Wine Tasting

Monday, July 30-

After class, a nice Frenchman named Betrand Ehret who usually teaches at the university gave a workshop on wine. Wine comes from grapes, and only wine that comes from grapes can be called wine. Alcoholic drink made from strawberries cannot be called wine, it must be called strawberry wine. He gave us a packet on how to make wine, and the different methods. You can pick grapes by hand the way they do here, or you can us a machine that wiggles. The wiggling machine jiggles the grapevine so the grapes fall down (our instructor never actually said 'wiggle' or 'jiggle,' I just think they sound funny). After they are processed, and bacteria is added to ferment, they can be stored in two ways, in traditional wood barrels, or in steel tanks. Machines and steel tanks are more common outside Europe. In California, it's too hot to pick in the middle of the day, and machines can be used even at night, and Europe, especially Switzerland, there's a lot of hills that would cause the machine to roll into the lake. Here, many people store their wooden barrels underground to keep it cool. While in places like California, they use steel tanks to allow the temperature control, so you can store it above ground. They also cheat a little by dumping a teabag-like thing containing wood to give the illusion of a taste that it was stored in a barrel.

There's a lot more into it but it could get boring. Every step in the process of making wine makes a difference in how it tastes. The best part was how to taste wine.

Sight
Look at the wine, and take in its color and its clarity. Wines have different colors, different shades of red or white. Always serve wine in a clean glass. Red should be room temperature, white should be chilled.

Smell
Smell the wine, and try to figure out what it smells like. Even though it's made from just grapes, they have distinctive smells. Swirl the wine to get a more rich aroma from it.

Swirl
When you swirl the wine, pay attention to the "legs" or the water things that remain on the side of the glass. The French call them "tears." How long it is can tell you the alcohol content. The ring around the wine can also tell you the alcohol and sugar level. The ring is the surface of the wine inside the wine glass, and you can determine it by how thick it is. Usually the thicker the ring, the more alcohol content and the more sugar it has.

Taste
Finally, taste the wine. He said you should sip a little and hold it for at least 12 seconds to get the taste. Since Europeans are used to bitter food & Americans are used to foods with a lot of sugar, each palate is different in tasting wine. Some might find sweet wine not so sweet, and vice versa. Then he said usually during a wine tasting, they would have a bucket where people can spit out the wine after tasting, but since he is French and they are lazy, he forgot; so we can walk outside onto the balcony.

Time
Wine has the lifetime of a human. When it's growing up, or fermenting in the container, its taste starts out bad, then develops into a better taste. When it's being bottled, going from big container to little container, it needs time to rearrange itself and thus its taste has a little dip; this drop in quality is the teenager years. Then it's the golden years where wine tastes good for a long amount of time before it starts to deteriorate, the adult stage before aging. Wine should not last more than 15 years (?).

The life of a wine depends on the wine, it could be 2 years, 5 years, or longer before maturation. You need to taste it before you can find out. When you buy wine, open a bottle and taste it to see where it is in its life. Then take it out again at most a year later & try it again. If it tastes good, invite some friends and have a dinner party. If it doesn't taste good, try it again some other time later. Therefore, always try to buy at least a crate of the same wine when buying wine.

He said a good wine depends on the person, just like there is no standard what a beautiful women should look like. It also changes with time.

I didn't really much like wine before. But after his class, I think I can like it now, to appreciate the time and heart that goes into wine, they way he taught me. It's hard because all the things he said comes from experience. I can't know what wine tastes like because I haven't tried a lot of it before, so there's no memory to trigger.

At least not yet. I am learning to love wine. Does this mean I'm growing up, learning to love wine? Drinking coffee after dinner? Learning how to put on cosmetics, wearing heels and matching outfits for events, walking the thin line between attractive but not slutty? Being on my own. Handling my own money without looking to my parents. Trying new things. Dare I try to be more of myself?