.

 

New Zealand winemakers have taken to it with a vengeance and tests done on some of their wines suggest that the wine indeed is kept "fresh" and there is no detrimental effect in sealing a bottle this way.

 

 

[xylophone]

24 minutes ago, ChidlomDweller said:

Ha!  I thought that sounded familiar.  Went to check my cupboard and that's the one I've been drinking the past 2 months.  They have in Central for 499.  It's slightly on the too light and sweet side, but in Thailand you can't be picky at that price.  

 

Big C also has decent wines just under 500, like Gossips.  

Try the one in Tesco's, because for me that is just a great wine for that price and is not too light and sweet, in my opinion, however we all have different tastes and everyone to their own........and I often scour the shelves in Big C because just occasionally they knock the price down surreptitiously, but can't advertise it as a "sale" and sometimes they misprice it!

[MyFriend You]

18 hours ago, observer90210 said:

Better to put wine bottles,  on the Duty Free "to-buy-list", when entering Thailand!!....And naturally, drink with moderation!

They only allow one bottle of "any liquor" to enter Thailand now, two of us wanted to buy a bottle of Henessee and a bottle of Baily's each, the airport said no and showed us the new list  One Bottle of any Alcohol, 250 cigarettes.  I used to buy 1 Cognac, 1 Liquor, and 2 bottles of wine - not anymore.

Edited August 26, 2017 by TunnelRat69

[owl sees all]

4 hours ago, owl sees all said:

Get 7 litres of low khow.

Buy half litre of concentrated fruit juice (CFJ) I like raspberry.

Pour the CFJ into the low khow (not the other way 'round)

Shake well; but not that well that some is spilled.

Start the music and let the girls in.

 

Another recipe is similar but takes longer to prepare. 

Get half kilo of ginger. 

Peel and then grate the ginger.

Put in a pan with a little water.

Bring to the boil and simmer for 3.5 minutes.

Turn off the heat and let it cool.

Strain it.

Mix it into the Low Khow (the juice not the residue).

Start the music and let the girls in.

 

Total cost for 7.5 litres; 380 Bhat

This was post 88 I think might have been 78 or even......never mind. It's above now anyway!

 

Actually I'm making some right now and tasting it as I go.

 

I have shared my wine-making bizzo skills with the local lads and lasses but they prefer me to do the bizzo every Saturday night. They tell me it's because my hooch is the bizzo. But I think it's  'cause if I make it I buy the ingredients.

 

Tastes really good tonight!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Ready for decanting and chillin'.
 

1 hour ago, zyphodb said:

And as I'm sure you know just as illegal as what I did, can't have home brewers challenging the Thai alcohol monopoly....

 

Edited August 26, 2017 by owl sees all
added more content

[IAMHERE]

7 hours ago, StayinThailand2much said:

To be fair, they probably learned that faux pas from the yanks after WW2.

I have never ever seen an American put beer on ice; at least never in America. How would the average American learn to put beer on ice, most never seen ice until after WW2 unless a bad winter was about. Before WW2 most American never had refridgeators and only seen ice as a luxary.

[Oxx]

5 hours ago, pauleddy said:

You can normally read the small print, and it will say wine+cherry juice

 

Reminds me of the time my partner went to the wine store at Siam Paragon wanting to buy a bottle of sherry and was told they didn't sell cherry wine.

[ChidlomDweller]

20 minutes ago, Oxx said:

 

Reminds me of the time my partner went to the wine store at Siam Paragon wanting to buy a bottle of sherry and was told they didn't sell cherry wine.

Doubtless with a straight face too, because the "enologists" on staff wouldn't know wine from bloody stool.

[pauleddy]

LAO KHAO (correct spelling) is a Thai Rice Whisky which is distilled from Rice Beer, I believe. It also offers the fastest way into the Liver Unit on God's Earth.

[pauleddy]

Sherry is available in Villa Market. They sometimes have Bristol Cream, but you can get Spanish Jerez (which is where the name comes from) OR some OK Australian Sherry (Sweet or Medium/Dry) in most Villas.