How to taste wine: "Letting the genie out of the bottle" Part 2

Logic tells us that taste occurs within the mouth. The truth is that most of our sense of taste occurs via our olfactory sense, that is we smell tastes more than taste them. This process involves the upper sinus cavity, the olfactory bulb (a bundle of nerves involved in our sense of smell) then ultimately the brain. When we swirl the wine in the glass we are incorporating air into it and releasing vapors that we then inhale. These vapors travel up the nose into the upper sinus cavity and this tells us most of what there is to know about the wine. The terms used to describe what is experienced here can seem strange. Aromas of fruits, flowers, earth, mushrooms, wood, meat, rubber etc. can be used to describe the smell of various wines. When we then taste we can experience butterscotch, cherries, plums, chocolate, spices, and many more flavors. You might wonder why this is? Wines contain large amounts of amino acids and other chemical compounds that are found in the actual items they mimic. Not everyone will smell and taste the same things in the same wine. This is no big deal. No one is right or wrong, this is all very subjective so don't be intimidated. It doesn't take long to train your palate (your smelling/tasting equipment) to detect more nuances in wine; experience is key. Of course it varies from person to person so don't get discouraged if it takes you a little longer. When I was starting out, if I came across a description that I had had not experienced, like "truffles" or "cigar box" I would seek out that item and smell it and then I knew what a truffle smelled like. I accomplished this by for instance going into a cigar shop and smelling a cigar box. A gourmet food store is an excellent place to find a truffle, I think I found a small bottle of truffle oil to get a sense of that one. You might want to use your imagination with the burning rubber! Sure enough I would notice these smells in certain wines once I had experience with them. You can purchase wine courses where actual items are placed in samples of wine for you to smell; this can fast forward your awareness. What I recommend is using an "Aroma Wheel". If you detect what smells like some kind of fruit in a wine but can't put you finger on exactly what it is, you roll around to that area on the wheel and there you find listed various possibilities: Cherry, plum, blackberry, raspberry etc. There is a great interactive aroma wheel on Robert Mondavi's "Discover Wine!" website. You can even download and print the wheel. Hats off to this winery for this great service! Because it is an all flash website I can't link directly to it. To find it click on "'Discover Wine!" highlighted in blue above. At the site click "Enter", then click on "Tasting Toolbox" on the right, then on "Aroma Wheel" to the left. Here is a site "The wine aroma wheel web portal" which is the homepage of the original aroma wheel and its creator with a free users manual, and a wheel that can be purchased for $6.75 (includes shipping). The user manual also has instructions for building your own kit where you put items into small amounts of wine (like the wine course I mentioned above) and smell to give you real time experience. In the next installment we will go through the whole tasting process start to finish.

How to taste wine: "Letting the genie out of the bottle"

I remember when I first read the words "How to taste wine" and I thought "How stupid, you just put it in your mouth and swallow!". Drinking is something I had done since birth and the thought of someone telling me how to drink was preposterous. But alas I learned shortly that "drinking and tasting" are two very different animals. When I learned the difference the way I experienced wine took a dramatic turn. You might say I finally "Got it". Up to that point I really could not see paying a lot for a wine as I couldn't discern the difference between a $5 wine or a $20 wine. (actually I could tell when the wine was a $300 German wine but that is a story for another time) Lets start with removing the cork. You may or may not have heard of a wine being "corked". What this refers to is when a faulty or moldy cork is used it can generate a chemical compound, 2,4,6-Trichloroanisole (TCA) which leads to an off smell in the wine. The smell is a musty, mildewy smell, something like the aroma of wet moldy cardboard or a musty basement. I will write more of this in another post as corked wines have become quite a problem due to a shortage of good quality cork. For tasting wine you want to use a wine glass preferably one which is tapered at the top as opposed to a glass with straight sides. Not only does this help to stop the liquid from escaping when you swirl, it also helps to expand and focus the aroma so that your nose can do a better job of discerning what is there. Yes you can spend $80 on a single glass and they are very nice, but I can usually find them for a few dollars per glass. Pier1 and Ross Stores are good sources. I have taken to using a snifter for wine as it has the proper tapered shape with the added benefit of having a much shorter stem therefore much harder to break! Now a word about swirling. I have read a lot about tasting wine and no where in those readings did anyone tell me that I would feel like and idiot trying to swirl wine in a glass. Nor did they alert me that the wine would work its way up the side of the glass and spray all over the place! Expect a learning curve with the swirling. It is a very necessary function of tasting so don't develop a complex and stop swirling (Not that this happened to me!) With practice you will improve. I recommend practicing with plain water at first so that the damage from the spray will minimal. Have you ever had someone pour you a glass of wine and fill it all the way to the rim? And you think, "All right, now THAT is the way to pour a glass of wine!" right? Wrong. This actually inhibits your ability to taste the wine. Even if your just relaxing and enjoying a glass of wine you want a some headroom at the top of the glass to let the aromas expand. This lets you experience more of what is there. Wine sits in a bottle for a period of time, sometimes many years and it just takes a little time and air for it to open up and show you what its got. Its unique in this way. For tasting and evaluating wine we want just a few ounces in the glass.