Wine Tasting 101

There's never been a better time to learn about wine. Don't be fooled into thinking that wine is "forbidding, snobbish, and above all, daunting in its complication"1 and don't be "suspicious of its trappings and cowed by its air of sophistication."1 Wine is food! "Wines exist for food. Without the context of food, wine is a eunuch, a sterile experience which soon acquires distorted features."1

Nonetheless, what makes a good or even great wine isn't merely a matter of taste. Given the interest and large number of people we are trying to accommodate at our 50th Reunion wine tasting, our goals are modest. If your curiosity about wine is enhanced, you find yourself more willing to try something new, and you come away with a belief that you too can, without a large investment in time or money, learn more about wine, then we've achieved what we set out to do.

Bear in mind that wine is an agricultural product and reflects the conditions (weather, soil, etc.) in which it is grown. It's not a precise, manufactured substance subject to an inconsistent (between graders)  grading system in which we are supposed to believe there's a difference between a grade of 89 or 91. While a numerical grading has some use, it's more important for the consumer of wine to develop an understanding of what makes a good wine. As Consumer Reports always warns, "Differences of fewer than 5 points are not meaningful." Beware the "low-cut dress syndrome" (Google it).

"... the 1990s were the most transforming ten-year span in the history of fine wine. Everything essential to fine wine - winegrower ambition, a passionate, informed audience, and abundant money - coalesced. What had been slowly building in the 1970s and, especially, in the 1980s, came to full flower in the 1990s."1

"Combining better quality, familiar varietals, and expert marketing has given consumers worldwide some of the best wines ever produced at some of the most reasonable prices. Consumers today have a better selection of wine at all price points than ever before. And it promises to get even better in the future!"2

1. Matt Kramer, Making Sense of Wine (Philadelphia; Running Press Book Publishers, 2003), 7, 11 and 187.

2. Kevin Zraly, Windows on the World Complete Wine Course (New York/London: Sterling, 2010), Kindle location 210

While the number of accessories to the consumption of wine are nearly unimaginable, there are only three things you really need: (1) a simple, but effective cork screw that can fairly easily extract even the most recalcitrant cork without shattering or driving it into the bottle, especially a terminally dry cork; (2) an aerating and filtering pour spout that saves even the most inept of us from those annoying and cloth (or guest) staining drops from the bottle. The spout simultaneously filters the sediment from long-cellared reds (especially Pinot Noir; be sure the spout is well seated in the bottle); and (3) a glass that's got a tall and wide enough bowl to allow you to swirl without spilling and smell the wine aroma. While Riedel would have you believe you need different glasses for different varietals (and to a degree, they're right), one multipurpose glass, like that recommended below will suffice. If you don't want to worry about breakage, try a plastic glass. The only exception to the one-glass-for-all rule is Champagne/sparkling wine. A tall, narrow glass preserves the bubbles for a longer time. The bubbles are a big part of enjoying sparkling wine. Two other non-essentials that make life easier are a microfiber drying cloth to avoid the formation of unsightly hard water precipitates on the glass and a product called "Wine-Away" (this stuff really works) that easily removes red wine after a spill.

Pro tip: if you love sparkling wine (I have a friend who'll drink nothing else) you need the right glass properly cleaned. Bubbles form as a result of friction between the carbon dioxide trapped in the wine and the roughness of the glass (crystal is rougher than normal glass).  Bubbles will fail to form if the glass contains the slightest amount of grease, dust, detergent or water. Wash with liquid electric dishwasher detergent and dry carefully with a clean microfiber drying cloth.

Here are my favorite tools:

1. Le Creuset TM100L-31 Original Table Model, Black (available at Amazon)
2. Nuance Wine Finer Aerator Pourer and Stopper (available at Amazon)
3. Riedel O Wine Tumbler Cabernet/Merlot, Set of 4 (available at Amazon)
4. or if you prefer a glass with a stem, get the Riedel Vinum Zinfandel/Riesling/Chianti Glass (available at Amazon)
5. or the less expensive Riedel Wine Series or Riedel Gourmet Glass

The other stuff:

1. Riedel Large Microfiber Polishing Cloth (available at Amazon)
2. Wine Away Red Wine Stain Remover,12-Ounces (available at Amazon)

The five basic steps of wine tasting: color, swirl, smell, taste, and savor.

Color: The best way to get an idea of a wine’s color is to get a white background— a napkin or tablecloth— and hold the glass of wine on an angle in front of it. Generally, the darker a white wine, the older but grape varietal and barrel aging also affect color. Red wines lose color as they age. If you can see through a red wine, it's usually ready to drink.

