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South American Wines
An Introduction to the Wines of South America for Visitors to Peru
Wine Tasting
ABCs of wine
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The ABCs of Wine Tasting
By Thomas Matthews
The Components of Tasting:
Set and Setting
Looking at Wine
Smelling Wine
Tasting Wine
Clues From Color
What Tasting Tells:
What Wine Is
Clues From Aroma
Clues From Taste
Overview:
Understanding Wine
Getting the Most From Wine
Judging a Wine By Its Label
Decoding the Language of Wine Tasting
Drinking wine is easy: tilt glass and swallow. Tasting wine is more of a
challenge. You need special tools, the proper environment, keen concentration, a
good memory and a vivid imagination. But after three or four glasses, the basic
effect is the same either way. So why bother? I'm a baseball fan. When I take a
friend who knows nothing about the sport to the ballpark, he may enjoy the
crowd, down a hot dog, cheer if someone hits a home run. The rest of the time
he's asking me, What's the big deal? One guy throws a ball, the other guy misses
it. But for me, every pitch is a small drama: what the pitcher chooses to throw,
how the defense sets up, where the batter tries to hit it, how the strategies
play out. When nine innings are over, we both know the score. But while my
friend may have passed a pleasant afternoon, I've been totally absorbed in the
game.
Life can be lived in a casual way, or plumbed to the depths. We all choose how
and where to spend our energy and attention. You may play music, cook seriously,
tend a lovely garden. Maybe the things you love aren't vital, but they make life
richer. Passion is never wasted effort.
That's why wine lovers learn to taste. We know that the effort we put into
understanding and appreciating wine—as opposed to simply enjoying it (or its
psychotropic effects)—pays big dividends. Really tasting wine adds an extra
dimension to the basic daily routines of eating and drinking. It turns
obligation into pleasure, a daily necessity into a celebration of life.
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The Components Of Tasting:
Set and Setting
So what is wine tasting all about? Like any skill, serious tasting requires a
combination of technique and experience. The more you do it, the better you
become. Given an unidentified wine, an expert taster, using only his senses and
his memory, can pick out the grape variety, the wine's vintage, its region of
origin, even the specific winery that produced it.
That's the myth. In fact, if the wine is served at room temperature and the
taster is blindfolded, most can't even tell whether it's red or white. Harry
Waugh, an English wine expert who has been tasting for nearly 80 years, was once
asked if he had ever mistaken Burgundy for Bordeaux. "Not since lunch," he
replied.
Blind tasting is a great parlor game. But the real goal is to understand a wine,
not to unmask it. Through a concentrated application of all the senses, and by
comparison of the immediate sense data with memories of other wines tasted, the
serious taster can decipher a wine's biography to an amazing extent, including
the growing season that produced it, the approach of the winemaker who created
it and its relation to other wines of similar type or origin. Every bottle of
wine is a message, the physical embodiment of a specific place and time captured
and transmitted for the pleasure of the taster. Open a bottle of 1961 red
Bordeaux and even a generation later the dusty warmth of that long, hot summer
floods the dining room.
Even more, though, wine is a catalyst. The effort to understand it through
tasting, and to share that understanding with other tasters, creates a common
experience that builds bonds between people. The great French enologist Emile
Peynaud emphasized this aspect of tasting in his landmark book, The Taste of
Wine:
"Great wine has that marvelous quality of immediately establishing communication
between those who are drinking it. Tasting it at table should not be a solitary
activity and fine wine should not be drunk without comment. There are few
pleasures which loosen the tongue as much as that of sharing wine, glass in
hand. In essence it is easy to describe what one senses provided one has made a
sufficient effort to notice it. What is clearly perceived can be clearly
expressed."
The techniques of tasting enhance the ability to perceive wine clearly. They're
actually pretty simple and follow logically through a well-defined series of
steps. Some of the procedures may seem unnatural or pretentious to the
uninitiated, but they've been developed over centuries to achieve specific ends.
After a while, they become automatic. Swirling wine in the glass to release the
aromas may feel clumsy at first, but now I often find myself at the table
swirling my glass of water. At Wine Spectator, the editors taste nearly 8,000
wines a year. Here's how we do it.
First of all, consider the circumstances. Not all wines deserve or repay close
analysis. If you're drinking white Zinfandel out of paper cups at a picnic, any
attempt to taste seriously will be wasted effort and probably perceived as
snobbery. Professional tasters prefer a day-lit, odor-free room with white walls
and tabletops, in order to throw the wine into the clearest possible relief, but
in the end it's a sterile environment that improves analysis at the cost of
pleasure. To maximize both enjoyment and understanding, serve your wine at a
dinner party with friends; comfortable chairs, warm light and good food create
an ambience where the wines—and the guests—can express themselves without
constraint or reproach.
Remember that tasting is not a test—your subjective response is more important
than any "right answers." The bottom line is: Wine that tastes good to you is
good wine.
And no matter how advanced your technique, tasting is not an exact science.
Sensitivities vary widely when it comes to flavor and aroma. These differences
are both physiological and cultural. When test groups of French and Germans were
given wine with 8 grams of sugar per liter, 92 percent of the Germans called the
wine "dry" while only 7 percent of the French did. Their reference points were
different: German whites are more often frankly sweet than French ones, so the
German tasters were less sensitive to sugar in their wines.
The goal in tasting wine is not to "find" the same aromas and flavors some other
taster is describing. If you hone your own perceptual abilities and develop your
own vocabulary to articulate them, you'll not only derive more pleasure from the
wine itself, but also stimulate better communication between you and the friends
who are sharing the bottle.
