first wine-tasting class

Wednesday February 7, 2007

Today I helped Cliff set up for his first wine-tasting class setting out glasses and pitchers and then sitting at the door collecting class dues and checking IDs. I also helped him clean up afterwards corking bottles, cleaning up trash, and dumping out pitchers, ect. During the class, we tasted eight different wines and I learned some of the basics on how to observe them and take notes (see, swirl, smell, sip, and savour). We focused more on cheap whites today. I learned to try and pick out the grape smell/taste from other things that might contribute to the boquet, and what the “legs” of wine are (the tears that form on the glass after you swirl it—the more defined they are, the more alcohol is in the wine). Very fun. It’s surprising how much the wine went to my head even when I was pouring out probably half of the oz of each that we were tasting from into the spit bucket. (we tasted two at a time and by the last two I had troubles keeping straight which was which  ) I had fun trying to describe the smell and flavour. It was kind of tough to pick out certain smells and articulate what I thought I was smelling, but it was fun with a group of people at the table, since when someone suggested a certain smell I could sometimes then smell it myself. Holding the wine in my mouth and swishing really helped me to taste the flavour and keep it on my tongue longer too. I think I’ve mostly just knocked back wine before, more or less, (I know that’s terrible) so this was an interesting experience to actually take the time to try to savour it. I had always thought I was more of a fan of dry whites too, since I liked a particular kind of dry white, but I found that the two really dry whites we tasted near the end were not particularly to my liking, so I’m looking forward to tasting a few more different kinds to see if I am indeed a fan of dry or if I’m actually more of a fan of sweet whites. Plus I just felt more sophisticated swirling my wine glass.