Unexpected Download Hit… My web hosting service went through some sort of upgrade or overhaul recently, and part of the enhanced service is a rather nifty statistics area. Now I can find out what people are looking at when they stop by my website (up to a point). The revelations are interesting, and I strongly urge anyone who has a website to look at any statistics that are provided. It can be very telling. For example, I had no idea that one of my most popular features is my winetasting notesheet. Who would have thought that so many visitors would even find it? (It's buried under the Articles menu.) Moreover, people follow through by downloading it. It looks like I have a hit on my hands. I developed this notesheet the way I develop all things: I was just trying to figure it all out, and this notesheet was the result. I use it for guided tastings and still use it in my day-to-day tasting. I find it really helps me stay on track with each wine. (You can download the sheet as a PDF file from my website.) Aunt Belle Knows About Wine I remember in university we often relied on acronyms and mnemonic devices to help us organize and master new material. Once we'd coined a catch phrase from the material, it was a simple matter of memorizing the device so we could later spill out great heaps of knowledge on an exam. So I came up with a mnemonic, based in the notesheet's sections, to help me organize the wine evaluation process. So, let me introduce you to the "Aunt Bell System of Wine Appreciation". There is much to understand and remember when it comes to tasting, evaluating and appreciating wine. The five basic points are Appearance, Nose, Taste, Body and Length -- ANT/BL, which I have dubbed, appropriately enough, the "Aunt Belle" system. We have an Aunt Belle in our family, but she is not the inspiration for this system. So with apologies to my sister-in-law, here is how the Aunt sees it. A is for Appearance. Frankly you don't learn all that much about wine by just looking at it. The colours are interesting, often beautiful. Sometimes the depth of colour will give you a clue to the wine's age or character, but not necessarily. However, a good practice is to look for visual faults. Is the wine cloudy at all? Does it lack brilliance? Is there an un-characteristic brown tinge? (OK in very old wine but a sign of trouble in young wines.) Is there stuff in it that shouldn't be there? Good wine is clear with good, even colour and a hint of sparkle (the visual kind). And what about "legs"? See my April '05 newsletter for the full story here. N is for Nose. This is the smell of wine. Of course "smell" is too inelegant a word, perhaps even a bit off-putting. (Nor does it help us with our mnemonic device.) Experts don't quite agree on the words aroma and bouquet when discussing wine, but all agree that the "nose" of the wine sums it all up. What we mean by the wine's nose is all of its aromatic properties. How does it smell? Is it fruity? Spicy? Vinegary? Does it smell of chemicals (or the infamous barnyard or "cat's pee")? Nosing the wine is when you do the bulk of your work. All of the wine's elements are doing their best to escape from the glass, and your nose is there to catch them. There are dozens of aromas in wine and it takes a lot of practice to the able to detect them consistently. At the same time, no one can fault you for what you claim to perceive in the wine. A good place to start your nose training is with a Wine Aroma Wheel. This handy chart, which is frequently reproduced in wine books, helps you to narrow in on the many different aromas that can be found in wine. T is for Taste. The conventional wine wisdom is that the mouth confirms what the nose already knows, although sometimes the palate will disprove what the nose suspected. (A wine can have a wonderful nose but fall short on tasting.) A large part of our taste mechanism is, in fact, smell, so taste and smell go hand in hand. That's why you hear wine buffs sloshing and slurping wine -- to get the maximum amount of aroma into the nasal receptors near the back of the throat. They will also "chew" the wine to present it to all the taste surfaces of the tongue, mouth and back of the throat (this requires some swallowing). B is for Body. Is it a delicate wine that dances across your tongue? Then it's likely light bodied. Does it seem so thick that you could stand a spoon up in it? It must be full bodied or possibly big or even "fat". A wine's body is defined as its feeling of weight in the mouth. Some wines feel light and others feel heavy or full. Body is the combined effect of alcohol, sugars and acids, and it is an important factor in matching wine with food. A good comparison is milk, oddly. Skim milk is very thin, whereas 1% has a bit of substance to it; 2% is fuller still, while whole milk, at 3.5% butterfat, is the densest of all. With practice, you can even evaluate weight within wine styles ("…rather full-bodied for a valpolicella"). L is for Length. The taste of some wines disappears from the mouth almost immediately. They are short wines. Others seem to linger on and on, and can only be called long. This is also a wine's "finish" -- its final, lingering taste impressions. The simplest way to determine length is by counting. A short wine will make its exit within a few seconds, while a long wine can stay with you for one or two minutes or more. (There are even wines that seem to stay with you for hours and sometimes days!) Long is usually better, and a long finish is considered quite a bonus. So that's it -- a simple device to help you sort out and remember the five critical components of wine tasting. The next time you sit down with wine, let Aunt Belle help you enjoy it. Check out its Appearance, savour its Nose, sample its Taste, then assess its Body and Length. If all these elements are good, then the wine is in balance and should be a winner. Oh, and about those last two boxes on the notesheet ... feel free to record any other impressions you have about the wine. Anything you can put down will help you later when you review your notes. Even a single word such as "yummy" or "yuck" will help you decide whether you want to try this wine again. As for the food matching area, isn't that what wine is for? Go ahead and be creative here.
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All material is Copyright 2006 by Richard Best - The Frugal Oenophile.
Reproduction by any means must be accompanied by proper attribution.