Wine Tasting - The Sense of Sight
Wine tasting basics begin with knowing how to use your senses to understand, interpret, and enjoy the wine. The ability to recognize what you see, and furthermore describe it in clear terms, is a very important wine tasting skill.
Although some may say the appearance of the wine is the least important aspect with regard to the senses, it is still worth noting. When examining appearance, we are looking for clarity and color. We want the wine to be free of any sediment, leaving it clear and brilliant. Red wines tend to lose their color as they mature, while white wines tend to grow darker with age. A good quality wine generally will be intense in color. The "legs" seen running down the sides of a glass after being swirled, are an indication of flavor density. It is best to use a plain white background, and tilt the glass slightly as you observe clarity and color.
Wine Tasting - The Sense of Touch
Touch is an important category of taste sensation. This is where we try to feel the wine on the palate. Here we seek to find impressions of such things as texture, body, temperature, and astringency. The aftertaste, finish, and length of a wine are all things we feel on our palate. We are looking for how the wine feels in weight (light, medium, full) and texture (silky, coarse, velvety). Try to observe how long the sensations last in your mouth. Most will tell you the longer it lasts, the better the wine!
Tastebuddy – A Rainbow of Northbay Wine
Hopefully you’re wondering, what’s
up with this Tastebuddy guy? (He likes to talk about wine.) Who
nominated him? (Hint: it didn’t take 65 signatures or $3500.)
Like hundreds of others I nominated myself for service, to the
Rainbow wine public, hoping to stir up some fun yet informative
gay talk about wine in our wondrous Northbay ‘hood. Perhaps
create some new opportunities for "something to do"!
One
thing I notice as I spend more time in wine tasting rooms, is
that they are inclusive, comfortable places to be. The friendly
folks who work in these rooms know how to treat their best customers,
don’t they? The environment is unequivocally adult-oriented,
I’ve noticed that a lot of the straight folks who enjoy
wine somehow like that ambience too. And the wine biz is certainly
a generous donor to some of our worthiest causes. In short, we
belong.
And thus, those who have already been to Face to Face’s annual blockbuster fundraiser Art for Life know that the event is worth the price of admission for wine and food alone. Test your skill spotting the premier cruise at the tables where quality area wines flow profusely. Take your glass and try a new food pairing with the showcase hors d’oeuvres that abound. Peruse interesting art and ponder how it might fit both home and credit card limit. All for a great cause. Tix $50, held Sunday September 7, 2 to 6 p.m. at the Friedman Center in Santa Rosa.
Might as well go ahead and put the Food for Thought Calabash on the calendar while we’re at it, for Sunday October 5. Along with all the other fun, there will be an interesting group of organic wines flowing…more next month.
The kings and queens of the industry are buzzing about a new social group called MAGNUM. Mike Bernard of Porter Creek Winery in Healdsburg has turned his background in social wine tasting towards "gay guys affiliated with the wine industry". I heard about the first meeting in a fax we get from the Russian River Wine Road office (aren’t they friendly!), but couldn’t clear my calendar until the third meeting in early August. When I talked with Mike, we agreed the RRWR is peppered with our interesting, sometimes campy stories that enrich interest in our wines. Howabout this from a customer who said of a thick, rich tasting wine poured in Mike’s room, "that wine is too big for my mouth"!
Anyway, MAGNUM had lots of mouth, ok? About 15 of us blind-tasted 11 Pinot Noirs with gusto, especially from the sixth wine on! You know, we are real men and we know how to spit, or could if we had to, but it just didn’t seem, well, seemly on the gorgeous deck of the Village Inn. We even had one foaming surprise, a tasty Blanc de Noir from Rabbit Ridge. In the end, an Oregon wine was the winner at this decidedly unscientific but spirited affair. If you want information on MAGNUM, or to forward your contact information to them, e-mail me.
Well
thanks for stickin’ through it if you’ve made it to
the sangiovesy end. (That’s Tastebuddy for bloody end, I
enjoy twisted winespeak ok?) If you know of wineries, wine events,
or relevant wine-related associations that you find of interest
to our community, I want to hear from you! More importantly, I
call you to be a Tastebuddy too! Write me to get in the loop,
or consider stopping in at our Tasting Room, LOCALS, in downtown
Geyserville Sunday September 21 sometime between 5-8pm. We’ll
meet, hang, taste some wine, nosh a little, maybe catch a meal
later. An RSVP would be great. Ladies, I’d like to hear
from you too, in case that wasn’t obvious. In general, I’d
love to hear about anything the community wants to know or do
with wine.
And trust me, I have a few good tricks up my sleeve to share! Next month, I reveal the Tenets of the Tastebuddy, I hope you’ll stay tuned-in vino veritas…
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Article Written by Taylor Poff who discovered Sonoma County old-vine Zinfandels in the early 1980’s and was a changed man, moving to Guerneville in 1989. He is Tasting Room Manager at LOCALS in Geyserville, and strongly believes in having fun while learning more about wine! Please contact your Tastebuddy at tastebuddy@comcast.net.
