Should I mix the wine with water or add ice? To enhance the flavors and aromas of food usually use the seasonings: spices, herbs, lemon juice etc. Water, unlike spices, doesn’t taste, so I don’t have to change it. However, the reality is different. Dissolving the ingredients, water changes their relationship and thereby affect the taste. And what will these changes depend on each situation.
Alcohol increases subjective sweetness of the beverage and affects the rate of evaporation of bearing the aroma molecules. This is especially felt in spirits: vodka, whiskey, etc. But if whiskey is diluted in half with water, it will change not only the strength of the drink. At the same time will greatly intensify its flavor. The bartenders know: a weak cocktail is always more flavorful than strong.
Alcohol molecules, chemically similar to aromatic molecules “bind” them, not allowing them to leave their own drink. When water is added to produce more “independent” of aromatic molecules which, colliding with the water molecules may evaporate in their own bouquet, without the admixture of alcohol.
This property is sometimes used during decantation (transfusion) of fine wines. Before you pour in a carafe of wine, add a spoonful of water. For the same reason, add a few drops of plain water to the wine in the glass.
On a hot day diluted wine is more pleasant. Besides taste some of the wines improved from melted water. Therefore, they are poured into a glass, which already is ice. To a greater extent this applies to simple wines with low alcohol content and acidity.
However, this method of wine consumption a lot of enemies. They believe that wine should be consumed exactly the way it was created by the winemaker.
Tradition to dilute wine with water for centuries. Once the wine was created with the help of natural yeast and alcohol in them was not enough. So they quickly turned to vinegar. Remained only wines with a high content of grape sugar or fortified with a lot of alcohol. But they wanted to dilute with water because of the strong sweets or too intense taste.
What diluted with water, the ancient Greeks, was a little like a modern wine. Rather, it was concentrated vermouth: wine with herbs and spices, from which it evaporates a fair share of moisture. Such a wine can be kept long, but drinking it neat was… controversial matter. Therefore, to drink undiluted wine was considered in Greece a lot of drunks.
The Greeks often added to wine and sea water. It was boiled with spices to reduce the amount 3 times and drain. This water was left in storage and was mixed with wine only a few years. Sea water made wine less sweet and increases its acidity. Some wines are stored for so long that it thickens like honey.
Today it is popular to add to wine carbonated water (spritzer). This wine is easy to make, is light and is similar to a bubbly.
In many ways, the addition of water to wine is a matter of taste. Noticed the following: even small amounts of water enhances the shortcomings of bad wine. Excellent wine, on the contrary, will retain their best qualities and with a significant dilution.
And of course, it is not necessary to carry out experiments, when we are talking about expensive wines.
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