recipe for retsina
Colin Allingham
Recently I've developed quite a taste for the Greek white wine Retsina.
I've been making kit wines for some time now, the usual Chardonnays and
Sauvignon Blancs, but now I'd like to try a retsina. These kits don't
seem to be available. Does anyone have any ideas? Can I add some pine
resin to a cheap table white for the same taste. Where do you get pine
resin? How do they do it in Greece?
Colin
crs...@compuserve.com
In article <3516F4...@escpae.ca>,
col...@escape.ca wrote:
>
> Recently I've developed quite a taste for the Greek white wine Retsina.
> I've been making kit wines for some time now, the usual Chardonnays and
> Sauvignon Blancs, but now I'd like to try a retsina. These kits don't
> seem to be available. Does anyone have any ideas?
Some while ago I lived in Greece for 5 years.
I was told that the resin originally came from using pine wood casks. A
small amount of the resin from the wood got into the wine. The Greeks
found that it improved the keeping quality of the wine and then they
grew to like the taste. Nowadays they often artificially put the resin
flavour into the wine (don't know how). If you try cask stored retsina it
has a much milder flavour than the artificially flavoured variety and to me
tastes much nicer. Possibly the fact that you are normally drinking in a
taverna to get cask retsina also helps!!
I have never tried doing this - but I would suggest you should try using
some pine chips in the wine as some people do with oak. If you have
the right type of pine this should give you the effect that you want.
Good luck and let me know how it goes.
Allan Crossman
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Colin:
Some years ago, a friend provided me with a lump of resin he obtained from
an importer of Greek foodstuffs. I use this resin (about 1/2 tsp per gal)
to flavour some realtively neutral white wine (I think it was a palomino)
and found that provided a wine very comparable with commerial Retsina.
The resin provided was a lump - didn't see any package or references but
the source was defninitely Greek!
Good luck.
Don
Colin Allingham wrote:
> Recently I've developed quite a taste for the Greek white wine Retsina.
> I've been making kit wines for some time now, the usual Chardonnays and
> Sauvignon Blancs, but now I'd like to try a retsina. These kits don't