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Looking at Wine
The first step in your examination is visual. Fill the glass about one-third
full, never more than half-full. Pick it up by the stem. This may feel awkward
at first, or affected, but there are good reasons: Holding the glass by its bowl
hides the liquid from view; fingerprints blur its color; the heat of your hand
alters the wine's temperature. Peynaud says, "Offer someone a wine glass and you
can tell immediately by the way they hold it whether or not they are
connoisseurs."
Focus in turn on hue, intensity and clarity. Each requires a different way of
looking. The true color, or hue, of the wine is best judged by tilting the glass
and looking at the wine through the rim, to see the variation from the deepest
part of the liquid to its edges. Intensity can best be gauged looking straight
down through the wine from above. Clarity—whether the wine is brilliant, or
cloudy with particles—is most evident when light is shining sideways through the
glass.
Each of these elements reveals different aspects of a wine's character and
quality; I'll detail these later. But don't forget simply to enjoy the wine's
color. No other liquid is as vivid and variegated, or reflects light with such
joy and finesse. There's good reason wine's appearance is often compared to ruby
and garnet, topaz and gold.
Next comes the swirling. This too can feel unnatural, even dangerous if your
glass is too full and your clothing brand-new. But besides stirring up the full
range of colors, it prepares the wine for the next step, the olfactory
examination. The easiest way to swirl is to rest the base of the glass on a
table, hold the stem between thumb and forefinger, and gently rotate the wrist.
Right-handers will find a counter-clockwise motion easiest, left-handers the
reverse.
Move the glass until the wine is dancing, climbing nearly to the rim. Then stop.
As the liquid settles back into the bottom of the glass, a transparent film will
appear on the inside of the bowl, falling slowly and irregularly down the sides
in the wine's "tears" or "legs." "Experts" derive meanings from them as various
and profound as fortune-tellers do from looking at tea leaves, but in truth
they're simply an indication of the amount of alcohol in the wine: the more
alcohol, the more tears. Remember that when you're considering whether to open
another bottle.
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Smelling Wine
When you stop swirling, and the tears are falling, it's time to take the next
step: smelling. Agitating the wine vaporizes it, and the thin sheet of liquid on
the sides of the glass evaporates rapidly; the result is an intensification of
the aromas. If the glass narrows at the top, the aromas are further
concentrated. Stick your nose right into the bowl and inhale.
There's no consensus about the proper sniffing technique. Some advocate two or
three quick inhalations; others prefer one deep, sharp sniff. I've seen tasters
close one nostril, sniff, then close the other and sniff again. The goal is to
draw the aromas deep into the nose, to bring them into contact with the
olfactory mucosa and thence to the olfactory bulb, where the sensations are
registered and deciphered. It's a remote and protected place, and a head cold or
allergies will effectively block it off from even the strongest aromas. But with
practice, and keen attention, you'll learn how to maximize your perception of
aromas, and then how to decipher them.
The world of smell is vast and bewildering. First of all, our olfactory
equipment is incredibly sensitive; we can distinguish aromas in quantities so
small that laboratory equipment can scarcely measure them. Second, our analytic
capacity is extraordinary; estimates of the number of different smells humans
can identify range up to 10,000! Finally, wine has a staggering number of
smellable elements. In their exhaustive study Wines: Their Sensory Evaluation,
Maynard Amerine and Edward Roessler, both professors at the University of
California, write that "Identified in wine aromas are at least 181 esters, 52
alcohols, 75 aldehydes and ketones, 22 acetals, 18 lactones, six secondary
acetamides, 29 nitrogen-containing compounds, 18 sulfur-containing compounds,
two ethers, 11 furans and 18 epoxides, as well as 30 miscellaneous compounds.
Many of these are modified in various ways by aging and cellar treatment, and
they can and do react with each other or have additive, masking or synergistic
properties."
Serious wine tasters love to identify smells. "Chocolate!" cries one. "Burnt
matches!" insists another. "Tea, tobacco, mushrooms and a bit of the old
barnyard," intones a third. Are they just playing word games?
Let's face it: Contemporary American culture turns up its nose at strong smells.
We deodorize our bodies, our homes and our cars; everything from hand lotion to
dishwashing detergent comes "lemony fresh," to give the impression of
cleanliness and neutrality. It's no wonder we lack the language to describe the
complex, fleeting sensations that evanesce from a half-filled glass of wine.
But in fact, wine does smell of more than grapes. Analysis of its volatile
components has identified the same molecules that give many familiar objects
their distinctive scents. Here are just a few: rose, iris, cherry, peach, honey
and vanilla. Who's to say that some of the more imaginative descriptors—from
road tar to cat's pee, sweaty socks to smoked bacon—aren't grounded in some
basic chemical affinity?
As with color, wine's aromas offer insights into character, origin and history.
Because our actual sense of taste is limited to four simple categories (the
well-known sweet, sour, bitter and salt), aroma is the most revealing aspect of
our examination. But don't simply sniff for clues. Revel in the sensation.
Scientists say smells have direct access to the brain, connecting immediately to
memory and emotion. Like a lover's perfume, or the scent of cookies from
childhood, wine's aromas can evoke a specific place and time with uncanny power.
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Tasting Wine
Now comes the best part. You can be mesmerized by wine's flashing colors and
hypnotized into dreamy reverie by its evocative aromas, but actually drinking
the wine is what loosens the tongue, opens the arms and consummates the liquid's
true purpose.
You might think it's the easiest part, too. After all, you learned to drink from
a cup when you were 2 years old and have been practicing diligently ever since.
