Taste Technique

We start with some basics:
A love affair with wine begins with open eyes and an empty glass. Pick something and pour and drink a little. Linger, savor, then swallow. Now sit up and pay attention.
Wine appreciation uses four of our five senses, sight, smell, touch and taste to perceive wine’s five basic structural components: sweetness, acidity, body, tannin and fruit.

• Taste is sensed in your mouth by tiny papillae; each is configured to sense a particular element.
• Primeval sweet perception is immediate; you discover that, by the way, the first moment you put candy in your mouth. Sweet is good,; sweet is yummy, but only that…
• Acidity is also only ever sensed in the mouth. Your lips pucker and you salivate after tasting something tart.
• Body is a tactile sensation also detected by nerve endings in your mouth. The best way to understand body or texture is to compare wine to milk. Does it feel thin like skim or does it coat your mouth like cream, or maybe it falls somewhere in between?
• Tannin is a strictly tactile element as well. For now, we will associate tannins with red wine, the colors from which are acquired by the pressed juice’s extended contact with skins, stems and pips while macerating. Some grapes are inherently deeply colored, others need time to properly bleed. The horrifying, drying out sensation you feel after sipping over steeped tea; well those are tannins.
A final element, which is also the least understood by a novice, is fruit. A term that does not equal sweet or tart; it only refers to the aromas and flavors of a wine and is perceived not by your mouth, but by your olfactory bulb which resides in the primitive part of your brain. Alcohol evaporates at a relatively low temperature, carrying wine’s many flavor components up into your retronasal passage where they are sensed, identified and then labeled.
You experience a wine more by its aroma than its taste. Some wines I want to smell forever, but disappoint once drunk. A fruity wine is one with strong fruit intensity, like a jolly rancher, or a warm, squashy peach on a hot summer day. Lighter fruit intensity might be akin to an under ripe pear from a supermarket shelf or out season strawberries shipped to your local grocer from somewhere far away. Aromas or flavors which are not necessarily fruitlike count as well. For example, newly turned earth, wet dog, rotten mushroom, damp undersides of river stones are all fruit descriptors. Seriously, you can reference the “Aroma Wheel” in the Oxford Wine Companion if you have any doubts.

How to taste:
Step 1 – Look at the wine in your glass.
Do this preferably against a white background, like a tablecloth or a bed sheet. What color is it? Is it pale or deep, flat or reflective? Give it a swirl and coat the glass – are there barely visible droplets running down the sides of the bowl? Old French men of yesteryear, perhaps lonely for company, used to wax poetic about the mystery of a wine’s legs. Now we understand they are caused by the tension between the glass surface and a wine’s viscosity – its level of alcohol or sugar. A sweet or boozy wine will drip many fast moving legs; while a thin, light wine will demonstrates a few, if any at all. If you feel weepy, melancholy or at all sentimental, by all means…call them tears.

Step 2 – Place your nose inside the glass…all the way in and inhale.
What do you smell? Assuming the wine has no faults, corky mustiness, like a moldy cellar, you should perceive your wine’s dominant aromas. Are they citusy, appley, tropical? Or do you get berries, plums or licorice? Maybe there are peppercorns, flowers or coffee? Whilst many a pretentious taster takes pride in sniffing out the odd or exotic - to the dismay of anyone standing nearby; the fact is many seemingly unrelated aromatic components actually exist in your glass. That these aromas are both objective and subjective, makes tasting with others fun. What I call raspberry, you may call strawberry, but we agree the fruit component is absolutely red.
Give the glass another swirl. The increased surface area magnifies all the aromas. How intense are they? Does the wine need a bit of coaxing to open up? Is it shy or bold? Perhaps there is a hint of something you didn’t catch before?

Step 3 – Lift the glass to your lips and take a greedy swig.
Swish it around, allow it to coat every corner of your mouth and keep it there. Ask yourself basic questions about taste. Is it sweet? If there is no perceptible sweetness, the wine is dry. Is it tart? A wine’s crisp acidity is softened when you eat something salty. How’s the texture – thick, thin?
Spit or Swallow. Does your mouth pucker and dry out? Tannins can feel rough like gnawing pencil shavings, plush like chewing velvet or softly soothing like licking microsuede. Altogether, it is the same sensation you experience when drinking over-steeped tea. Does it come at you harsh? Or actually pleasant?
Slurp another mouthful. Be adventurous - roll the liquid around your mouth and suck in some air. Can you sense the same aromas you smelled before? Have they changed, evolved, opened up? Look for oakiness – vanilla, toasted nuts in white wine or licorice, black peppercorns, coffee and baking spices in red.

Step 4 – Final impressions. Stop and think. Do the flavors linger or just fade away? Do you bask in its glow, like the morning after a steamy encounter that your imagination returns to again and again? Or is it a one-note wonder? An easily forgettable quickie?
Is it satisfying? Is it typical? After you’ve tasted the world’s wines, you will know, for example, whether the Sauvignon Blanc in your glass belongs to the Loire, California or New Zealand. Each has a typical style.
Is it balanced? This is the million dollar question. Do all the elements integrate well with the wine’s structure? Most commercial wines will be balanced, but in the most basic, monotone sense. But there is so much more out there. The reason those old lonely Frenchmen of yesteryear, pining and languishing, identified wine so closely with women is because both can be luscious, unpredictable, elegant, wild. It’s the je ne sais quoi factor which separates the great from the mediocre. The depth of a wine’s flavors, along with its structural elements, its capacity to age vs. its current drinkability, all combine and create the difference between a wine that is merely good and one that is great.

Everyone possesses the anatomy needed to taste; though, some are lucky to have extraordinary physical attributes. But like other personal and social skills, practice makes perfect. Sample and smell everything, from the rocks, stones and grass, to the fresh or rotten fruit sitting in your fridge. The half empty bottle of week-old red sitting atop your counter, and coffee, candy, meat - unwashed body parts and dirty socks, celery and leeks from a nearby garden.
Wine is a living product with a personality. It changes and evolves, sometimes right in front of you. Sometimes it disappoints, be prepared for this. Mostly it delights and elevates your senses to unbelievable heights. Each bottle can be different and change from day to day.
To appreciate wine is to embark on a tumultuous relationship in which you are unsure where you’ll end up. As in life, however, you must embark. And in the same way, you’ll be better for the experience.

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What to Drink

“Do not search in a wine for the reflection of an exact science. The formulas of scientific oenology are only thin competitions which know how to respect the mysteries of eternal creation.”

            - Jacques Perrin, Chateau BeaucastEL, Chateauneuf-du-Pape     

I am not a whine-y

I am a demon. I sit atop your left shoulder, whispering subversive sweet-nothings, which grate against the gourmet establishment’s grain. I can guide all your gustatory pleasures, remaining reverent of traditions, yet still a bit naughty, unwilling to take anything from any source too seriously.

 Historic precedent justifies the popularity of extensive whine-y talk where ever it exists. Talk of feasts and fêtes, science, principles, blah, blah from the aspirers to prestige; the pretenders to a certain savoir faire. But frankly, hang all that. I refuse to over-analyze and prefer to have fun.  And I think the best state in which to approach my decadent world is a little tipsy. So pick up a glass and read on…

 My appreciation of wine (and of spirits too) mirrors many bright-eyed manic desires… a lust for something unknown - that I need to know better, or something familiar - soothing to remember. 

I dare you to be good to yourself. Slurp and swallow; dive into the metaphorical goblet. Here it is.  Welcome.