Appreciating and understanding wine involves knowing something about the capacity for taste and smell and how wines differ. At the same time, some of the most common practices that are associated with wine tasting have little real function or purpose.
Carl Henrickson of the Virginia-based Farm Wineries Council, an organization that seeks to assist Virginia winemakers in selling their products, turns his focus to overall basics of wine while leading a session on the subject at the annual Virginia Wine Showcase. He did the same when speaking at the 2011 event in Chantilly, Virginia.
As a start, the reason to smell wine is because the smell capacity is much greater than taste in the process of sampling wine. Taste buds can only detect sweetness, bitterness, saltiness, sourness, and umami, a Japanese discovered term for delicious flavor, Henrickson noted.
Dispensing with cork ritual at restaurants
When ordering wine at a restaurant the condition of the wine cork is a reason to observe what’s taking place. In the bottle opening process for a well cared for bottle of red wine, red would be seeping down the cork with the tin foil then keeping the seepage from dripping down, Henrickson said.
But he cautions not to pick the cork up and smell it in restaurants because all you’ll smell is the cork. In addition, the tasting ritual in restaurants is unnecessary when you have a synthetic cork or plastic cork or screw top as opposed to a natural cork.
Bacteria can occur in cork which is a natural product and it can harm the wine. About one percent of wine in bottles with a natural cork is ruined by the cork itself, Henrickson said. That is the purpose of pre-tasting the wine to determine if it has the taste and smell of a wet paper bag with a lot of sulfur.
Ease or difficulty of removing cork from bottle
Another sign to look for is whether the cork is hard to remove. If so, that is an indication it is not moist enough because the cork is too dry. This can occur if the bottle has not been lying on its side long enough to allow the moisture to lubricate the cork.
If the cork is easy to take out, look at it and see how much of the moisture has seeped down through the cork toward the tin foil covering. If it is very moist all the way around, that indicates it is a well cared for bottle of wine. “I think that’s going to be the only instance where you are going to find wines where the cork comes out very easily like that,” Henrickson told the attendees.
Another means to indicate wine quality is looking at the length of a cork. A larger, longer cork that would seal the bottle better is more likely to be a better product. That doesn’t replace the taste of a wine, but a longer cork (as in a French Bordeaux Chateau) is probably better, he said.
When tasting wine, with a Chardonnay for example, swirl it around in the glass and put your nose down in the glass to detect vanilla, pineapple, or fruits (which can be unusual for Chardonnay), Henrickson emphasized. And taste it promptly.
He found a pinot noir he had tasted with a screw top that was not particularly tight had a very strawberry-like taste. “Pinot noir is a hard grape to grow, it’s a hard grape to make good wine with.”
Variety of tastes in wines
Henrickson prefers the absence of an oak taste in Chardonnay. “If you want to get an oaky Chardonnay, buy a bottle of Australian Chardonnay.” Less oak taste that ordinarily comes from the barrels the wine is stored in but a more fruity taste probably indicates stainless steel Chardonnay, he said.
Chardonnay grapes are used in producing a French white Burgundy, and a soft fruity Chardonnay with no oak taste is made more in that style.
Sampling a Tuscarora Red from Rockbridge Vineyard in Raphine, Virginia, he found that the flavor changes in the mouth. Plum berry and other elements came out. “The amount of alcohol in the wine will have a significant impact on the flavor.”
The Tuscarora Red is a blended table wine of red grapes with Chambourcin dominating. With a red wine having about a 13% alcohol content, swirl it and smell it three or four times as the nose has more sensitivity to the flavors than the palate, Henrickson pointed out.
Tasting also can show whether a wine could benefit from another one to two years on the shelf to bring out some of the fruits with less bitterness. When that is so, it may not be a wine that will age for 20 or 30 years but for the far shorter period for improved taste.
A related factor here is tannin, which is an aftertaste coming from natural organic compounds found in grapes and produces a dry mouth feel from dryness on the back of the teeth. Oak barrels used in the wine aging process can introduce tannin which is in the sediment at the bottom of a bottle but can be an antioxidant and natural preservative and still be part of the flavor element.
Tannin heavy red wine and roast leg of lamb can be combined on par with Chianti or would pair well with lighter spaghetti, in Henrickson’s view.
While he finds no relationship between the price of a wine and its caliber, he thinks a wine producer who spends the time to make a well designed label with creative graphics will also devote the same kind of effort in the winery to make a good bottle of wine.
Restaurants charge more for wine than bottles sold in a wine shop in using labels to reinforce the purchase of a bottle of wine, Henrickson said. That means the restaurants can’t use grocery store labels on the wines they offer for sale.
For training the palate he recommends buying a bottle of Kendall Jackson Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, or Cabernet Sauvignon as a frame of reference for going above or below. Kendall Jackson can serve as a barometer of wine taste -- as to whether another wine meets or exceeds it.
Sources
- Wine Tasting 101 session at Virginia Wine Showcase, February 12-13, 2011, Westfields Marriott Conference Center, Chantilly, Virginia.
- Allen R. Balik, “Drink it now or later?” Napa Valley Register, May 5, 2011
John Seidenberg - John Seidenberg has worked on newspapers, newsletters, radio news, and produced specialized news publications as well as freelance ...