But there's a huge distinction between swallowing and tasting, the same gulf
that yawns between simply hearing and truly listening. Once again, correct
technique is essential to full appreciation.
With the aromas still reverberating through your senses, put the glass to your
lips and take some liquid in. How much? That depends on the size of your mouth.
But too little is as ineffective as too much. I find that one-third to one-half
an ounce is just about right. You need to have enough volume to work it all
around your tasting apparatus, but not so much that you're forced to swallow
right away.
Because you don't want to swallow, not just yet. It takes time and effort to
force the wine to divulge its secrets. I keep a pleasant wine in my mouth for 10
to 15 seconds, sometimes more.
Roll the wine all around your mouth, bringing it into contact with every part,
because each decodes a different aspect of the liquid. Wine provokes sensations,
too: The astringency of tannins is most perceptible on the inner cheeks; the
heat of the alcohol burns in the back of the throat.
The strength of these taste sensations can be amplified through specialized
techniques that, frankly, are more appropriate to the tasting lab than the
dining room. But if the wine is seductive enough, you may not be able to resist.
First, as you hold the wine in your mouth, purse your lips and inhale gently
through them. This creates a bubbling noise children find immensely amusing. It
also accelerates vaporization, intensifying the aromas. Second, chew the wine
vigorously, sloshing it around in your mouth, to draw every last nuance of
flavor from the wine.
Don't forget the finish. After you swallow, exhale gently and slowly through
both your nose and mouth. The retronasal passage, which connects the throat and
the nose, is another avenue for aromas, which can linger long after the wine is
finally swallowed. You'll find that the better the wine, the more complex,
profound and long-lasting these residual aromas can be. With great wines,
sensitive tasters and minimal distractions, the finish can last a minute or
more. It's a moment of meditation and communion that no other beverage can
create.
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Clues From Color
A wine's color gives many clues to its character. First, color reflects the
specific variety of grape (or grapes) the wine is made from. Take two common red
grapes, Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir. Cabernet berries are typically
smaller, with thicker, darker skins, than Pinot Noir. As a result, wines based
on Cabernet tend to show darker colors, leaning toward purple and black, instead
of the ruby tones associated with Pinot.
Second, color is influenced by growing conditions in the vineyard. A warm summer
and dry autumn produce grapes that are fully ripe, with a high ratio of skin to
juice, resulting in dark colors. A cool summer or a rainy harvest can result in
unripe or diluted grapes, which will show up in colors with lighter hues and
less intensity.
Vinification techniques can also affect color. When red wines ferment, the grape
skins are left to macerate in the juice, like a tea bag steeping in warm water.
The elements that create color, the anthocyanins, are found in the skins, not
the juice itself (most grapes, even red varieties, have clear juice), so the
longer the skins steep, the darker the color will be. Even after fermentation is
over and the skins are discarded, some solid material remains in suspension in
the wine. Some winemakers choose to remove this material, through fining or
filtering; others believe the wine benefits from a little residual deposit.
Time in bottle—the inevitable process of aging—also has an impact. Young red
wines are full of anthocyanins, and so their colors are deeper; with maturity,
these coloring elements evolve, lightening through red to colors described as
"brick" or "amber," slowly combining and falling out of suspension in the wine,
creating a sediment in the bottom of the bottle.
So if you pour a glass of red wine and look at it closely, you may find a deep
garnet color, with good intensity but not brilliantly clear. You might
reasonably infer that the wine is made from Cabernet Sauvignon grown in a warm
climate, that the winemaker chose to extend maceration and to filter only
lightly, and that it's from a recent good vintage. If the tasting's not blind
and you already know what the wine is, you can compare its color with what you
might expect: Perhaps it's exceptionally dark for a weak vintage, indicating
good grape-growing or winemaking abilities, or maybe it's already faded for its
age, suggesting that the grapes lacked concentration, or the winemaker was
unable to extract the intensity that allows wines to mature with grace and
complexity.
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What Tasting Tells:
What Wine Is
Wine tasting offers us the best route to understanding the messages hidden in
the bottle. You can think of them as poetic, or autobiographical.
Poetry comes easily to sensitive palates confronted with great wines. It's
harder work to tease out the facts that create these feelings. After all,as
Peynaud puts it so bluntly, "Considered from a chemical point of view, wine is a
hydro-alcoholic solution containing 20 to 30 grams of substances in solution,
which constitute the extract and give it flavor, and several hundred milligrams
of volatile substances, which constitute its odor." By deciphering these diverse
substances, an attentive taster can learn a great deal about the wine they
compose.
Every wine is a complex web made up of natural and man-made components. The
final taste is determined by forces as non-negotiable as the number of hours of
sunlight during the grapes' growing season, and decisions as personal as whether
the grape juice should macerate on its skins for 10 days or two weeks or a
month. While no introductory guide can even attempt to link all the ways flavor
reflects the particular history of a wine, the more of them tasters can
identify, the more complete their appreciation will be. Here are a few of the
most important links between the real world and the liquid. I'll use a
hypothetical Cabernet Sauvignon as an example.
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Clues From Aroma
Every step of the tasting will add more information to the equation, modifying
the conclusions you're drawing about the wine. Aroma is the most complex
element, and the most revealing to the experienced taster. Some commentators
divide the aromatic components into several classes: those produced by the
grapes themselves, those introduced by the chemical processes of winemaking and,
finally, those that result from the evolution of the wine over time in the
bottle. Sometimes the first two classes, which are most distinctive when the
wine is young, are called the "aroma," while the third, which emerges only in
maturity, is called the "bouquet."
