Out & About Magazine Autumn 2020

Head sommelier at The Vineyard hotel and UK sommelier of the year 2019, ROMAIN BOURGER shares some tips on how to taste wine, including a blind tasting game you can play with your family TOP TIPPLES

T here is no right or wrong in wine tasting as everybody has a different palate and would be more sensitive to certain aromas. Wine tasting can trigger memories such as a place you have visited or the smell of a childhood favourite dessert – it is these memories that help you to identify the aromas you find. You need a white backing (whether it is a napkin, your table cloth or paper towel), a well-lit room without odour and, of course, your glass and bottle – and a corkscrew if needed. There are three parts to a wine tasting. The sight: tilt your glass at a 45 degree angle above and in front of your white backing – which allows you to see the true colour of the wine – to give you an idea of its quality and age. Young wines should be brilliant and clear, with no debris. Whites should also have a silvery or green hue and red wines should be bright with a more purple or red hue. If the wine has some age, it would become darker for whites – more toward amber – and clearer for reds – more of a tawny, brick orange hue. The intensity of the colour can indicate the body of the wine. The darker and more intense the wine, the richer it will be. Like a lot of things in wine, this is only a rule of thumb. With your glass still tilted, slightly rotate it to gently coat the the inside of the glass. This action breaks down the watery disc on the top of your glass (this is glycerol, a by- product of the fermentation). Then, look through the glass to observe the “legs” or “tears” of the wine – streaks or drops that run down the glass when coated – to assess its viscosity. This indicates the level of alcohol and body in a wine. If the legs are fast and thin, it generally means that the wine has a lower alcohol content and a higher acidity which would indicates that it comes from a cooler region. If the legs are slow and thick, you can expect a richer wine with higher alcohol and lower acidity, which would mean that it might come from a warmer part of the world.

oxidation (strong smell of rotten apple) or maderisation (strong Madeira smell, the wine has “cooked” due to being stored in an area that is too warm). The wine should smell fresh and clean and try to assess the intensity of the aromatics – for example, a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand would be considered a highly aromatic wine, when a Chablis would be less intense. There are three main categories of aromas: from the grape variety/ies – mainly fruit, flowers and herbs; aromas from human intervention during winemaking, such as oak aging or ageing on the lees (dead yeasts), which will develop aromas such as vanilla, toast, brioche, bread dough; aromas developed by bottle ageing, such as truffle, tobacco, honey, nuttiness or dried fruits. Try to find and name the flavours that you find, by family such as fruits, flower, spices, oak. Then maybe subdivide them – fruits for example would be citrus, white fruits, stone fruits, tropical fruits, red fruits, dark fruits. The same variety will develop slightly different aromas depending where it is from. A Chardonnay from Chablis will tend to have more citrusy and green apple notes, whereas a Californian Chardonnay from the south of the state will show more baked apple, ripe pineapple and mango. Next, swirl the glass around by rotating you wrist – anti- clockwise if you are right handed, clockwise if you are left handed. Smell the wine again and, by aerating the wine, you should find different aromas. The palate : Take a small sip and try to breathe some air in from your mouth by slightly opening your lips. By doing that, we allow a process called retro-olfaction where we can smell what we taste by breathing. Try to assess the acidity, alcohol and body of the wine (as well as tannins for reds). This can help to find where the wine is from and normally reflects what you saw when looking at the “legs or tears”. Repeat the process and try and

Lastly, your glass should not contain any sediment or bubbles – unless it’s a sparkling wine of course. Some wines might have a very small amount of carbon dioxide and generate very fine bubbles when first poured. Instead of using sulphites to protect their wines, some winemakers bottle the wine before fermentation has finished. The wine would have finished to ferment in the bottle and so release some carbon dioxide. These bubbles should go away with a bit of swirling round. The nose: Smell the wine as it is, without swirling your glass around, this is the “first nose”. It is important to assess the quality of the wine – some defects might happen such as cork taint (musty, damp cardboard smell),

identify the aromas you find – you might recognise some flavours that you smelt, but also find new ones. The more family of aromas you find, the more complex the wine is. Now assess the quality of the wine. Is it balanced? Are the acidity, alcohol and aromas in harmony? If the wine is too acidic for example, it is then not in balance and should reflect a lesser quality wine. You can add a fourth element to wine tasking, which is your conclusion on what the wine is if you do your tasting blind.

Tip Have someone put different fruits, spices, herbs… in little pots and then smell them blindfolded. This should help with remembering flavours and aromas – and it’s quite a fun game.

O&A AUTUMN 2020 40