On sediment

When I finished off my bottle of Director’s Cut Shiraz, I noticed that my glass had a huge amount of sediment at the bottom:

I know that some people hate this and think that it is icky, but I have come to love seeing this in a glass. I don’t think that I ever had a wine with huge sediment that I did not like, so normally seeing the chunks of grapey goodness at the bottom of the glass confirms a great bottle of red for me.

I have a picture of the aforementioned display of grape chunks, saved for the lucky readers of my blog (all 6 of you).

Yeah, I realize that this is one of the things that decanting is for. Personally, I enjoy drinking the wine slowly enough to let the sediment stick to the glass so that I don’t end up drinking any of it. Over the years I have gotten bloody good at this, hence my display of 4 chunks at 90 degrees to each other. Besides, I like to think that the chunks are leeching more goodness into the wine right to the end.

Why so much of the stuff? Because some wines are unfiltered. It seems logical to me that filtering the wine would remove bits of grape that could be imparting flavour to the wine as it sits in the fridge, testing my willpower over the years before I give in and open it. Hence I prefer unfiltered wines.