As with color, grape variety and growing season are powerful determinants of
aroma. Pinot Noir typically smells of red fruits like cherries and strawberries.
Cabernet Sauvignon, like its color, tends to have darker aromas, typically black
cherries or plums.
Winemaking techniques dramatically affect aromas. The yeasts that cause
fermentation are sometimes chosen by the winemakers and added to the juice
specifically because of the aromatic and flavor nuances they create. Cool
fermentations yield vibrant, fruity aromas; warmer ones give more spicy and
earthy notes.
The biggest aromatic impact comes after fermentation, when the wine is racked
off the skins and held for clarification and maturation before bottling. Some
Cabs are simply pumped into large vats, generally made of stainless steel,
epoxied concrete or old wood. The large volume of the liquid and the neutral
character of the container emphasize the fruit character inherent in the wine.
Other (generally more ambitious and expensive) wines are racked into small
(60-gallon) oak barrels. If the barrels are old, they too will be basically
neutral, adding little in the way of flavor or aroma. If they are new, however,
the wine absorbs elements from the wood that can add aromas (and flavors) of
vanilla, smoke, toast, coffee, even chocolate. These aromas will vary in
character and intensity depending on whether the oak is French or American in
origin, how much the inside of the barrels have been charred, or "toasted," and
what percentage of the barrels are new.
Time in bottle also influences aromas. Young red wines smell of fruit; as they
age, their bouquet evolves into complex perfumes that mingle cedar, tobacco,
tea, mushrooms and spices. Different cultures prefer one stage over the other;
the French drink their reds vigorous and fruity, while the English favor the
softer, more earthy aromas of mature wines. Young wines can be delicious, but a
great wine aged to perfect maturity is a glorious experience, and once sniffed
will never be forgotten.
So when you smell our hypothetical Cabernet and find scents that remind you of
plums or blackberries, joined by aromas of vanilla and toast, you can reasonably
assume the wine is young, made from ripe grapes and aged in a high percentage of
new barrels—the "formula" that most often results in concentrated, age-worthy
wines. If there are herbal, vegetal or other "green" notes, you may suspect the
growing season was cool or short, preventing the grapes from achieving complete
maturity. If the fruit smells "cooked," ripe and sweet like jam or even raisins,
overripe fruit from a long, hot summer is a likely cause.
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Clues From Taste
Finally you taste the wine, and the last evidence falls into place. Our taste
buds are blunt instruments—most of what we "taste" is actually perceived by our
sense of smell—but they do add basic information, particularly about sweetness
and acidity. Just as important are other physical sensations perceived in the
mouth, such as a wine's body, astringency and level of alcohol.
A wine's alcohol level results primarily from the ripeness of the grapes at
harvest (more sugar in the grapes equals more strength in the wine) plus, where
it's permitted, from additional sugar added during fermentation (a process
called chaptalization). Most table wines contain from 7 to 14 percent alcohol
naturally, and winemakers generally chaptalize where necessary to reach levels
of 12 to 13 percent (though it's almost always illegal to boost a wine more than
two degrees, or percent, through added sugar). Higher alcohol levels give wines
richer textures and fuller bodies. Alcohol also provides a subliminal sweetness
that's necessary to balance acid and bitter components inevitably present in
wine.
Acidity is also inherent in the grapes, though in hot climates (and where it's
legal) winemakers may add some tartaric or citric acid to balance the sugar in
ultraripe fruit. Acidity can also be manipulated through a process called
malolactic fermentation (this is actually a bacterial activity, not a true
fermentation). The process takes place after alcoholic fermentation, almost
always in red wines and selectively in whites, according to the winemaker's
vision of the wine. It transforms rather harsh malic acid (the kind found in
green apples) to softer, rounder lactic acid (the kind found in milk), yielding
softer wines that, especially in whites, often show marked buttery or creamy
flavors.
Tannins are elements extracted primarily from grape skins (and so found mostly
in red wines), but which can derive from stems or seeds, and also from oak,
especially new oak barrels. They're perceived as an astringent feeling. Young
red wines meant for long aging are pumped full of tannins, by extending the
maceration period or otherwise enhancing their extraction, because tannins act
as a preservative and their chemical evolution toward softer, silkier textures
is part of the maturation of great wines.
Back to our Cab. In the mouth, you may note a marked astringency, plenty of
fruit and very little tartness. When you swallow, there's a warm feeling in the
back of your throat followed by a long aftertaste. You can reasonably assume
that the wine is made from ripe grapes, possibly grown in a warm climate, and
that the winemaker emphasized extraction to produce a long-lived wine. If the
wine is too alcoholic and lacking in acidity, the grapes may have gotten too
ripe before they were picked; if the tannins are too harsh, the winemaker may
have left the juice on the skins for too long, aiming to make a super-wine but
winding up with a bodybuilder, impressive in youth but unlikely to maintain its
form.
Don't stop concentrating when you swallow, though. The finish—the taste that
lingers for seconds, even minutes, when the wine is gone—is the wine's farewell.
If it's short, the wine is simple and probably meant for early drinking. The
longer it is, no matter what its age, the better the chances you have a winner.
With age the tannins soften and the wine, which may be a collection of
impressive but disparate impressions in its youth, will become more harmonious
and complex. One of the most important and least certain judgments a wine taster
makes is when a wine will reach its peak, achieve a point when all its elements
come into alignment, creating a seamless web of color, aroma and flavor. One
reason to invest in a wine by the case is to follow its evolution through the
years. This maximizes your chances of catching the wine at its best.
