Jul 2010 - Have you ever tasted wine? Oh sure you have...but I mean really taste it. Tasting is no more than concentrating on what’s in the glass. Paying attention to your own senses is the only way to discover your true taste in wine, and YOUR taste is the only thing that matters. I am going to take you on a cyber wine tasting - (keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times!) so sit back and enjoy the ride!First, get yourself some wine. Go ahead…I’ll wait. There. Now, pull out the cork, unscrew the cap, or unplug the tap – and pour it into your glass. I have no issue with the vessel in which the wine is stored and poured, but I do think it is important to drink out of a real glass. You don’t want to taste plastic, do you?
So- now you’ve poured the glass of wine. Be it white, red or pink, bubbly or still – it’s in your glass. Now, give it a SWIRL. Why - you ask? We SWIRL to release aroma. That wine has been sitting in a bottle for some time. It has travelled many countless miles for many countless days. It needs to stretch; to catch some air and awaken from it’s slumber. Re-introducing air into the wine by banging it around the sides of your glass will help re-oxygenate and release the grapey goodness or aroma . Aroma refers to the wines natural grape scent.
Second, put your nose to the edge of the glass and take in a sniff. This is your first real taste of that wine. That’s right folks, our primary sense of taste is in our noses. Your taste buds can only discern 5 basic ‘tastes’(sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and savory) but your nose can detect virtually thousands of ‘flavors’. Flavor is the combination of taste and smell. Your sense of smell also is a the most powerful trigger to your memory and emotions.
Just think, when you have a cold and are all stuffed up – nothing really tastes that good, does it? A bowl of hot steamy bowl of chicken soup with rich savory broth is just about the only thing that works, right? You probably can’t remember what Grandma’s Chicken Soup tastes like, but you can remember the feeling of warmth and goodness that came from it. Right? I thought so. One of my favorite aromas is Thanksgiving. If you are like me, all I have to do is say the word Thanksgiving and you smell roasted turkey, pecan pie and sweet yams right now, don’t you?
Okay, we have SWIRL’d . We will now try to identify bouquet. Bouquet differs from aroma in that aroma is the scent of the grape and bouquet is the scent of the matured wine itself. Can you identify any aromas? Do you smell apples, lemon, strawberries, yeast, florals, spices? Aroma isn’t just classified as one element, but rather a combination of elements.
For example:
Floral (jasmine, rose, violet..)
Fruit ( cherry, raspberry, peach, apple, lemon, fig…)
Spice (clove, cinnamon, pepper, licorice, mint…)
Vegetable (mushroom, tea, straw, bell pepper…)
Earthy ( smokey, dried , coffee, hay, leather…)
Wines that are considered complex, have one or more of these aromas combined to define it’s bouquet. Do you recognize any particular aromas in your glass of wine? ( And yes, yummy can be considered an aroma in my book! ) More importantly do these aromas remind you of anything in particular? Do the aromas trigger any emotional response?
Now look at appearance of the wine itself. There is a wide range of colors of for red, whites and rose wines. The important thing here is that the color of the wine and its clarity should be appropriate to the type of wine it is and the age of it the wine. If you have a red wine that is tinged with brown and is murky or cloudy - you may have a suspiciously old wine that may have past its prime.
Now on to the tasting part; Although you’ve already had your first taste with your nose. If you can, try to inhale just a little before you bring the wine to your mouth to further aerate it. Let the wine wash over your tongue and linger a bit. Swallow.
Take a mental note of a few key things about your taste:
• Body: the weight of the wine on the palate. Wines are typically described as ranging from light- bodied to full-bodied. Like as in a ‘2% is different than skim is different than whole milk’ kind of way.
• Acidity: The amount of crispness or tartness in the wine. Think lemon. Think citrus.
• Fruitiness: Yes, grapes are fruit. But the amount of fruitiness in a wine is an indication that the flavors are derived from the grapes themselves as opposed to the winemaking process or the barrels in which the wine was aged. And what kind of fruit do you taste? And to what level of sweetness is its intensity?
• Tannin: Found in red wines. That gritty, pucker at the back of the cheeks thing that happens when you drink red wines. Tannins are present in grapes. Next time you’re peeling a few grapes for the kids, take the skins and rub them against your teeth. What you feel is tannin. Red wines are made by leaving the skins of the grape in contact with the white juice that flows from the crushed grapes. If you drink a lot of iced tea or cola, you might be familiar with the sensation of tannins.
• Balance: The ratio of wine’s key components: body, acidity, fruitiness, and tannin and alcoholic strength. A wine is said to be balanced when no one single component stands out against the rest.
So you have SWIRLED, sniffed and tasted. Now what? The best way to know what you like is to experiment. I am an equal opportunity imbiber! I want to know! Here is a little homework for you until next time…
Try a few wines; different varieties – maybe something you’ve never had before. Tell me what you liked about it. Tell me what you ate with it. Tell me how it smelled. Did it evoke any particular memories for you? Tell me what senses were engaged. Tell me about the flavors of the wine. Tell me how it connected you with the people who shared it with you.
If you have any questions or are in need of sharing your wine-gasm immediately, you can leave a comment or email .
Published by permission. Please visit Wendy's blog at http://cyberswirl.blogspot.com/
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