Great Wine Made Simple - Andrea Immer [5]
Swirl the Wine Around in the Glass
Swirling is your ticket to the real taste of the wine, because the alcohol in the wine vaporizes when you swirl. Those airborne vapors carry the scents of the wine to your nose. And the nose lets you savor all of the wine’s flavor. The tongue can perceive four different tastes: sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. But the nose is capable of isolating literally thousands of different scents. It’s no contest. Although the nose is the winner, the tongue is still certainly vital to the tasting process. It senses temperature—think of the hot and cold thrill of a hot fudge sundae—and it perceives texture—gooey fudge, creamy ice cream. But it is the nose that lets us savor flavors—chocolate and vanilla. If you have a head cold, your sundae will be hot and cold, gooey and creamy, and sweet, but you won’t taste the flavor of chocolate or vanilla. You don’t have to wait until you have a cold to test this phenomenon. The next time you are digging into a sundae, pinch your nose closed and take a bite.
Taste is perceived on the tongue, but flavor comes from scent. Scents travel through your nose and the back of your throat to the olfactory bulb, the nerve center for smell. It shoots a message to the brain and the brain fires back: Chocolate! Big Mac! Garlic bread, and so on if the flavor is familiar. Or if you’re trying something new, it might say, What is that?
So swirling isn’t a trick to help you look cool at cocktail parties. You have to swirl to get the real scent and flavor of the wine. It takes practice at first, but it will become second nature before you know it.
“WHAT ABOUT THE LEGS?”
I’m sure you’ve seen people swirl their wineglass, peer at it, and say “Good legs.” Yes, wine has “legs,” but they are neither good nor bad. They are the streams of wine that run down the sides of the glass after you swirl it (some people call them tears). Thick, slow-moving legs can indicate fuller body; fast-streaming legs suggest lighter body. But they are not a sign of quality, good or bad. So don’t worry about “good legs” when you’re tasting. That may apply to your date, but not your wine.
Smell the Wine
Put your nose near the rim of the glass and take in the scent. Periodically swirl again so the alcohol vapors keep rising. What do you smell? If the words white wine and red wine come to mind, you’re right on. You will identify more specific wine smells such as Chardonnay or Chianti after you have experienced them a few times by doing the tastings in this book. Any other scents that you notice are good to use as a reference point, but don’t worry if you can’t precisely identify them.
So much of the pleasure that we get from wine comes from just smelling it. The diversity of scents in different wines is utterly exciting to me. The anticipation builds, the mouth waters. You know the feeling–chocolate chip cookies are much more seductive when you can smell them baking before you eat one. So be sure you really take the time to breathe in the wine’s aroma in your tasting.
You will quickly discover that scent triggers powerful responses. Over time, as you continue to sample different wines, you may find that certain wines evoke powerful memories, that a scent or taste can spark a recollection of something that may have nothing to do with wine. I have smelled wines that reminded me of my grandmother’s rhubarb jam, the Tropical Blend tanning oil that my girlfriends and I wore during summers in high school, and the Sloppy Joe sandwiches my mother used to whip up for us kids when she and my dad were going out on a Saturday night (well, yes, that