There is something debonair and sophisticated about a man who
knows his wines and who is at home savouring and drinking the "nectar of
the gods." What may not be very obvious to many is that this is a skill
that can be learned and mastered beyond just knowing that red wines go
with meat and whites go with fish and other seafood. If you are
fortunate enough to live near a grape growing area like the Napa and
Sonoma Valleys in California where there are both large and small
wineries, you have a very good opportunity to learn the finer aspects of
wine tasting with very little cost to you.
This is because many
of these wineries conduct wine tasting tours precisely to educate their
markets and to develop more customers for their wines. Wine tasting
today can be made less complicated by winery or vineyard tours where you
will have the chance to taste a variety of wines, with someone who
knows wines intimately giving you a short story about the qualities of
the wine being served. Listen to him carefully, especially the part when
he sings praises to the wine being tasted at the moment. More than ten
different wines may be served during these sessions. This is all very
well and good but if you are just a tyro and not really a pro, your head
can spin both, literally and figuratively, from the alcohol in the
wine. Take notes to help you remember, without being obvious.
Basically,
there are three things that you have to know about a wine, any wine -
its color, smell and taste. Before you sign up for a wine tasting tour,
it may be worth your while to go through a basic introduction about
wines, in general. For starters, you will have to acquire several wine
glasses in different shapes and sizes. You will also need to buy some
bottles of wine for purposes of comparison and your own edification -
whites, reds, etc. The first thing to notice as you pour a glass of wine
is its color and clarity.
Tilt the glass away from your body and look
at the wine preferably against a white background, e.g., a paper napkin
or the tablecloth. Examine the wine from the rim towards its center. A
red wine may appear maroon, purple, garnet, ruby, brick red or reddish
brown. A white wine will be clear, pale yellow, light green, amber,
golden or light brownish. A younger wine will have a lighter hue than an
older one of the same variety. Give your glass a little swirl and look
for bits of cork or sediments. These are not good signs. Dark brown
colored reds or even whites will signal that the wine has gone sour.
The
second quality to notice when you are wine tasting is the smell of the
wine. How a wine smells is critical in its appreciation. For a change,
it is considered polite to pointedly make use of your sense of smell.
Bring the wine cork under your nose, taking a quick whiff after pulling
it out of the bottle. You are also allowed to swirl your glass for about
10 - 12 seconds to evaporate the alcohol and release the wine's natural
aroma. Take another quick whiff to savour its smell. As you continue to
swirl your wine glass you can bury your nose into the glass and take a
deep inhale to discern the smell of oak, berries, flowers or citrus. As
you become more familiar with the different aromas of wine, you will be
able to recognize them more and more distinctly and be able to make
intelligent comments about the wine's bouquet. You may want to identify a
wine tasting hero like James Bond and approximate his movements with a
flourish when going through the motions of approving a bottle of wine to
be served to him and his date.
The third aspect of wine tasting
is actually taking a small sip of the wine and rolling it around in your
mouth, letting it thoroughly wet your tongue, actually tasting the
wine. At this point you are supposed to distinguish how the wine tastes
with regards to its alcohol content, tannin levels, acidity and residual
sugar.
In the final analysis, a wine will be judged by how much
you like it and whether you will buy it again because you enjoyed
drinking it.
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