So our hypothetical tasting is over. Given an unknown red wine, we've determined
that it has a deep garnet color, offers vibrant aromas and flavors of
blackberries and toast, and is full-bodied and firmly tannic on the palate, with
a long, clean finish. We can make a good guess that it's a young California Cab
from a good vintage that's been made to develop with age and that, while it's
attractive to drink now, it will be smoother and more complex after two or three
years in the bottle. (Of course, we won't be surprised if it's from Bordeaux or
Australia or even from some completely different grape!)
If we know that the wine we're drinking is, say, Beringer Cabernet Sauvignon
Napa Valley Private Reserve 1992 ($45, rated 95 points or "classic" by Wine
Spectator editors), we can agree that it delivers on its promises and happily
put our other bottles safely in the cellar for a special dinner down the road.
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Overview:
Understanding Wine
Most of the time, most of us drink young, simple wines. What you taste is what
you get—they may be flavorful and refreshing, but they don't repay extended
analysis. Even so, it can be amusing to taste them blind, to try to reach back
through the wine to its components: grape variety, vintage quality, winemaking
techniques.
Sometimes we splurge, drinking a bottle from a topflight producer in a great
vintage. Then, good tasting technique is essential to full appreciation. If the
setting or the company is distracting, or we can't be bothered to concentrate on
the data our senses are providing, then we've wasted our money and insulted the
winemaker and the wine. Recently a Wine Spectator editor dined with a wealthy
collector who opened 17 bottles for eight guests, serving them almost completely
at random, pairing, for example, 1985 Krug Champagne and 1929 Château
Mouton-Rothschild as apéritifs. Appreciation is impossible when conspicuous
consumption is filling the glass. But when you put senses and imagination to
work, tasting a great wine can be more than a great pleasure; its memory can
illuminate all the other wines we drink, majestic and modest, from then on.
And once in a while we get lucky. Every passionate wine lover tells the same
story: a special night, close companions, an extraordinary bottle of wine. Maybe
it's an old Burgundy, fragile and recalcitrant at first, blossoming into magical
complexity. Maybe it's a honeyed Château d'Yquem drunk with an unctuous terrine
of foie gras, proving that a sophisticated disdain for "sweet wines" was utterly
mistaken. Suddenly we have the impression that rather than analyzing the wine
we're practically worshiping it, and what began as superficial sensory pleasure
becomes as profound as a religious conversion. Eating and drinking will never be
quite the same again.
Life goes on. Corks are pulled, glasses broken, wine racks fill and empty and
fill again. If we're paying attention along the way, though, our memory's cellar
grows and grows, and every addition adds meaning and value to each wine we
drink. Here's Peynaud again, nearly 70 now, reflecting on a lifetime of wine
drinking:
"The world of wine is infinite," he writes. "How could I possibly commit to
memory the thousands of wines that I have tasted from all over the world? The
rate at which I taste now has gone beyond the limits of memory, it is wasteful
in effect. Nonetheless, I still have the notes of all my tastings and every now
and again I leaf through them; the experience is like looking at the pictures in
a travel album which can take me back in time and space."
Wine tasting is a technique that can enhance our everyday experience of eating
and drinking. But it can also be a way of life that enriches our perceptions and
deepens our connections with every aspect of the sensory world. That's a large
claim for a common activity, but those who know wine well know it to be true.
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Getting the Most From Wine
Accurate and complete wine tasting depends primarily on the concentration and
perspicacity of the taster. But the right tools and an efficient approach can
make a big difference, too.
Technical details include the serving temperature of the wine, proper opening
and pouring methods, the decision whether or not to decant the bottle and
appropriate stemware.
The "correct" temperature, like so many details in wine tasting, is ultimately a
matter of personal preference. I know Southerners who simply cannot drink a
beverage without ice, and that includes Montrachet and Yquem. But wine
temperature influences wine flavor and there are good reasons to follow
time-tested practices.
Cold temperatures enhance the perception of bitterness; warm ones increase the
impact of sweetness and alcohol. According to French enologist Emile Peynaud,
"the same red wine will seem thin and hot at 72° F, supple and fluid at 64°,
full and astringent at 50°." So a powerful, tannic red should be poured warm
enough to minimize its astringency, but not so warm as to emphasize its alcohol.
We drink sweet white wines well chilled to keep their sweetness in balance.
We recommend serving full-bodied and mature red wines at 60° to 65°F,
light-bodied young reds at 55° to 60°, dry whites at 45° to 50° and sweet whites
at 40° to 50°. Remember that the wine will warm up in the glass, since most
dining rooms are heated to 70° or more, so it's better to serve them a couple of
degrees too cold than too warm.
The way you open the bottle won't normally affect its flavors, but as part of
the ceremony of wine it helps put the tasters in a receptive mood. If a capsule
covers the neck of the bottle, cut it cleanly below the protruding lip and
remove the top portion (or simply take the whole thing off). Wipe the neck of
the bottle to remove any mold or mineral salts that may have accumulated. Using
a corkscrew that feels comfortable in your hand (we prefer the Screwpull or a
simple waiter's corkscrew), pull the cork slowly, trying not to disturb any
sediment in the wine, and clean the inside of the bottle neck before pouring.
Should you decant the wine—that is, pour it from the bottle into a different
container for serving? Yes, if the wine has thrown a heavy deposit; vintage Port
and full-bodied, mature reds are the usual culprits here. (But decanting is
useless if the sediment is floating throughout the wine; be sure to stand the
bottle upright for a day or two before opening.) Yes, if you want to show off an
heirloom crystal decanter or hide the identity of the wine. In all other cases,
decanting is useless at best, harmful at worst.
