Fine Brandy Fusion & The Brandy Basics
Ok before I even start this I have a confession to make. Alright not one, maybe two confessions; I may have potentially taken more than my allocated one glass home and my ticket for the event was free. So there you have it. I am a cheapskate who likes festival glasses.
On Friday the 23 May, I had the privilege of attending the Fine Brandy Fusion event hosted by the South African Brandy Foundation and I'm not going to lie it was kind of amazing. I went to the festival with my friend Jeremy Bingham (he’s the guy responsible for all the pictures you'll see from the event), and had a pretty life-changing experience. I admit it sounds a little far fetched, but I feel that being introduced to a whole new world of excellence totally counts as a life changing experience.
Until this event, I'd never really considered brandy as a real thing to get involved in. My sister spent a year living on the same road as one of the best brandy distilleries in the country and I never so much as batted an eyelid. I was all about wine, all the time and maybe some gin if I was feeling festive. But I was wrong and wrong in a big way because there is something uniquely beautiful about brandy. I learnt way too much to put into one post so we’re gonna take this step by step.
Before we get to the nitty gritty's here are a few brandy basics to help understand what brandy's about.
Brandy is made from grapes. The harvest for brandy grapes starts a little earlier in the season than for wine grapes because the grapes need to have a lower sugar content and higher levels of acidity, allowing more flavours to withstand the distillation process.
In South Africa, brandy is predominantly made from Colombar and Chenin Blanc grapes .
I may be wrong here but what I was able to gather was that distillation for brandy is basically cooking the fermented grape juice, to separate the good alcohol from the bad and increasing the alcohol content.
When you use barrels to age brandy just a bit of it evaporates and that is what's called the angel's share .
Now for the Tasting Part:
Look at the colour. The longer the time spent in oak barrels, the richer and deeper the colour. New oak barrels give a darker colour but because brandy ages for such a long time, housing it in new wood for that entire period would leave you with a Coca Cola looking substance. So whilst the first few years may be in new wood, brandies often move house at least once as they get a little older .
Never twirl your glass. In wine tasting, you normally have to do that thing where you like all fancy and swirl the wine in your glass to aerate the wine a little. This is not how it works for brandy. Whilst swirling the glass, does open up the brandy the high alcohol content means that most of what you're "opening up" is the smell of liquor. Don't do it, I looked like a complete fool swirling 20 year old Brandies.
Bring the rim of the glass to your bottom lip and slowly work your way up until it's just below your nose. It's that high alcohol content again, diving your nose into a glass of brandy could very well burn your little nostrils, so be classy and take it slow.
If you still can't smell anything then suck the air up through your mouth before taking a sip and that should help you identify the flavours.
Now for the tasting, if it's good it should be quite velvety and smooth. Concentrate on where it tingles as you swallow.
Water works with brandy but remember to not go past 1 part water to 3 parts brandy
* Extra fun: If you want to improve the smoothness of the brandy in your mouth, try smoking a cigar or cigarillo and blowing the smoke into your glass. It unlocks all kinds of delicious flavours and from personal experience, can make a 5 year old brandy taste as smooth as one that's 15 years old
Being a Mix Master
Brandy is often known as Karate Juice because of its alleged propensity to start bar fights. But it's not the brandy talking it's the brandy and coke talking. Whilst brandy and Coke is a super popular South African drink, it doesn't really work that well with your body because as the alcohol is trying to bring you down, the caffeine and sugar in the coke are pumping you full of energy leading to feeling that can only inspire Karate chops.
This doesn't mean you shouldn't mix brandy because brandy is an excellent base, you should just try and mix it with things that have less sugar, like tonic, soda water, lemonade or some ginger beer.
Less sugar means you get so much more of that delicious brandy flavour.
That is pretty much all that I can fit in one blog post but this weekend I'll be filling you in on all the brandies we tasted...