explosive and tropical-fruit-packed, and aged/mature and nutty. We've developed dishes that highlight each of these styles. Every varietal chapter also includes a lexicon of tasting descriptors associated with that varietal and recommendations of producers who make wines that are representative of their regions and geographies in different price categories.
To round out the book, we present several menus that are mixed and matched from the book's recipes to create fun and educational dining events. Perfect Pairings is interspersed with tips, useful pointers, and a “cheat sheet” to reinforce and summarize key points. It concludes with a glossary of everyday wine terminology that will help you understand more about how wines are made and how they are described.
Throughout this book I encourage experimentation. Whether you choose to do informal wine tastings to learn about grapes, wines, styles, and geographies or to create delicious meals to further your learning and pleasure, it's all about fun, enjoyment, and what works best for you. Remember that, ultimately, what gives you the most happiness along the wine and food journey is all that matters.
So, let's move on to the basics of tasting.
TASTING AND ENJOYING WINE
Nobody is born with a wine palate. As nobody consumes Merlot as mother's milk, wine appreciation is completely learned. Learning to enjoy and to discriminate among wines is an acquired taste or skill and one for which everybody, regardless of level of perceived sophistication, is entitled to his or her own opinions.
Think about it. As my friend Steve Olson once put it, on the day you figure out you can spit out the strained spinach and have seconds on mashed bananas, taste opinions are born. Your point of view ultimately determines your wine preferences. I want to help you learn to feel comfortable saying, “Delicious!” or “Blech!” and to understand why you have the preferences that you do. Once you know something about a wine's background—the grape type, characteristic flavors, region of origin, production style, and so on—you'll know what to expect from your first sip.
The idea of wine evaluation is implicitly bizarre. No other consumer product causes such paralysis by analysis. Certainly we do not experience angst when shopping for soda, mineral water, shampoo, or chocolate-chip cookies! Although wine is no longer the exclusive domain of the so-called wine snobs, people are nevertheless intimidated by the variables and complexities of this magic beverage.
Learning wine appreciation is much like training for running a marathon: you have to temper your initial expectations. Wine lovers aren't born overnight but are formed with focused practice, best accompanied by the feedback, company, and direction of someone whose palate they trust and respect. Eventually you'll experience a moment when the lightbulb goes on. For me it was listening to dining-room babble while sipping a red Burgundy at Thanksgiving when I was about sixteen years old. The wine's complexity and layering of flavor all of a sudden made sense, and, as a reminder of that day, I still have the empty bottle, displayed with many others along the walls of my dining room.
Wine evaluation or tasting is a series of cross-references, with tastes framed against past experience. Once you've tried twenty or thirty Zinfandels, your palate will begin to recognize a basic varietal character linking those different bottles. With the recognition of that varietal “signature,” you can taste each successive Zinfandel against that standard and give it the yea or nay vote.
It's always helpful and informative to taste more than one wine so that you can compare. How can we find out what we prefer if not through comparison? Tasting two or three wines side by side is a great way to learn.
SAMPLING WITH ALL YOUR SENSES
With a little discipline, you can enjoy tasting wine and learn quickly. If you don't employ a systematic approach, you'll lose the benefit of context and your growing personal experience and perception.
In wine evaluation, we make use of all the senses:
| Sight: | The appearance of a wine is often overlooked, but it's packed with information. |
| Smell: | Most evaluation is done through aroma analysis. |
| Taste: | It's overrated in the evaluation process but still essential. |
| Touch: | Wine possesses tactile qualities, such as body and texture, that are critical to enjoyment and understanding. |
Hearing, too, in the figurative sense—listening to what the wine has to say—is also an evaluative step!
SIGHT
The appearance of a wine provides information about the wine's quality and age. With experience you can sense, literally at a glance, how a wine was vinified (or made) and from what type of grape or grapes it was produced. Wines that have spent a long time aging in an oak barrel may look deeper and richer than those that have not. This contrast would be obvious in a side-by-side comparison of current releases of a barrel-fermented Chardonnay with one that was fermented in a stainless-steel vat. Wines of different grapes display different hues: a lightly pigmented, cherry-colored Pinot Noir contrasts dramatically with an inky black Zinfandel, for example.
Examine the wine against a neutral background. A sheet of white paper or a white shirtsleeve will do fine. Avoid tinted backgrounds that will distort the wine's appearance. Ample light is critical, and natural light is far better than incandescent. Tilt the glass away from you and look across the surface of the wine. Compare the color at the rim of the glass with the color in the center. The difference, referred to as rim variation, is more common in red wines than in whites. Generally, the more the layers of color change from the center of the glass to the edge, the older the wine is likely to be.
ROSÉ AND BLUSH WINES
A rose is a rose, except when it's a…rosé! While rosé wines come in varied types, the best examples are made from red grapes. When pressed, all grapes run with clear juice; it is during the process of alcoholic fermentation that color is bled (the French call this process saigner) from the skins. The color of wine made from red grapes progresses from clear to blush to rosé to red. If the skins are removed when the liquid reaches a rosé color, the resulting wine will share characteristics with both reds and whites: mild red-wine flavors with a chillable white wine personality. Rosés should be served at a slightly warmer temperature than whites, however; an ideal temperature is around 55 degrees.
Dry rosés can be refreshing alternatives to light- or medium-bodied white wines. The grapes most commonly employed in dry rosés include Grenache, Carignan, Mourvedre, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Cabernet Franc. Pinot Noir lends itself to a lovely rosé still wine (often called vin gris), which can be quite enjoyable for warm-weather drinking. Vin gris and other dry blushes and rosés are delicious with fish, fowl, white meats, grains and pasta, and summer produce.
However, not all blush or rosé wines are dry. Off-dry examples such as white Zinfandel, blush Merlot, and Rosé d'Anjou (made from Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc in the Loire Valley's Anjou region) can easily take the place of a Riesling or Chenin Blanc. These wines, which should be served somewhere between 45 and 50 degrees, are excellent with ketchup-slathered burgers, aromatic curries, spicy Asian fare, and sweet barbecue sauce. Production methods for off-dry rosés vary; many are mass produced, and grapes are blended to achieve the desired color and sweetness profile.
The wine at the center of the glass should look bright rather than milky, hazy, or anemic. Although