Swirl: Why do we swirl wine? To allow oxygen to get into the wine. Swirling releases the esters, ethers, and aldehydes that combine with oxygen to yield a wine’s bouquet. In other words, swirling aerates the wine and releases more of the bouquet and aroma.

Smell: This is the most important part of wine tasting. the average person can identify more than two thousand different scents, and wine has more than two hundred of its own. Smell the wine at least three times. What does the wine smell like? Don't make stuff up here. In the beginning, you should learn the smells of the some of the most common grape varietals. White varietals: Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and Riesling and red varietals: Pinot Noir, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon (just what we're tasting). When asked what does that smell like? Your first answer should be the name of the varietal. Smelling is the point at which you identify a "corked" bottle of wine, wine that has been oxidized due to failure of the cork. It smells like "dirty socks" or "wet cardboard." Once you've experienced it (sometimes it's easier to detect by smelling the cork), you won't forget. Also, it's almost the only reason for rejecting a bottle in a restaurant. If you order something you're not familiar with and you don't like it, if it isn't corked, you own it!

Taste: Tasting is something you do with your taste buds. You have taste buds all over your mouth— on both sides of the tongue, underneath, on the tip, and extending to the back of your throat. Leave the wine in your mouth for three to five seconds before swallowing. Some people (particularly professional wine tasters) draw air in through their mouth to enhance oxidation. The wine warms up, sending signals about the bouquet and aroma up through the nasal passage then on the brain. Remember, 90 percent of taste is smell. tasting wine is confirming what the color and smell tell you. You can only recognize four different tastes: bitter, sour, sweet and salty. Just four! Pay attention to where on your tongue you're experiencing a taste: front of tongue detects sweetness, center salt (not applicable to wine), back bitter and sides sour. One other aspect of the wine you should assess while in your mouth is the way it makes your mouth feel (not taste). Tannins (most typical of red wine varietals like Cabernet Sauvignon and Petite Syrah) make your mouth feel dry. Acidic wines make you salivate so the wine feels "soft" in your mouth.

Savor: The first thing you should consider after you’ve tasted a wine is whether or not you like it. Some other things to consider include: (1) for a white wine how was the acidity; (2) for a red wine what was the tannin like (present, absent, strong, or weak); (3) what was the strongest component (residual sugar [sweet], fruit [a smell], acidity, tannin); and (4) how long did the balance of tastes, odors and feel last in your mouth after you swallowed? An analogy for understanding wine texture (body): Light (skim milk), Medium (whole milk) and Full (heavy cream). Wine examples: Pinot Grigio is light, Pinot Noir is medium, and Petite Syrah or Cabernet Sauvignon are full. What is the opposite of a dry wine? Not wet - sweet.

What makes a good wine: (1) varietal character - does the wine reflect the characteristics of the grape varietal [some wine makers obscure the basic character of the grape through chemistry, microbiology and aging, e.g., California overly oaked Chardonnay]; (2) balance of characteristics - no one feature like fruit, acid, tannin, sweetness overwhelms the others; (3) complexity - some poorly made wines lack detectable fruit, acid, or tannin [they taste and feel more like water than wine]; (4) sense of place - does the combination of odor, flavor and feel suggest the origin of the wine [a typical Oregon Pinot Noir is quite different from a Pinto Noir that is made from grapes grown in Sonoma, Anderson Valley or the Central Coast of California each of which have  characteristics that distinguish one from the other]; and (5) emotional response - do you like the wine?

Have you ever read wine tasting notes that describe characteristics of the wine in unintelligible terms? Do you want to increase the size of your wine descriptive vocabulary? This is the book for you: WineSpeak: A Vinous Thesaurus of (Gasp!) 36,975 Bizarre, Erotic, Funny, Outrageous, Poetic, Silly and Ugly Wine Tasting Descriptors by Bernard Klem. I hope you're laughing.

The contents of this section are largely based on Kevin Zraly, Windows on the World Complete Wine Course (New York/London: Sterling, 2010), Kindle location 416-588.

