(The obvious title for this would have been “Wine Tasting for Dummies.” But you’re all smart people, and I respect you too much… I just couldn’t do it.)

I came up with this week’s post as part of the newsletter for The Vines‘ February wine club, but it’s going to go through a pretty vigorous editing process before printing and I wanted to share it with you in its current form. I hope it helps you get more out of your next glass of wine. I need to find a way to somehow shorten each of these to one line - that should be an interesting challenge for me.

AA’s wine tasting tips:

* First of all, don’t be intimidated by this exercise. The goals are three-fold, and simple: to enjoy a wine, learn about it, and get to know your own palate. Don’t worry about anything else.

*Use all of your senses to explore a wine. Yes, even sound - if you listen carefully enough you may be able to hear what the wine is trying to tell you.

*Look closely at the color – hold the wine under a light, or in front of a white background. It may not affect the flavor of a vino, but it just might change how you feel about it overall.

*Practice swirling the wine in the glass. Start on a flat surface – you don’t have to get fancy. Not only can this be fun (and visually stimulating), but it really does open up the aromas. To prove this, smell the wine both before and after swirling. I promise you’ll notice a difference.

*For the olfactory part of the process, stick your nose all the way in the glass and breathe deeply. Before you beat yourself up trying to think of descriptors for what you’re smelling, just ask yourself two simple questions: does the wine have an expressive bouquet? Does it appeal to you?

*Observe the complete journey that a wine makes as it crosses your palate. Remember that each part of your tongue registers different flavors, and they don’t necessarily compliment each other - a good, well-balanced wine is one that you’ll enjoy from the ‘attack’ (front of your tongue) all the way to the finish (what you taste after swallowing). The pieces should fit together well.

*Don’t just taste a wine when it’s in your mouth – this is where your sense of touch comes into play as well. Note the weight, the viscosity, and if your mouth waters or dries out.

*When you find a wine that really gets you excited, think about a food pairing. Don’t analyze too much, just think: what are you craving after the wine goes down?

*Take notes! No, nobody’s going to test you on them. But if you want to find wines that you enjoy, it helps to figure out what you like about them. Use your own words, and remember that you don’t have to show your notes to anybody. Write down if you love a wine or if you hate it - and transcribe all that you can from the label. Every piece of information can be useful in tracking down similar wines. Or avoiding them.

January 13th, 2008 | vino | No comments

It’s almost a week into 2008, and most of us are back at work – at least physically.

As things begin to settle down after the holiday season, I realize that I’ve gotten so caught up in learning the logistics of my new job and setting up my new life here in Mendoza that I haven’t allowed myself time to do much of that which is most important: taste the local wines.

Not only is this what brought me down here and an inherent part of my job, but it’s one of my greatest passions, and really the only way to learn about vino. I’ve been writing about wine-related topics, selling it online, and doing some blind tasting, but I’m ashamed to say that there are still a handful of wines in our tasting room that I don’t know by anything other than name, varietal, and cost. So on Thursday I took the hike down the hall from my office to the tasting room, and did our flight of “Los Malbecs Reservas.” I determined to never again let a week go by without sampling a flight, even when I know all the wines.

It bears mentioning here that The Vines is really the only place in Mendoza that offers comparative tastings - the opportunity to sample several different wines side by side. Not like I’m really complaining, as it certainly doesn’t hurt to be the only game in town, but the fact of it never ceases to amaze me. Here we are in one of the world’s great ‘wine capitals,’ and there’s only ONE place in town where you can taste wine from various producers at the same time, and build your palate? Flabbergasting.

So there I was, tasting through 5 of the best, high-end malbecs in Mendoza, engaged in conversation with one of our private vineyard owners who was in town to see his vines in the ground, learn about blending, and enjoy high summer in the southern hemisphere. The topic quickly turned to wine, our palates, and the different ways we have of describing what our taste buds discern. As many times in the past, I was asked how I’ve managed to develop my palate and learn to talk about what I taste.

Before I get into my response, let me first say that I don’t actually consider myself very good at this - you may have noticed that there’s very little of it on this blog. After a great deal of practice and a extended wine reading, I know how to write a hell of a tasting note when supplied with basic descriptors or asked to come up with a sales pitch. I think I have a pretty well-trained palate, but as for expressing I taste with it, I tend to describe a wine primarily with reference to other wines, or with general descriptors that may not mean much to anybody else. In fact, as I’ve started taking more notes again, I’ve realized that I tend to use the same words over and over, and that sometimes they don’t even normally apply to the same sense. (ie: using colors to describe flavors) Which is funny, given how much I like to write.

When I taste a wine, my mind takes what I like to call a “sensory snapshot.” The color, the depth of the aroma, the mouthfeel - these are the sensations that come together and remain in my memory, rather than verbal flavor descriptors. If anything, I may come up with a general name for the overall style. When my new friend Barry asked me how I do this, over the course of conversation on Thursday, I answered as I have many times that it’s all about a frame of reference.

Like many abilities that people develop, I find that having a ‘good palate’ falls easily into the debate between natural aptitude and acquired skills. Is one person born with more sensitive taste buds and olfactory nerves than another? Maybe, to a certain point - but what I find more interesting, more important, and indisputable is the effect of what one does with these senses. In other words, if you taste more wines, you will begin to discern more from each one. This is what I mean about frame of reference: the larger yours is, the more discriminating your palate becomes. For better or worse; some of my friends (and even my own sister) in New York grew to hate me for showing up at their houses with spectacular (free) wine at the end of my workday, and introducing them to higher quality, more expensive wines with more character than they were used to. More specifically, for introducing their wallets to such flavors.

The silver lining here is easy to find, however, and really it’s part of the learning curve. Increasing your familiarity with premium wine may lead to a bigger wine budget, but then again, it might not. Or at least it doesn’t have to - improving your palate also means learning what’s good, and what you really like, at any (and every) price point.

Now, I’m a big proponent of spending at least a little more on a bottle of wine, and I don’t say this as a salesman. I’ve honestly found that the difference in quality between a $7 bottle and a $12 one can be huge, ditto that between $12 and $17, or if you go up to $22. Especially as you learn more about what you’re looking for in a bottle of wine. But I’d probably only take it as far as the low $30 range before the jumps get bigger, for smaller differences in quality. Marketing obviously alters the formula sometimes - and rarely to our advantage; despite economies of scale, I find that in the wine world, at least, when you spend money on a ‘brand’ you’re more often helping to finance their next print advertisement than contributing to an improvement in their cellar. (Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio, anybody?)

Sometimes a frame of reference can actually save you money - I’ll briefly take the Santa Margherita example one step further, as I happen to know a fair amount about northern Italian Pinot Grigio, (I like it) and it’s a wine that every wine store is likely to have several of. If this is your style, my suggestion is that next time you go to buy it ask the salesperson what their favorite Italian Pinot Griogios are for $10 and $15. Instead of spending $25 on Santa Margherita, buy both, and I bet that besides having 2 bottles for the amount of money that you usually spend on one, you’ll find that you like at least one of them better than what you’re used to buying.

Nothing can compete with a strong knowledge of what you like, and in the case of wine the only way to increase that is to taste more of it, and to discuss it. (No, I’m not really trying to encourage alcoholism - I’m talking about TASTING wine, not drinking it. What you do with it once you’ve enjoyed the flavors is up to you.) Hopefully if there’s one thing I am inspire with this blog it’s learning more about your own palate.

Teach a man to fish… and he’ll be happily buzzed for life.

January 6th, 2008 | vino | 2 comments