Is anyone interested in wine? I'd like to share what I learned today at the wine lecture. It was interesting. Let's see …
* Enology = wine making (a vocab word I hadn't known)
* NY State is the 3rd largest state when it comes to wine production. I had thought it was 2nd to Calif., but Washington State is 2nd.
* There are 3 basic kinds of wineglasses, though they come in many shapes. The largest is for red wine to aerate it, the next is for white, and a narrow flute is for sparkling wine, since you don't want to aerate it and lose the carbonation. Some people drink sparkling wine in large, open glasses, but this isn't as good. The wide ones were developed sometime in the 1600s, and a legend went around that they mimicked a queen's breasts, but this isn't so.
* Corks (real cork from trees) is the best for wine that you'll keep for a long while to age, though the wine can go bad from them, especially if they've been exposed to chlorine, which might be the case in a winery where they are trying to kill germs.
* Synthetic corks are OK if you'll drink the wine more quickly, like in 18 months.
* Screw tops are OK, like in less than 10 years.
* Glass stoppers are good, but they are expensive, so they are rare (I've never bought a bottle of wine with one).
* If you are in a restaurant, and the waiter hands you the cork, what do you do with it? That's so you can look on the cork and see that the wine printed on it matches the label on the bottle. If you bought an expensive wine, some people might put the label of the expensive wine on a bottle of cheaper wine, but they are unlikely to change the cork.
* When you store wine, on its side, of course, put the label facing up in case any light hits the bottle, which will degrade the wine.
* I asked how long you can store an open bottle of wine. Drink it all; it degrades in flavor rather quickly.
* Why decant wines? Decanting lets the wine breathe more, but also, if there's sediment in the bottle, you can stop pouring before the sediment goes into the decanter.
* Native wines, ones that grew in the US before imports from Europe are wines like Concord, Catawba, and Diamond.
* French-American hybrids: Cayuga, Traminette, Seyval, Aurora, Baco Noir, and Chancellor.
* Vinifera: Traditional grape varieties like Pinot Noir.
* Charles Fournier and Dr. Konstantine Frank started wine grape growing in the Finger Lakes.
* Why do we graft American roots onto European grapes? There was a root louse that infected the roots, and the American varieties were immune, but when they took American varieties to Europe, it got the roots of the grapevines there, so now most grapes are grafted onto American roots. Using the roots does not affect the taste of the grape in any way.
* 4 components of wine: Sugar (whether it's dry, semi-dry, or sweet), acid (how tart it is), alcohol (heat), tannin (what dries out your mouth when you drink it).
* To pair food with wine, the ideal situation is when the food makes the wine taste better and vice versa. Thick, spicy food tastes better with a wine with lots of tannins. Lighter wine for salads, etc, but consider the taste of the dressing. When pairing wine with a meal, think of the whole plate of food, not just the meat. I thought it was interesting that fried chicken and salty French fries would be complemented best by a sparkling wine. With dessert, the wine should be sweeter than the dessert. Regional foods (i.e., Italian) go best with foods from the same region (i.e., Italian wine).
* When wine tasting, look at the wine in the glass first. Hold it up against a light background to see the color better. Look for color, clarity, and brilliance. Swirl it in the glass. Do this by rotating the glass while resting it on the table or holding it up. Swirling it aerates it if it hasn't been decanted. Warm it in your hands to bring out the flavor if it's too chilled, though generally, hold a wineglass by the stem to drink the wine. DON'T SWIRL SPARKLING WINES!
* Sniff the wine. Think of what the smell reminds you of.
* Taste the wine. Your sense of smell and taste combine to give you a sense of the wine. Toss it over your tongue by holding a small amount in your mouth, then breathing in gently over the wine to enhance the flavor. Try not to drool it when you do this.
* Spit the wine out into a container. If you don't do this, you will not be able to taste the succeeding wines so well. (The drunker you are, the less you taste -- my aside.)
* Use palate cleansers between wines, like bread, olives, or meats. Drink drier wines first. You may want to ignore the first taste and then assess the wine so you get a good idea of the taste after the other wines you tried before it.
* Red wines: the purple ones are younger; the brownish ones are older.
* Legs: Droplets of wine drip back into the glass after you swirl it. Look at them. The thicker ones mean more alcohol content.
* Bordeaux wine is a blend of wines, and can't be called that unless it came from that specific region of France. Same with Champagne, which is sparkling wine if it's from somewhere else. Someone made up the name Meritage (Merit + Heritage) for American Bordeaux mixes, but he requires a fee for use of the name, so other names might be used to avoid the fee.
* How to open a bottle of sparkling wine without injury: Remove the foil from the top. Unwrap the wire, called the cage. Cover the cork with a towel, and turn the bottle, not the cork, till you begin to feel it release, and then, gently remove the cork. There should be no big pop. Someone said it should be "like the sigh of a contented woman."
* Attributes of sparkling wine: Size of the bubbles (smaller is better), how many bubbles (more is better).
So there's more than you probably ever wanted to know about wine tasting -- but hey! It might come in handy someday if you ever come to this area and decide to do a wine tour.