"The greatest disorder of the mind is to believe that things are so because we wish them to be so." - Jacques-Bénigne Lignel Bossuet1

• A home cellar should be humid. This idea is a relic of the past when wine was cellared in wood casks. A bottle is impervious to moisture and a good cork creates a near-hermetic seal in a bottle such that the only part of the cork that comes in contact with external air is top-most layer of cork cells. The only requirements for a home cellar are a relative absence of mainly ultraviolet light (sunlight or intense full spectrum light from LED or fluorescent bulbs - remember the inverse square law) and a fairly constant temperature below 70 degrees F.
• Wine bottles must be stored on their side. In the Piedmont area of Italy, Barolo and Barbaresco are always stored standing up, sometimes for many years. This practice has no effect on the cork.
• Vibration affects wine aging. The only possible exception is if you apply sufficient force with regularity to disperse sediment and make the sediment fragments small enough not to settle. That will affect clarity and possibly taste.
• Wine must be stored at an exact and constant temperature. Experiments have shown that heat will accelerate maturation of the wine in a bottle by accelerating naturally occurring chemical reactions and oxidation (if enough oxygen is present - unlikely in a bottle with a normal cork). Two conditions can result from excess heat: (1) loss of fruitiness and (2) gain of bottle bouquet and aged character. Cold has no deleterious effect until the wine freezes (about 27 degrees F). Temperature fluctuation, per se, does not affect wine. Again, the problem is heat. If the air between the liquid and cork is heated sufficiently to move the cork, the incompetent cork may allow oxygen into the bottle. This is a particular problem for white wines that lack tannins to buffer the oxygen. Experiments have shown that temperatures of 80 to 95 degrees F for up to 6 weeks have little if any affect on red or white wine.
• Wine must be stored in darkness. See home cellar above. Weak light of any wavelength will have little if any affect on your wine. Colored glass bottles (brown is best) are the great defenders of wine's virtues.
• Shipping and storage from wine maker to retailer. No myths here. This is a subject too complex to cover in a few sentences . Suffice it to say that once the wine leaves the wine maker's premises and lands in your shopping basket, there's much that can go wrong. For more information, see the reference below.

1. Matt Kramer, Making Sense of Wine (Philadelphia; Running Press Book Publishers, 2003), 135 - 171.

My favorite book, now somewhat difficult to obtain, other than as an audio-book from Audible.com/Amazon is:

• "Making Sense of Wine" by Matt Kramer

Kramer tells a story of wine in a way that makes the topic understandable for everyone. He discusses the properties of wine, wine tasting and explores myths in an entertaining, down-to-earth voice. Great for the beginner and experienced alike (you will definitely stop doing those, pretentious things you may have learned from wine "experts").

One of Amazon's most highly rated wine books (available in hardback (2017), paperback (1989) and Kindle (2010); I didn't notice that each of these has a different publication date when I purchased the Kindle edition - the link below is to the latest, hardback, edition):

• "Kevin Zraly Windows on the World Complete Wine Course: Revised and Expanded Edition" by Kevin Zraly

If you're into video, check out "Jansis Robison's Wine Course." I love this for it's irreverence, educational content and spectacular cinematography. It's available as a two disc DVD (my copy is VHS - does anyone still have a player?) and is expensive new, but much less so used. Robison is also the editor of one of the most comprehensive reference books on wine (available in Kindle and hardcover (both 2015)):

• "The Oxford Companion to Wine" by Jansis Robison

Do you have feelings of inadequacy?  Do you suffer from shyness?  Do you sometimes wish you were more assertive?  Do you sometimes feel stressed?  If you answered yes to any of these questions, ask your doctor or pharmacist about Cabernet Sauvignon.

Cabernet Sauvignon is the safe, natural way to feel better and more confident.  It can help ease you out of your shyness and let you tell the world that you are ready and willing to do just about anything.

You will notice the benefits of Cabernet Sauvignon almost immediately, and, with a regimen of regular doses, you will overcome obstacles that prevent you from living the life you want.

Shyness and awkwardness will be a thing of the past.  You will discover talents you never knew you had.  Cabernet Sauvignon may not be right for everyone.  Women who are pregnant or nursing should not use it, but women who would not mind nursing or becoming pregnant are encouraged to try it.

Side effects may include: dizziness, nausea, vomiting, incarceration, loss of motor control, loss of clothing, loss of money, delusions of grandeur, table dancing, headache, dehydration, dry mouth and a desire to sing Karaoke and play all-night Strip Poker, Truth Or Dare and Naked Twister.

Warnings:  The consumption of Cabernet Sauvignon may make you think you are whispering when you are not.  The consumption of Cabernet Sauvignon may cause you to tell your friends over and over again that you love them.  The consumption of Cabernet Sauvignon may cause you to think you can sing.  The consumption of Cabernet Sauvignon may create the illusion that you are tougher, smarter, faster and better looking than most people.

Please feel free to share this important medical information! “LIFE IS A CABERNET, OLD CHUM”!

Note: For more severe symptoms Jack Daniels is recommended.

Oh, and check this out.