Great Wine Made Simple - Andrea Immer [8]
Skim milk—Watery, runny, feels kind of skimpy on your tongue and the taste goes away fast—is light-bodied.
Whole milk—thicker, richer, coats your mouth a bit, and the flavor lingers longer—is medium-bodied.
Heavy cream—dense, thick, really clings to the inside of your mouth, and the flavor hangs on—is full-bodied.
The difference in body is obvious both in the taste and to the eye—you can see how the texture thickens and the color deepens, and that the fuller-bodied liquid clings longer to the side of the glass.
I ask every consumer and waiter I teach to learn about wine and to talk about wine in terms of body, whether light, medium, or full. It’s very easy to understand, because it’s one of the few wine terms that has the same meaning to every taster. People quickly grasp differences in body, weight, and intensity in reference to wine, because they have experience in those differences. For example, they know that sole is lighter than salmon, although both are fish, silk is lighter than wool, and prime rib is fuller than chicken breast.
Also, I have found that body is a very comfortable realm for most people when it comes to talking about wine. Other descriptive terms are subjective and open to interpretation. I may think a certain Chardonnay tastes like an apple, but you may think it tastes like a pear, or just “white wine.” If I describe a Cabernet Sauvignon as tasting like blackcurrants, I am likely to confuse 99 percent of my fellow tasters because so few Americans actually know what blackcurrants taste like.
How does body factor in to your Big Six tasting? Throughout the retail stores, hotels, and restaurants I consult to, and on my Web site’s food-and-wine-pairing database, I work with thousands of different wines. But for me, this simple chart is the bottom line when it comes to teaching waiters and retailers. You will want to refer to it when you are tasting the Big Six:
Body Style White Red
LIGHT Riesling Pinot Noir
MEDIUM Sauvignon Blanc Merlot/Cabernet Sauvignon
FULL Chardonnay Syrah/Shiraz
That’s all there is to it. It takes, at most, five minutes for me to teach a new waiter or bartender what he or she needs to know about wine in order to sell it: the Big Six grapes, their body style, and how to pronounce the names. As far as I’m concerned, that’s enough wine knowledge to handle most wining and dining situations.
WINE TASTING
The Big Six
There are two options for doing this tasting.
Option 1 Taste all the Big Six grapes at once. This is great fun to do with a group of people—I demonstrate the entire tasting live with a group of wine lovers on my Complete Wine Course DVD. To simplify things, you will probably want to make it BYOB and G. In other words, give wine-buying assignments from my list of suggestions, and have your fellow tasters bring extra glasses, too.
I lean toward this option. It’s enough to keep your attention span without being overwhelming. In fact, I do this exact tasting with waiters and consumers all the time. I usually do the test with beginners, but truthfully, the wine sophisticates love it just as much.
I estimate that on average I present this tasting to several thousand people every year, from beginners to experienced tasters. The reaction is always the same: Now I get it. Tasting the wines all together gives you the big picture—the whole spectrum of light, medium, and full body, and the flavors of the Big Six grapes—all at once. There is nothing like comparison to cement the differences in your mind.
Keep in mind: Opening six bottles of wine does not mean you have to finish them all. A tasting portion is about one to one and a half ounces, and six ounces of wine is about the amount you’d find in one glass in a restaurant. (See Chapter 10 for how to preserve wine leftovers.) If you do this tasting with a group, there probably won’t be much to worry about.
Option 2 Taste the white