This advice flouts some conventional wisdom, which argues that young reds (and
occasionally other wines as well) benefit from "breathing" and need the vigorous
contact with oxygen that decanting provides in order to "open up" and show their
best. No scientific evidence supports this point of view. It is true that wines
change with exposure to air, but mostly for the worse—old wines, for example,
may deteriorate rapidly after opening. I enjoy following the whole arc of a
wine's evolution, from the first taste until the last sip, which may come hours
later.
Don't forget the glasses. Any container that will hold water can serve wine, but
appropriate stemware not only adds beauty to the table, it also enables the
fullest communication between wine and taster. Austrian glassmaker Georg Riedel
offers special glasses specifically made for dozens of particular wine types,
and investigation has convinced me that glass shape and size can affect wine
taste significantly. If cost is no object, it pays to tailor your stemware to
your wines. On the other hand, even Riedel offers an "all-purpose" goblet.
In our experience, the best wine glass is a slender goblet of thin, clear
crystal with a long stem on a sturdy base. Heavy cut glass may take light
beautifully, but it blunts the contact between wine and tongue, and examining
wine through colored glass is like gazing at a beautiful friend who's wearing
wraparound sunglasses. The glass should hold 10 to 18 ounces and the bowl should
be biggest at the bottom, tapering to a small opening in order to concentrate
the wine's aromas.
Once you've got the mechanics in place, two more subjective questions arise:
When is the wine ready to drink? What foods make the best match with the wine
you want to serve?
These are long discussions without clear answers. English wine authority and
Wine Spectator columnist Jancis Robinson once wrote a book, Vintage Timecharts,
exploring the maturation curves of great wines. She plotted arcs on graphs
showing time on one axis and wine evolution on the other; the colored lines
curving sinuously across the pages are impressively scientific but hopelessly
confusing. The truth is that different people prefer wines at different stages
of maturity, and different bottles of the same wine may mature at different
rates. Trying to find the "perfect" match between taste and development is like
trying to hit two moving targets with one shot.
Wine and food matching is even more complicated, and fine books have been
written on the topic. However, before you submit to the many complex and
dogmatic rules offered by seemingly authoritative experts, remember that in the
1890s the best restaurants in America routinely served sweet white Bordeaux,
such as Barsac and Sauternes, with oysters and other shellfish—exactly the
opposite of today's taste.
The best advice is: Eat what you like and drink what you like. You'll find
combinations that work, and they will suggest general rules that will increase
your chances of creating other magical matches. And one day, when everything
comes together—the food, the wine, the company—to create a whole that far
surpasses any single element, you'll be glad you took the time and the effort to
get the details right.
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Judging a Wine By Its Label
More people choose wines by their labels than are comfortable admitting it.
Novices reach for pretty pictures; snobs demand famous names. But in fact, a
wine label reveals a great deal about the flavors in the bottle. You can begin
your tasting even before you've pulled the cork.
There are basically three kinds of labels: varietal-based, terroir-based and
sheer fantasy. The information they offer—much of it required by law—overlaps to
a large extent, but each one reflects a different approach to winemaking.
Have you ever bought a Chardonnay? Then you're already familiar with the
varietal approach: wines named for the grape variety that makes up all (or some
legally defined minimum) of the juice in the bottle. California pioneered this
method, and most of the New World producers have adopted it. However, some
European wine regions—Alsace in France, Friuli in Italy, for example—have
traditionally followed this approach.
Most European wines, however, use terroir-based labeling. Terroir is a French
word that comprehends all the physical factors which distinguish a given
vineyard or wine region: its soil, exposure, microclimate, etc. These wines may
be made from a single grape variety (such as Pinot Noir for red wines in
Burgundy) or a blend that may vary by vintage (such as Bordeaux's judicious mix
of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc).
Some winemakers have found themselves so frustrated by local wine
regulations—which may dictate certain grape blends or vinification techniques as
prerequisites to obtaining labels, whether based on varietal or terroir—that
they abandon traditional approaches and use labels based simply on fantasy. In
Tuscany, producers determined to make new-style wines abandoned the
terroir-based Chianti labels for the humble designation vino da tavola (table
wine). In California, winemakers working with the grapes and flexible blending
approach of Bordeaux have given up some varietal-based labels to bottle "Meritage"
wines.
Each kind of label gives different clues to the wine inside the bottle, but all
labels include a few basics. For example, the producer's name is always
prominent. Most wineries develop consistent signatures, based on their location,
winemaking skills and marketing goals; once you're familiar with a winery's
profile, the producer's name is perhaps the most reliable indicator of wine
style and quality.
The wine's vintage is almost always shown, too. If you're familiar with the
vintages of a given region, this can be a telling indicator—red Bordeaux were
mostly light and diluted in 1992, but rich and concentrated in 1990. However,
even if you don't know whether a specific vintage was good or bad, knowing how
old a wine is indicates something about its current style: young, fresh and
fruity, or older, smoother and more complex. Most whites, and very many reds,
are best within three years of the vintage; wines that age well increase in
price over time. Beware of old, inexpensive wines.
Most labels indicate the region where the grapes were grown and the wine made.
On terroir-based labels, this is emphasized: The Burgundian appellations of
Nuits-St.-Georges and Vosne-Romanée, for example, are more or less homogenous
and distinctive vineyard areas that, at least in theory, impart recognizable
character to their wines, especially since appellation laws generally regulate
many aspects of grape growing and wine making. Varietal-based labels also
generally indicate appellations (though often in small type), sometimes right
down to the name of the vineyard. But in these production areas regulation tends
to be much looser, and so wines from the same appellation tend to have less in
common. Fantasy labels often avoid any mention of origin at all (some-times the
laws won't permit their indication). But since fantasy wines deliberately break
with the traditions of their regions, origin doesn't mean that much, anyway.
