|
How to run a wine tasting
Some advice on setting up a fun, educational wine
tasting for non-experts, including advice on the wines to choose
For normal people, there's something a
bit comical about wine tasting. While people are happy to drink
wine, and even be a little bit curious about it, the thought of
tasting it and then talking about the different smells and flavours,
or trying to write a tasting note, is just one step too far.
One of the difficulties is the lack of
vocabulary we have for tastes and smells. We experience them, we
recognize them, but there seems to be a block between this
experience and coming up with words to describe it. So one of the
big hurdles in wine appreciation is developing such a vocabulary, so
that we can describe wine in words. This helps us communicate to
others what a wine tastes like, and it also helps us to communicate
to ourselves: one of the reasons I write notes is so I can go back
to them and see just what my experience of a certain wine was.
Here, I'm going to give my guidelines for
how to run a wine tasting for non-experts. Of course, you could just
open some bottles and drink them. But the goal of this tasting is
for it to be fun, and also highly educational. It's meant for those
who've never really done anything like this before, and I'm
deliberately choosing a diverse set of wines that should put down
some useful taste markers and act as anchor points for future wine
tasting experiences. Think of them as the corner bits on a jigsaw
puzzle: a good place to start.
The grape variety is a good place to
begin when it comes to understanding wine, but I must emphasize that
it's not the only way, and not all wines made from the same variety
taste similar. So most of these wines are made from a single
variety. The wine recommendations are deliberately generic so that
wherever you are you stand a good chance of being able to source
candidate bottles. So, here goes.
First, you'll need some glasses.
As this is an introductory tasting, pretty much any glass will do,
but some glasses are much better than others. Try to find glasses
with a reasonably big bowl, made of thin glass with a thin rim, and
one that is wider in the middle than at the top: a tulip shape is
ideal. Also, beware glasses that smell. Make sure the glasses are
clean and odour free, and free of soap residue. If necessary rinse
them out with water first and dry them with a clean cloth or kitchen
roll before use.
One glass per person is fine. You don't
need to rinse glasses out before pouring the next sample, unless the
wine style has changed dramatically (for example, sweet to dry, or
red to white).
Obviously, try to get the wines at the
right sort of temperature for tasting. For whites, fridge
temperature might be a little too cool, and for reds, room
temperature might be a little too warm. Aim for 8 degrees for whites
and 18 degrees for reds, but don't worry about getting it exact. If
you need to chill down whites fast, a container filled with ice plus
water is faster than ice alone, and if the bottle is only partly
submerged invert it a few times to mix the colder and warmer wine
before pouring.
For pouring measures, somewhere
between 40 and 50 ml of each wine per person is ideal – a double
shot. It's enough to taste and linger over for a while, and you'll
get around 16 pours from a bottle. It's worth doing a trial so you
get an idea of what this volume looks like in the glasses you are
using.
Nibbles? A good idea. Professionals
probably wouldn't use them, but most normal people find that trying
seven wines in a session with nothing to eat a bit weird. Anything
goes, but try to avoid really strong smelling or tasting foods, and
it's best to avoid cheese which will make it harder to taste reds.
Pens and paper are a good idea. It's a
nice discipline to write down the sorts of tastes and smells
you are getting from the wine, plus how it feels in the mouth, plus
more general impressions and – of course – whether or not you liked
it.
Which wines? I'm picking wines
that have a point to prove, and which should be easy to find at just
under £10/$15 a bottle.
1. We'll start
with Sauvignon Blanc, and I'd recommend a New Zealand
Sauvignon Blanc from the Marlborough region. I always like to start
here, because this is a very distinctive sort of wine style and most
people can get some of the typical flavours when they taste what's
in their glass. This is a clean, dry style of wine with keen
acidity. There are often flavours of elderflower, gooseberry, green
pepper, tomato leaf, lemons and even passionfruit. The overall
feeling is one of 'greenness'. Good examples should show a balance
between the ripe fruity flavours and the greener notes. Specific
recommendations: Brancott, Villa Maria or Oyster Bay, all of which
should be easy to find.
2. An oaked
Chardonnay. Chardonnay is a very popular white grape variety and
it provides a brilliant contrast to Sauvignon Blanc, because it has
much broader, fatter flavours. It also has an affinity for being
fermented and aged in oak barrels, which give some extra character
to the wine. So look out for pretty much any Chardonnay that is
'wooded', or 'barrel fermented', or 'oak aged'. Expect to find
flavours of nuts, toast, pears, peach, citrus, vanilla, cream and
ripe apples. You might not get all these flavours in any particular
wine, of course, but these are good starting thoughts.
3. A dry
Riesling. Riesling is such a distinctive grape variety, and it
makes wines with a range of sweetness levels. Here, we're looking at
dry Riesling because it's easier for novices to get their heads
around. The key flavour here is lemon/lime, which is the hallmark of
Riesling, and this is best found in dry examples from Australia or
Alsace. But you could go to Germany for an off-dry Riesling, such as
the easily found, inexpensive Dr L Riesling from Loosen in the
Mosel, which shows off lovely pure lemony fruit with a hint of
sweetness balancing out keen acidity. Riesling is almost always
unoaked, and has lovely pure fruit flavours with keen acidity.
4. Let's move
to reds, and I want to start with Pinot Noir. It's one of my
favourite grape varieties, and it makes lighter red wines with
lovely fresh, pure cherry fruit. The best examples also have a
really nice texture, with sappy, slightly green notes framing a
generous ripe, sweet cherry fruit core. Think red cherries and
berries, maybe even black cherries, maybe some plum, and some nice
spicy notes, too. Good Pinot also has quite floral aromas. I'd
recommend you look for a New Zealand Pinot Noir. Good Pinot can be
really expensive, but affordable Kiwi Pinot is usually pretty good.
5. Cabernet
Sauvignon is the most famous red grape variety, and this is a
good one to taste because it has a very distinctive flavour
signature: it tastes of blackcurrant. There are variations on these
theme, however: to blackcurrant you can add plums, cedar, mint, or
gravel, or chalk, or spice, or tar. It also often has a slightly
green edge to it. Choose a Chilean Cabernet for the tasting, not
because they are the best but because they often show this
blackcurrant aspect at its most pure. Chilean Cabs often have a bit
of black fruit pastille-like flavour, too.
6. Finally,
Shiraz or Syrah, the same grape variety under different names.
It's a bit of a chameleon grape and can do well in a range of
climates, from cool to hot, producing different wines in each. Let's
opt for Syrah from the northern Rhône, the birthplace of the grape,
where it will be labelled by the appellation: for our purposes, get
hold of a Crozes-Hermitage or a St-Joseph. You'll find fresh black
fruits (particularly black cherry and blackberry), maybe some
raspberry, and if you are lucky, some violet perfume. There might
also be notes of meat and spice, but they key flavour signature
should be black pepper, which is common for Syrah grown in cool
climates. New Zealand Syrah also shows these features very well.
However, around a fifth of a people are smell blind to the key
chemical that communicates this black pepper smell, rotundone. So
you might not get that!
If you have a specific retailer that you
use and you want me to recommend wines for this tasting, then drop
me a mail (jamie@wineanorak.com)
and I'll try to provide a shopping list for you. I'll post it
here, also.
Find these wines with wine-searcher.com
Back
to top
|
