Does quality decrease by heavily reducing wine?
Somewhere I read a suggestion to reduce wine separately before making a red wine sauce. After doing that, the alcohol taste is always gone, and I can control the wine taste efficiently.
A few times I've by mistake "over reduced" wine so it's more like a runny syrup (not scorched, by any means). By coincidence, I've always used a particular wine those times and never else. And all those times the sauce has gone bland and slightly bitter, while I expected the flavor to be more powerful with a more reduced wine.
Can it be that the treatment ruins the wine, or is it just a bad wine?
Best Answer
The extended reduction could be destroying or driving off some of the volatile, organic compounds that give the wine its flavor. Wine can contain literally thousands of aromatic and flavorful chemicals from the specific variety of grape and the winemaking process (see http://www.winegeeks.com/articles/93 for a good article that balances geeky and approachable) and together their flavor is what makes up the "profile" of the wine's flavor. As you reduce, some of the more temperature-sensitive ones are being driven off, just like how the alcohol in the wine burns off before the water does. So it's probably the over-reduction that's culpable here, but some flavor loss/change is inevitable with any reduction.
The other factor is dilution. Adding or removing water from a substance can change the aromatics that your nose picks up as you eat or drink. Try this: take two glasses of the same wine, chill one in the fridge, and add ice to the other until it reaches about the same temperature. You'll very likely notice some significant differences in their flavor.
The best solution is to watch your reduction carefully so that it doesn't over-reduce in the first place. If you want a stronger flavor, you're better off varying the type of wine that you're using. Fruit-forward wines like Merlot tend to retain their flavor pretty well in reductions.
Pictures about "Does quality decrease by heavily reducing wine?"
What happens when you reduce wine?
A reduction is a concentrated sauce obtained by thickening a liquid over heat. As the liquid portion evaporates, the flavors concentrate and the sugars caramelize, resulting in a more intense taste and a thicker consistency.How do you know when wine is done reducing?
Once the boiling begins, the liquid will go down (that's the reduction part), usually leaving a line of residue that circles the interior of your pot (see image of reduced tomato sauce). This is a good marker for you to tell if you are at your goal or if you should continue boiling.How can you tell the quality of wine?
There are 4 simple aspects of a wine to consider when deciding if the wine is of good quality:Can you reduce wine by itself?
If a recipe asks you to reduce the wine, don't skip this step. Bubbling the wine intensifies the delicious flavours and can remove that harsh 'raw' alcoholic edge that it can impart on food if not properly cooked down.How long can you keep wines?
Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Images: Rachel Claire, Hernán Santarelli, Julia Volk, Brett Sayles