Wine 101: All you need to know for a basic wine tasting

Many years ago, when I first began teaching wine classes, I quickly learned that most people do not want to receive too much information. Wines can be intimidating and confusing, and many times we overwhelm the new wine drinker with unusable facts. There is a great deal to learn about grapes and wines, but until the basics are understood, it doesn’t really matter to the typical novice whether the winemaker went to the University of California in Davis or in Fresno. If you learn a few simple areas to examine, you will easily find which wines please you, and that is their only responsibility. Start with the six S’s: see, swirl, sniff, sip, swallow and store. See (color): Pour a third of a glass to allow room for swirling. White wines can be made from any type of grape, because all grape juice is clear. Red wines are made by leaving the dark skins of red grapes in contact with the clear juice, which allows the juice to absorb the color. This skin-to-juice contact may be as long as two weeks. Pink, or rosé, wines get their color the same way, but the skins are left in for a very short period of time, usually no more than 24 hours. When white wines are very young, they are virtually colorless. As they age, they will gradually darken to a golden color. Generally, when white wines get dark, they have probably lost most of their character and might be declining in quality. There are a few exceptions to this. White wines aged in oak barrels and those that have significant sweetness will likely have more color, even in their youth. Red wines start out very deep purple or red and gradually lose color as they age. Older reds show a softer red color, even to the point of having a brown edge to them. If a young wine, red or white, is brown, it is a sign of spoilage. Swirl and sniff: Swirl the wine to increase the aroma. You can do this on a table to practice until you get the knack. After you swirl, take a good sniff of the wine in your glass. The aromas should be fresh and clean. Young wines should smell like fruit. White wines tend to smell like big white fruit – apples, pears, peaches and grapefruit. Red wines should have aromas of little red fruit like raspberries, cherries, plums, blackberries and currants. The only other acceptable aroma is that of oak. Many red wines are barrel-aged, so you might pick up barrel-related aromas, but fruit should always be the dominant aroma in young wines. White wines tend not to age well, but reds will normally age quite well. When reds mature for 5 to 10 years, the red-fruit aromas of their youth will develop into nonfruit descriptors. You might find scents of earth, woods, mushrooms, tobacco and cedar. This is when “aroma” develops into “bouquet.” Aroma is the youth of a wine; bouquet is the maturity. “Off” aromas of sulfur, must or mildew are signs of a spoiled wine. These wines should be returned to the wine shop or rejected in a restaurant. Sip and swallow: Take a small amount in your mouth and roll it around to hit all of your taste buds. To really get to know the wine, you have to give it some time to get to know your buds. After you have tasted all the aspects of the wine, swallow it and think about how the flavors linger in your mouth. Do they last or disappear? Great wines tend to linger, while simple wines tend to leave very quickly. The lingering taste is the “finish,” and this is the part of the wine that really allows it to match flavors of food. Only if the taste of a wine stays in your mouth for a while will that next bite of food be able to combine with the wine flavors. If the wine totally disappears, there is nothing left in your mouth to pair with the flavors of the food you’re having. Storage: One of the easiest ways to ruin a good bottle of wine is to store it improperly. A beautiful wine rack kept in a kitchen with lots of heat will certainly lead to the lowering of wine quality over time. My recommendation has always been to find the place in your home that most resembles Meramec Caverns, as wines are most happy in a cave. Find the darkest, quietest and coolest place, and you will be rewarded with properly matured bottles. Wines with natural-cork closures should be kept on their sides to keep the corks moist and tight. Synthetic closures and the newest packaging development, screw tops, do not require the bottles to be stored on their sides. The six S’s are the basics of tasting, but there is no magic pill to learning all about wines. If you have a basic knowledge of grape varieties, it will be a huge step toward finding wines to please your personal taste. Just the knowledge that Chardonnay is a dry white and Riesling is generally a slightly sweet white will help you to make educated buying decisions. Get on mailing lists from wine shops and sign up for newsletters from wineries, both for special sales and for great wine information. Wineries and wine shops frequently conduct classes and tastings that allow you to learn in a group. Wineries are really a great place to learn, and they are great additions to the educational side of wine. One of the best ways that I have found to learn is to listen to others about their opinions about wines being tasted. There are ways to learn outside of the local wine scene. When you go to your favorite bookstore, the number of books and magazines featuring wine and food is nearly staggering. There is also the Food Network, which is mostly food information, but very often wines are discussed and recommended. And we certainly have no shortage of Web sites. A great local source is the Missouri Wine and Grape Board Web site, www.missouriwine.org, which has links to every Missouri winery’s Web site.