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!
Gewürztraminer (pronounced Guh-VERTZ-tra-meener)
“Gewürz” means “spicy” in German. Traminer is the original name of the grape that produces this flamboyantly aromatic, full-bodied, spicy white wine, which is vinified to perfection in the Alsace region of eastern France and is also produced elsewhere in central Europe, as well as in California, Washington, Oregon and New York.
Gewürztraminer is a pink-skinned, small-clustered grape variety that sets a modest crop and ripens fully in propitious, cool-climate conditions, producing heady, alcoholic, dry table wines, at least in Alsace. (It also makes marvelous, late-harvest dessert wines there.) In California, winemakers tend to vinify Gewürztraminer as a lighter-bodied, slightly sweet wine, apparently for fear their customers will object to the slight bitterness that characterizes the wine when it is fermented to dryness.
Gewürztraminer is justly famed for its wonderfully exotic, complex aroma, which is reminiscent of roses, lychee fruit, allspice, peaches, and grapefruit. Its rich, spicy flavors makes it a wonderful accompaniment to spicy Asian cuisines, as well as rich, Germanic-inspired entrees such as schnitzel, sausage, and pork and ham dishes.