Finally, don't forget the price tag, stuck right there next to the label. Yes,
there may be wide disparities between a wine's cost and its quality. Wine
Spectator takes pains to point these out, whether it's a great wine for little
money or an overpriced bottle to avoid. But more often than not, there is a
rough correlation.
If you're spending under $5 per bottle, the wine is likely to be simple,
offering alcohol as its principal virtue. From $5 to $12, most wines offer fresh
fruit, enough structure to marry well with food and some individual personality.
From $12 to, say, $50, you can expect complex flavors of ripe fruit and new oak,
enough concentration to develop with aging and a distinctive character stamped
with the wine's creator and origin. Pay any more, and you enter into a rarefied
world inhabited by passionate and deep-pocketed collectors; the rest of us
usually pass by with a shake of the head.
Wineries put a lot of effort into their labels. Savvy wine lovers can decipher
what the law says they must say, what the producers want to say and sometimes
more than they intend to say. Spend some time studying labels before you buy and
you'll increase your chances of finding a wine to suit your tastes.
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Decoding the Language
of Wine Tasting
Understanding the wine you taste is only half the battle; communicating your
impressions to others in words is just as big a challenge. And since the wine
itself disappears as you drink it, verbal descriptions are the only way to
preserve the pleasure wine provides.
It's easy to ridicule our feeble attempts to put wine into words. Perhaps the
most famous satire on tasting notes is a James Thurber cartoon: Three people at
a dinner table look quizzically at their host, who's got a glass in his hand and
a manic look in his eye, saying, "It's merely a naive domestic Burgundy, but I
think you'll be amused by its presumption."
In fact, the struggle to develop a lucid and coherent vocabulary for wine
tasting has been going on for centuries. In his landmark study, The Taste of
Wine, Bordeaux enologist Emile Peynaud traces the slow accretion of terms
commonly used to describe fine wines. Ancient Greeks and Romans wrote about
wine, and even in the 15th century there are references to wines called "good,
clean, honest and commercial." But the true taster's vocabulary really began in
the 18th century, when Bordeaux wines such as Haut-Brion and Lafite began to be
sold at four to five times the price of ordinary claret, and it became necessary
to find words to describe and justify the difference.
Based on extensive research in the literature of wine, Peynaud culled about 40
terms used in the late 18th century, ranging from "acrid," "sour" and "hot," to
"lively," "fine" and "strong." More specific flavor descriptors appear in the
19th century, such as "balsamic," "herbal" and "woody." A manual for wine
merchants published in 1896 used nearly 200 different descriptors, and today
Peynaud recognizes over a thousand terms commonly used to describe wines. In
fact, the vocabulary has gotten a bit out of hand; in Wines: Their Sensory
Evaluation, Maynard Amerine and Edward Roessler list over 300 terms to avoid in
wine description, including the innocuous "charming" and "intense" and even the
antique "lively."
Wine Spectator attempts to use commonsense words to describe wines in our
tasting reports. Our goal is to characterize the wine in general terms, give
several distinctive taste descriptors, compare it to other wines of its specific
type and indicate when it may be drinking at its best. Though writing tasting
notes is more of an art than a science, the descriptions give a fuller idea of a
wine's character than the accompanying score, which locates the wine on a
comparative quality ranking.
Here are recent tasting notes for three wines, all Chardonnays, that differ
widely in quality and character. By "deconstructing" them, I hope to make all
our notes more accessible to readers, and to assist you in developing your own
vocabulary for describing the wines you taste.
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Chardonnay Carneros Reserve 1994 (95, $25)
Bold, ripe, smooth and creamy. A real mouthful of Chardonnay. Its tiers of ripe
pear, fig, honey flavors are framed by smokey, toasty oak. An altogether complex
and beautifully crafted wine with a rich butterscotch aftertaste that still has
all those delicious flavors chiming in.
On Wine Spectator's 100-point scale, a wine rating 95 points or higher is
considered "classic, a great wine." This level of quality generates real
enthusiasm in the note, with such positive words as "bold," "beautifully
crafted" and "delicious." The wine is clearly full-bodied, and all the fruit
descriptors indicate it was made from very ripe grapes: Unripe Chardonnay tends
to taste of green apples or citrus fruits. The "smoky, toasty" flavors are
typical results of fermentation and aging in new French oak, an expensive
technique generally reserved for top wines, usually reflected in higher price
tags. Despite the opulent flavors, skillful winemaking has achieved a harmonious
whole, and this Chardonnay shows the ultimate badge of high quality, a long,
complex finish. The note doesn't indicate when to drink the wine, but it sounds
irresistible now.
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Chardonnay South Australia 1995 (87, $11)
Bright with fruit and supple in texture, this harmonious white has a generous
dose of peach and pear flavors and a hint of honey on the finish.
An 87-point wine is "very good, a wine with special qualities," and this
Chardonnay offers virtues without flaws. Australia is known for a full-bodied,
ripe style of winemaking, and that heritage is reflected in this wine's "supple"
texture, "generous" fruit flavors and "hint of honey," which all imply fully
ripe grapes. Yet the adjectives "bright" and "peach" suggest some refreshing
tartness, so it avoids fatness or dullness. Since there are no typically oaky
descriptors, it may be that new oak wasn't used during vinification; at least,
it doesn't make a strong impression, so wine drinkers who look for those flavors
may want to pass. Overall, the note is positive without being insistent; you'll
enjoy
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MAKE YOUR OWN WINE AROMA STANDARDS
Once you have experienced known aroma standards in a neutral wine, you will find
it easier to identify those aromas when you encounter them in more complex
wines.
