Great Wine Made Simple - Andrea Immer [4]
The Wine Buyer’s Toolbox is a foundation—what you need in order to arrive at a comfort zone with labels and wine styles, and to buy wine confidently. But there is more to it than just buying with dignity and precision. This book is about the fun of wine, about enjoying all its scents and tastes and possibilities, without big bucks and boring book-learning. That is what I hope to share with you. It is my job, every day, and it is a labor of love, because wine is my passion.
My love affair with wine began in college, when I took my first wine-tasting class at a little Dallas restaurant called The Grape. At the conclusion of each session, I would go to the wine shop, buy the same wines we had tasted in class, then go back to campus and repeat the tasting with my dorm-mates. A whole new world had opened up for me. I had drunk wine before, of course, but it was absolutely a revelation to comparatively taste several wines side by side. That is what you will be doing, with the tasting lessons in this book, so let’s prepare a bit. The process of tasting is one of the neatest parts of learning about wine, so read the next few pages with care. The steps may seem detailed at first, but after a while, they’ll become second nature.
Learning to Taste
I know you know how to drink. I am going to teach you how to taste. It isn’t just about what you experience on your tongue. Wine stirs all of your senses: seeing, smelling, touching, tasting—and even hearing—as you clink glasses for the toast. (It also stirs your sense of excitement!) Let’s walk through the steps of tasting a glass of wine. You should follow each of these steps in the tastings we’ll do.
Take a Look
Pick up the glass. Wine is beautiful, and shimmers with beautiful colors. It just wouldn’t be the same in a Dixie cup. Tip the glass away from you and look at the wine against a white background, such as a napkin or a piece of paper. Color reveals two basic things:
Is the wine in good condition? White wines darken and turn brown as they age. Red wines lighten and turn brown as they age. Why? Cut an apple in half and expose the flesh to air. It turns brown. That is oxidation, and the same thing happens to wine. Most wines are made to be consumed young and fresh—within one to three years of the vintage, or year, on the label. A lot of brown in the wine is a tip-off that the wine may have prematurely oxidized, which usually occurs with poor storage or a faulty cork seal that allowed air into the bottle. An oxidized wine loses a lot of its fruit flavor, freshness, and scent. For young wines in good condition, here is the color range you are looking for:
White Red
Pale yellow-green Dark pinkish-red
Straw yellow Ruby red
Yellow/gold Inky, dark purple
Is the wine light, medium, or full? As a general rule, the darker the color, the fuller-bodied the wine. When you have a few different wines poured side by side for tasting and comparing, stand up and look down into the tops of the glasses. You will see the color differences of each style, typically getting deeper in the fuller-bodied wines.
PINK PINOT TO CRIMSON CABERNET
The Color Difference in Red Wines
The juice of red wine grapes is the same as that of white wine grapes—clear. Red wine gets its color when winemakers steep the grape skins with the juice. They call this part of winemaking maceration, “skin contact.” The juice soaks up color pigment from the skins, coloring the wine red.
The amount of color pigment in the skin varies depending on the kind