Ah… wine tasting. One of the most fun and yet daunting things to do – nothing gives me more pleasure than cracking open a good bottle of ‘vino’ to enjoy with friends (or dare I say by myself too!) but the thought of having to analyse and talk about said wine in front of other people still brings me out in a cold sweat (that’s before the morning after).
One of the perks of being a journalist in Argentine wine country is that you get to try a lot of different and great wine, but that brings a snag too. People can be pretty judgemental about your comments when wine tasting, and even more so when you are a ‘writer’ – they either expect you to know everything, or assume you know absolutely nothing, and either way it sometimes feels as though they are waiting for the first words you utter out of your wine soaked lips to verify their assumption.
Of course it doesn’t help that you are often tasting a wine with the winemaker or winery owner, who are not only experts on that particular wine but also quite defensive. I imagine it must be a similar uncomfortable feeling for new teachers as they sit face to face with a pair of protective parents during a parents’ evening at school.
I think the best advice I have ever received about wine tasting is (in politer terms) ‘sod it!’ Just enjoy the tasting, give your honest opinion if you have one and always remember that there is no-one’s opinion more important than that of the lowly consumer – at the end of the day, the person who pays the pennies to buy a bottle of wine is who the winemakers should aim to impress.
I love doing wine tasting with a group of friends because it is always so fun to see how different people can describe a wine in so many different ways: some will give you all the elaborate fruit descriptors in the world (honey infused vanilla pod crème brulee), others will tell you about the acidity and alcohol content (yawn!) and some will come up with the most amusing descriptors which is all you will even remember at the end of the night (It’s the same funky smell in my grandma’s loft!)
I’ve been to sommelier classes and wine courses and they do help in giving you more confidence in understanding what goes into winemaking, but the good news is that the best practice and way to learn how to taste wine is to taste lots of it. Some people are born with incredible palates where they can remember wines from 10 years ago, but others are not. If you want to look back on a wine you tasted a long time ago, keep jotting notes down – but remember wines change, as does your tongue.
I recently went to Cahors, France, the original land of Malbec, and had some really eye opening wine tasting experiences. I tried barrel samples of the same wines from different cooperages; samples of the same wines but harvested with one week’s difference in harvest times; and samples of grapes taken from a terroir two meters apart – they were all interesting, learning experiences. However the one I learnt the most from came at 10am on my first morning.
Thinking I was going in to a small wine tasting, I sat down to about 70 Malbecs (and forgot to have breakfast that morning)… My friend who I had convinced to come along with me on this fun wine tasting trip to seek out handsome French wine makers and try and get ourselves invited to their romantic French chateaus, was frankly appalled at the idea of sitting inside for four hours on a sunny Summer’s morning to spit out a few dozen wines. So she went off in search of coffee, pastries and a sun drenched bench somewhere with her book. I thought that at around number 17 I would want to join her… but actually after the first couple of wines, I really got into it and enjoyed trying each wine up until the very last one, despite having to spit them all out. I think my big black grin at the end proved it!
There is a clear moment when something you enjoy changes into something that you want to do for the rest of your life. In fact I think the moment I decided that my love of wine tasting went more from enjoying the odd tipple, to somewhat boring professionalism, was when I had the discussion with my dentist that drinking wine was more important to me than pearly whites (yes I am British, so I probably would never have had ‘pearly’ white anyway…)