Supplies
One glass for each aroma standard you plan to make
One bottle of an inexpensive, neutral white wine such as Pinot Grigio or
Colombard is enough to make 10-12 white wine aroma standards
One bottle of an inexpensive, neutral red wine such as Merlot or Beaujolais is
enough to make 10-12 red wine aroma standards
Directions
Mark each glass so you know which aroma it will contain; write the name of each
aroma on a small sticker (the removable kind are best) and label each glass.
Pour 2 ounces or 4 tablespoons of wine into each wine glass.
Add the indicated amount of each aroma ingredient to its own glass of wine and
let it macerate for an hour or so.
After the hour is up, remove any solid ingredients.
Swirl and sniff each glass of wine so you can become familiar with the aroma
that has been added to it.
Next, test yourself by transferring each sticker to the bottom of its glass
where it can’t be read. Then shuffle the glasses. Swirl and sniff the standards.
Can you identify any of them?
White Wine Aroma Standard
Ingredient
Lemon A small portion of fresh lemon peel and one teaspoon lemon juice
Grapefruit A small portion of fresh grapefruit peel and one teaspoon grapefruit
juice
Pineapple One teaspoon pineapple juice
Melon A chunk of ripe cantaloupe
Peach A chunk of ripe peach or one tablespoon syrup from canned peaches
Pear A chunk of ripe pear or one tablespoon syrup from canned pears
Green grass Three crushed blades of green grass
Honey One teaspoon honey (stir to dissolve)
Vanilla One drop vanilla extract
Nutmeg A pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
Smokey Oak One drop Liquid Smoke, available in many supermarket spice sections
Red Wine Aroma Standard
Ingredient
Strawberry Two crushed ripe or frozen strawberries
Strawberry jam One teaspoon of strawberry jam (stir to dissolve)
Cherry Two crushed ripe cherries or a tablespoon of juice from canned cherries
Mint One drop of mint extract or a crushed mint leaf (spearmint or peppermint)
Green Pepper A quarter of a green pepper, diced
Black Pepper A few grains of freshly ground black pepper
Chocolate One teaspoon of powdered cocoa or shaved chocolate
Coffee About 1/8 teaspoon ground coffee
Tobacco One small pinch of cigarette or pipe tobacco
Vanilla One drop vanilla extract
Smokey Oak One drop Liquid Smoke, available in many supermarket spice sections
START A TASTING GROUP
Tasting Group Tips
Tasting groups make learning about wine more fun -- and less expensive.
The basic idea is that by pooling resources, a group can taste more wines of
higher quality than an individual could taste alone. Plus, group members can
exchange ideas and broaden their perspectives through discussion.
Finding enough people for a tasting shouldn't take too much effort.
Some groups form in cyberspace. San Francisco management consultant Julius
Schillinger first connected with his friends on the Wine Spectator Online
bulletin boards. "We then started communicating offline," he says. "By the time
we finally got together, it was great to turn all the bits and bytes into flesh
and blood."
Stores and tasting organizations also host their own events. Get on their
mailing lists. It's a safe bet that you'll meet like-minded people who'd love to
start a group.
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Tasting Group Tips
START SMALL
Begin with four to 10 people -- it's easier to stay focused in smaller groups.
SET A BUDGET
Pick a price range and stick with it. Tasters need to make a firm commitment and
agree that no-shows have to foot their portions of the bill. Keep in mind that
quality wines can start under $10.
LESS IS MORE
Four to eight wines is plenty.
PICK A TOPIC
Pick a consistent, focused theme.
You can compare wines made with the same grape variety, whether they are from a
single region, such as “Napa Cabernet”, or from many regions, such as “Syrah
around the World.” Alternatively, you can explore a single region by comparing
the different varieties grown there, for instance, “Alsace Varieties.” Try to
stay within one or two vintages to get the best comparison -- and you'll have a
great horizontal tasting.
In contrast, you can host a vertical tasting that compares a range of vintages
made by a single producer. “Penfolds Grange 1980-1990” would be one example.
DON’T OVERPOUR
Remember that you're tasting, not drinking; an ounce or two suffices for a first
impression and leaves plenty for a second go-round. The 25 ounces in a standard
750ml bottle can accommodate up to 15 tasters; more than likely you’ll be able
to enjoy another splash of your favorite or drink remaining wine with dinner.
BLIND IS BEST
The host should help everyone leave preconceptions at the door by concealing
each bottle in numbered bags. Before the tasting starts, remove capsules and
corks, which can reveal the winery.
TASTING ORDER
Rule of thumb: lightest body to heaviest and driest to sweetest.
LOOK AND LEARN
A wine's appearance gives clues about its age and the grapes used. Good lighting
and a white background -- a tablecloth, napkin or sheet of paper -- are
essential.
TAKE NOTE
Always take notes; this helps you build your wine vocabulary and recall the
tasting. At least indicate your preferred wines.
DISCUSS THE WINES
Make a point of discussing the wines; it’s always helpful to get someone else’s
perspective and insight. To learn about your own taste preferences, express what
you like or don’t like about each wine. Remember, there is no right and no wrong
with preferences for ice cream flavors; the same holds true for wine.
EASY DOES IT
Relax and give yourself time to really examine the wines. And don’t forget to
spit.
South American Wines - An Independent Guide to the some of the Best Wines from Peru, Argentina & Chile.
www.south-american-wines.com Copyright 2009