THE WORLD OF WINE IS GETTING DOWN OFF ITS HIGH HORSE. AMY ADAMS MEETS IT HALFWAY BY LEARNING THE ART OF WINE TASTING.
TNT Magazine
Tuesday October 18, 2005
Like a Booker Prize panel or Brigitte Nielsen, the world of wine
tasting has a reputation for being intimidating. Filled with gargling,
spitting and more descriptive words than a poetry anthology, it's a far
cry from sipping a Pinot Grigio down the pub. Even the job title's
confusing. Try saying ‘sommelier' after you've had a few.
Recently, though, there's been a move to make wine more accessible to
the general quaffer. Richard and Judy are about to launch the second
series of their wine club (70,000 people subscribed to their first) and
Jamie Oliver's pal, Aussie surfer-sommelier Matt Skinner seems to be on
a one-man mission to give wine back to the masses. South African Kate
Thal shares his enthusiam. Green & Blue, her East Dulwich wine shop
and bar, has “everything to do with pleasure and absolutely nothing to
do with pretension”, and now her regular tasting sessions are taking
this one step further.
Originally developed for British Airways' First Class flight
attendants, the How To Taste Wine Like A Professional course
‘demystifies' the language of wine so you can talk about it
knowledgeably - a necessary skill if you're going to keep Mr Pinstripe
en route to Tokyo happy, but also useful for the everyday wine drinker.
“When you know how to taste wine, it's impossible to be fooled by a
bottle that isn't good,” says Thal, poised by her blackboard in her
backroom bar. “So this could turn out to be an expensive session.” Not
that all cheap wine is bad, she insists, but a poor bottle of plonk
will become much more obvious.
With that, she pours our first glass of wine, a £6.35 French white. The
first stumbling block in the art of tasting is concentrating too much
on the tongue. How a wine looks can be an indication of its age and
quality. Broadly speaking, as a red gets older it becomes more pale and
as a white wine ages it becomes deeper in tone. If a white is a tawny
colour, it's likely to be oxidised (ie, as tasty as a slurp of vinegar)
and no wine should be cloudy.
Clear and pale, our 2004 bottle passes the sight test. Next to be
investigated is the smell. The tongue is a basic instrument when it
comes to distinguishing flavours, so it's important to swirl your glass
and have a good sniff before it comes bludgeoning its way in. If you
can detect hints of wet dog and damp cellar, the wine is corked (when a
natural cork becomes infected with the compound TCA which spreads to
the wine) and should be sent back.
Again, our bottle makes the grade, so finally it's ready to be drunk.
There's no gargling or spitting, just a thorough swill round the mouth.
With a bit of guidance as to what we should be looking for, we begin
shouting out flavours. Someone at the back can taste grass, and another
citrus. The woman beside me hesitantly suggests peardrop. We're all on
the right track, so it's time for a test.
With three different white and red wines poured in our glasses we have
to look, sniff and taste until we're satisfied we've matched each wine
with the description on the blackboard (does the wine taste rustic and
spicy or crisp and elegant, for example). It's more difficult than it
sounds and some of the group get quite worked up about it, making Thal
beg: “Please don't get stressed, it doesn't matter if you get it
wrong.”
In general, the atmosphere remains lighthearted, with most of us
pouring more generous measures than strictly necessary and one
gentleman declaring loudly that an Alicante Bouschet smells like farts.
Pleasure certainly outweighs pretension. The only worry is the
temptation of the shop's well stocked shelves on the way out. With
explanatory labels urging, ”Ooh, this is good stuff”, and claiming
another bottle to be “stonking”, it's hard to resist topping up the
wine rack.
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Amy Adams did a two-hour How To Taste Like A Professional course at
Green & Blue, 38 Lordship Ln, SE22 (020 8693 9250). £15.