Ramblings around the Spittoon
Swirl, Sniff, Slurp……or how to survive the wine trail and still remember what you drank.
There’s probably as much pretentious waffle and un-warranted mystique written and spoken about wine tasting as about eastern suburbs real estate. At the end of the day, it’s about finding something you like and trying to remember where you tasted it. And from our side of the counter, hoping you find it such terrific value, you buy some.
We meet people at the cellar door who are a bit tentative about the whole process because they’re not fluent in wine-speak. Not needed. Here’s a survival guide.
Arm yourself with something listing the wines on offer to jot your scores down on. If there’s nothing handy, ask the cellar door staff for an order form.
Settle on a judging system, eg. Score out of 20, with colour out of 3 points; nose/scent of the wine out of 7 points; and palate, or taste out of 10 points max. So an amazing “perfect” wine would score 20 points.
Have a look at the wine in the tasting glass (a bit of white background helps here), is it bright, clean (not cloudy) and a colour you find attractive for the style of wine? (no brown tinges,) Then you can probably give it 2 or 3.
Next, give the wine a good slosh about in the glass. This is important as it helps release the aroma of the wine and impresses everyone standing about with your obvious knowledge of wine tasting. With a bit of practice you can do this without wearing it. One way is to leave the glass flat on the counter and swirl the wine by sliding the glass briskly round in circles. Now, stick your nose in the glass. Tasting glasses are meant to concentrate the aroma in their narrow shape, but you’ve got to get your nose in there to smell it. Can you smell fruit, florally perfume, woody scents? Or does it have a “dumb” nose, with no aroma at all. Give it a score out of 7.
Now, take a good mouthful (you want enough in your mouth to slosh it about a bit, no tentative little sips here). A small tip, cast your eye around for the spittoon before you get this far, ‘cos it’s now a bit hard asking where to spit, unless you can gargle like Mick Conway. Why a mouthful? We detect taste in different parts of the mouth and a little sip only uses the tip of the tongue. Why spit? Apart from looking like you know what you’re doing, it keeps your senses sharp enough to remember what the first wine tasted like, even as you slurp the last. Now give it a score out of 10. Was it pleasant, crisp, lively, bit of fruit, mellow, complex, rich,? Or as boring as yet another $12 Chardonnay?
Add up your score. 15.5-16.5 you’ve given it bronze; 17-18 silver and 18.5-20 gold. Now as long as you don’t lose the bit of paper, you’ve a record of what you drank and what you thought of it.
More wine trail survival skills………Winespeak
"There are known knowns and known unknowns, but there are no unknown knowns"... (courtesy that great known unknown US VP Dick Cheney)
There’s more rubbish written about wine than about Sydney real estate, but here’s a few useful definitions to help you survive the sproutings of the wine bores
Balance
Nothing to do with falling over outside the eleventeenth winery of the day, rather it refers to the flavour components of a wine: the fruit, acids, tannins, oak influence and alcohol. If they all combine to delight the palate, with no single component dominating, then the wine could be said to be well balanced.
Big
Bold, in-your-face wines. Usually high in alcohol, with very ripe, even jammy fruit flavours and deep colour. See also “Fruit bomb”, or “Parker Special” Usually from warmer climate vineyards and can only be made from very ripe fruit.
Blind Tasting
No, not a rating for your performance after the eleventeenth winery of the day, rather a way of assessing a wine, devoid of the influence created by knowing its label, name or region. Wine shows are judged this way and at its simplest consists of little more than wacking some alfoil or a brown paper bag over the bottle to hide its labels, before you offer it to a group to taste.
Buttery
A flavour descriptor often applied to bigger styles of oaked Chardonnay. The “buttery” flavour or aroma comes from the wine’s contact with dead yeast cells (or Lees) after primary ferment of the grapes, or the secondary Malolactic ferment which is done to convert harsher Malic acid into softer Lactic acid in the finished wine.
Closed
What the average B&B is when you rock up after doing eleventeen wineries on a hot day. It also refers to the aroma and flavour of a young wine which hasn’t been in the bottle long enough to develop its true character.
Corked
Nothing to do with a fly-half’s thigh 10 minutes before the final siren (see Legs), this refers to the dreaded, random spoilage of wine by a naturally occurring bacteria (Trichloroanisole, or TCA) in cork. It gives the wine a musty, wet-cardboard smell and renders it undrinkable. The only effective preventative for cork taint, is not to use corks.
Decant
Wine which has been cellared for some time will develop some bottle pong (as opposed to off, or corked characters (see corked) and this will disappear if the wine is allowed to “breathe” a bit before you serve it. The idea is to get some air through the wine and is usually done by pouring it into a wide-based decanter (thus giving the wine a large surface area), but can also be done by simply pouring it into a jug. If it’s an old red wine, there may be some sediment in the bottle, which doesn’t look so flash when poured into a glass. Avoid sloshing the bottle around and hold it up to some light as you decant and you’ll be able to separate the last bit of the wine, which contains the sediment. If you don’t have a decanter to serve from, rinse the sediment out of the bottle, then pour the jug back into the bottle and serve from that.
Lees
A fine, particulate sediment consisting of dead yeast cells, grape pulp and other grape solids which settle out of wine as it is being made. They are normally removed by filtration prior to bottling of the wine. Wine (especially Champagne / Sparkling) will often be left “on lees” for some time to impart nutty, yeasty, bready, buttery, characters into the finished wine. In the case of true, bottle-fermented Champagne /Sparkling wine, the wine is left on the lees of the secondary ferment (the bottle ferment which produces the bubbles as a result of adding a small quantity of sugar and yeast to the bottled wine) for anywhere between 3 and 18 years, before it is Disgorged and ready for drinking.
Legs
No not the great set of pins all the way up to there on the new female winemaker. This refers to the pattern of “runs” down the inside of the glass that form after you’ve swirled the wine about in the glass. They’re a function of the difference in surface tension between water and alcohol and are indicative of the alcohol content of the wine. Compare the “legs” on a VSOP Cognac and a light white wine and you’ll see what I mean. The more alcoholic the wine, the more well-defined the legs.
Malo, or Malolactic ferment
A secondary ferment of a wine, whereby the harsher Malic acid in a wine is converted to the softer Lactic acid. Both acids are naturally occurring in all grape juice, Lactic acid simply has a more rounded, softer mouth feel. Most red wine and Chardonnay undergo Malolactic ferment.
Oxidised
An off, undrinkable, vinegary character in wine, caused by exposure to oxygen during making, or in the bottle due to a poor closure.
Tannin
A naturally occurring substance found in the seeds, skin and stems of grapes, as well in the wood of the barrels used to age red and some white wine. They are readily extracted from the seeds and skins by alcohol, which is why they’re more evident in red wine than white. (Red wine is fermented with the skins, seeds etc, where white wine is not). They give the wine a grippy, mouthfeel and an excess of young, green tannins (coming from the seeds and stems of under-ripe fruit) can impart a harsh, mouth-puckering dry feel to a wine.
Terroir
A 4 year-old whose been dragged through one supermarket/cellar-door too many and just want to go home?. Close, but no cigar. Terroir: [noun. pron: terˈwär] is French, referring to the complete natural environment in which a particular wine is produced, including factors such as the soil, topography, and climate. The same grape variety, grown in the same regional location, but on different soils, or with a different topographical aspect can yield a wine with totally different characteristics to its near neighbour, simply because the grapes are expressing the flavours of their specific environment.
Contact details
Brook Eden Vineyard
167 Adams Rd
Lebrina
Tasmania 7254
T 03 6395 6244
F 03 6395 6211
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