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The art of wine tasting, or what I could glean in an hour and a half

You have to love a hobby where you’re encouraged to spit into a gilded silver bucket.

The art of the wine connoisseur takes years, even decades to learn, and even then you’ll never know everything. It’s a subtle form of appreciation that truly uses all five of your senses.

I don’t claim to be an expert, but I took a two-hour seminar on the art of wine tasting last year at Cornucopia and I think I got the gist of it. I’ve done a little reading since for my own edification, and I’ve tried to put what I’ve learned into practice. If wine tasting were hockey, I’d still be in PeeWee, but to someone who’s never seen a hockey game before, I might as well be Gretzky.

In other words, winning the respect and admiration of other even less-experienced wine tasters these days is just a matter of going through the motions. My limited knowledge is secondary to the overall effect.

Call me pompous, but I enjoy the whole civilized ritual of wine tasting and the curiosity it arouses in those around me – they generally don’t know I’m a hack until I drool wine down my shirt, but I’m getting better. That’s practice.

And sometimes, to the complete amazement of myself and those around me, I do everything right.

Why go through the motions?

Because drinking alcohol is easy, at least now that I’m of legal age, but wine is always a puzzle to solve, a challenge to unravel. You rarely buy the same bottle twice in a row, unless you’re completely boring, and if you’re at a tasting you don’t hover around the same table all night.

Identifying a variety or region of wine is a matter of educated guesswork based on observations. Judging a bottle wine is a matter of experience – the more Merlots you drink, for example, the more context you’ll have to rate the particular glass in your hand.

In the words of sommelier Mark Davidson – my instructor last year, and the instructor this year for the sold out Grape Beginnings: An Introduction to Wine Tasting – "There is a vocabulary to wine tasting that you learn over time that helps you to describe the little differences between wines. When someone asks you if you like the wine you’re drinking, you can say yes or no. But when someone asks you why you liked it, or why one wine you tried is better than another, it gets a little more difficult to qualify."

That’s something to keep in mind next weekend when the Cornucopia Food and Wine Celebration returns to Whistler. More than 50 West Coast wineries are taking part in the event, which includes the Preview Grand Tasting at the Delta on Nov. 8, the Crush! Gala Grand Tasting at the Westin Resort and Spa and the Wine Rave at the Bearfoot Bistro on Nov. 9. The rest of the weekend is a collage of tastings, seminars, and winemaker’s dinners, culminating with a farewell brunch.

If you want to get the most out of these events, and impress a few people, take some time to learn the basics of wine tasting.

Sight

A lot of professional level tastings are done blindfolded, first of all because the experts can sometimes tell the varietal (grape variety) of wine just by looking at it, secondly to hide the label and bottle, and thirdly to activate the other senses.

Because you could cause some serious damage to the ballroom and the other Cornucopia guests, no blindfolds are required. You’re free to use your eyes. And because you’ll get to see the brand and the bottle, you won’t impress anyone by guessing a ’98 Cabernet Sauvignon from California.

Instead you’re looking for colour, the intensity of the colour, and clarity. Is the wine uniform or does it pale around the edges.

When you swirl the glass (it’s a subtle swish, but don’t wear white shirts or try this on a light carpet until you have it down) does the wine stick to the sides of the glass. When it does, does it run thick like honey back into the glass, or in thin little streams like rain on a windshield? If it’s slow, the wine’s got legs, and if we learned anything from ZZ Top, legs are a good thing.

A thinner wine may have been filtered, or have a higher alcohol content. It may have been aged in copper or steel tanks instead of oak barrels.

It will behave the same way in your mouth as it appears. A thicker, denser wine will stick around, on your tongue and your teeth usually, and the aftertaste with it. If it’s a good quality wine, this is a good thing.

One red wine may glow red, while another appears flat because there’s particulate floating in it. The glowing wine may have been filtered more, or aged in steel instead of wood. Because winemakers can add spices, and other subtleties to a wine, that will increase the amount of particulate. It also can indicate sweetness, or bitter tannin from grape seeds and skins. Experience will show you the subtle differences.

Different winemaking and aging processes also produce different colours, intensities and textures. More traditional processes where time is not a factor will often result in thicker wines, but there are a lot of wines produced with modern processes that are excellent.

White wines are more difficult to appraise for colour, but the colours are there, ranging from almost clear to a murky yellow.

Smell

It’s not by accident that our centres for smell are located right next to our memory centres in the brain. Try sticking your nose in a glass of wine and sniffing. Then try swirling it first, mixing air in with the wine and freeing the aroma, and smell the difference.

With enough practice, you’ll stop smelling just fermented grapes and start smelling things like flowers, oranges, honey, cinnamon, mushrooms, trees, butter. If you’ve had this varietal or brand of wine before, one good sniff will often be enough to trigger your memory.

You can also detect something of the winemaking process. If it were aged in wood barrels for instance, you might smell the type of tree, or a leathery scent. If it’s high in alcohol content it might burn. If it’s high in tannin, it might seem bitter or earthy. If it smells like vinegar or mouldy bread, you might have bought a "skunky" wine.

If your mouth starts to water, you probably bought something you’ll like.

Taste

For an expert, tasting the wine usually just confirms their suspicions, although there’s always something in there you didn’t pick up.

Take a generous sip and swish it around your mouth and over your tongue, hitting all those sections mapped as sweet, sour, salty and bitter on that picture of a tongue in your science class.

Your sense of touch comes into play here, as you feel how light-, medium- or heavy-bodied it is. You can also tell how much sweetness, sourness, acidity, alcohol, and tannin the wine contains, which should tell you something about where, when and how it was made.

There are over 3,000 grape varieties used for wine, although within each general class there are more popular varietals and blends. Merlot is a type of grape, as is a Cabernet, Pinot Noir, Zinfandel, and Riesling.

Most of the grapes are more suitable for blends, but the brand name grapes mentioned above can be easily recognized over time.

To amplify the flavours in your wine, try holding a small amount in your mouth and slurping it, mixing the air and wine in your mouth.

When you’ve made your assessment, you can spit or you can swallow.

Since the judges are often required to taste and rate 30 or more wines at a tasting, there’s no way they can swallow them all without winding up in the drunk tank.

There is an art to spitting as well. Do it quickly, do it quietly, and, as Davidson says, "Put some wind into it. Wine tasting is supposed to be a classy thing, and there you are slurping and spitting, but that’s how it works. We all spit. I try to dress well to compensate."

Touch

I covered the body thing already, but there is something else to look for – temperature. Certain wines are better suited to better temperatures, and while your hands are not as accurate as the old rectal thermometer, they can give you an idea if a wine is in the right range or not.

A Merlot, Shiraz or Cabernet should be served at around 18 degrees Centigrade. Pinot Noir’s, Zinfandels should be served at around 15 degrees. A white Bordeaux should be served at about 6 degrees. A good guide can be found at www.intowine.com/enjoy.html .

Hearing

You can’t hear a wine, but you should listen to what the winemaker tells you about it, and the reactions of other people can help you to identify subtle things you might have missed. It’s a social hobby, after all.

Listening is also important if you want to evolve, and learn more about wine.

That said, go nuts. Enjoy your Cornucopia.