The basics of wine appreciation

MANILA, Philippines - Learning how to taste wines starts with your basic senses. Anyone can be trained in wine appreciation.

It begins with the right glass. A simple tall narrow elongated-shaped glass will help to concentrate the delicate aroma of a white wine better while a larger round-bowled glass is better for red wine as this allows for air to be swirled into the wine, which will bring out its rich flavors. When served a glass of wine, do not drink at once. Hold the glass against the light or white cloth first to see if the wine is clear and free from impurities. Next, swirl the glass to blend the aroma and bouquet of the wine. The glass is also held by its stem so that the warmth of your body doesn’t change the temperature of the wine. Also, take short sips, not big gulps when drinking.  

The reason for the sniffing is to identify the wine’s scents: spicy, fruity, floral, smoky, tangy and sweet. On the other hand, the purpose of the swirling is to allow air to mingle with the wine and release its aromas. Swirling allows your taste buds and sense of smell to participate in the detection of the finer flavors of wine.

The trickiest thing, according to experts, is to identify these aromas, whether they are fruity, oaky or grassy. This is the aspect of wine appreciation that needs a bit of practice. For the first sip, you should let it linger on the tongue and take sniffs of air at the same time. Sommeliers are known to spit out the wine after the first sip as this is considered proper etiquette during wine tastings. This is because during such events, they will likely get intoxicated from the taste and smell of several wines in a row.

We actually smell most of the things that we think we taste. Our taste buds discern only four flavors: sweet, sour, salty and bitter. As an aid to novice wine tasters — and experts, too — the wine scientists at the University of California at Davis, one of the leading wine-making and grape-growing schools in the US, came up with something called the “aroma wheel.”  The experts consulted with scores of wine lovers and wine tasters to list all the descriptive terms they could imagine for the smells of wine. Then they organized them, categorized them, eliminated all that seemed ambiguous or less than clear, and ended up with a list of 12 major categories of wine smells, subdivided into 29 subcategories and in 94 specific terms.

The wheel categorizes the taste of wines into the following:

• Fruity — Citrus (grapefruit, lemon; berry), blackberry, raspberry, strawberry, black currant (cassis); tree fruit (cherry, apricot, peach, apple), tropical fruit (pineapple, melon, banana); and dried fruit (strawberry jam, raisins, prune, fig)

• Vegetative — fresh (stemmy, cut green grass, bell pepper, eucalyptus, mint), canned-cooked (green beans, asparagus, green olive, black olive, artichoke), and dried (haw-straw, tea, tobacco)

• Nutty — walnut, hazelnut and almond

• Caramelized — honey, butterscotch, butter, soy sauce, chocolate, molasses

• Woody — vanilla, cedar, oak, smoky, burnt toast, charred, coffee

• Earthy — dusty, mushroom, musty (mildew), moldy cork

• Chemical — petroleum (tar, plastic, kerosene, diesel), sulfur (rubbery, garlic, skunk, cabbage, burnt match, wet wool, wet dog), papery (wet cardboard), pungent (acetic acid/vinegar), and soapy, fishy

• Pungent — hot (alcohol), and cool (menthol)

• Microbiological — yeast, sauerkraut, sweaty, horsey, “mousey”

• Floral – orange blossom, rose, violet, geranium

• Spicy — cloves, black pepper, licorice, anise

Sweet wines are often called dessert wines. But the truth is that a wine’s sweetness is determined by residual sugars, the remaining amounts of sugar in the wine after final fermentation. The sweetness taste factor is affected by other wine components such as acidity, tannins, alcohol and temperature.

Pairing food with wine is also an essential part of wine appreciation. Red wine should go with meat while white wine is usually paired with fish. Is it always the case? Not really. For example, salmon and tuna, which are richer and fleshier than most fish, can hold up to a light-bodied red wine. Meat is usually paired with red wine but if you are having your favorite beef dish, there’s nothing wrong with having it with a white.

Wine can also be enjoyed with Filipino food. Carlo Rossi California White, for example, would taste great with lechon, beef mechado or chicken pastel with white sauce while Carlo Rossi California Red is the perfect partner for grilled liempo and beef salpicao. Carlo Rossi California Red Muscat, on the other hand, would bring out the taste of pochero and pork adobo.

Carlo Rossi Red Muscat is a fresh, grapey, aromatic wine with a lovely freshness and sweetness. When matching wine with food, remember that salty foods like peanuts or potato chips contrast nicely with sweetness. If you are pairing Carlo Rossi Red Muscat with dessert, choose something that isn’t overly rich or sweet like an apple pie or blueberry cheesecake.

Another sweet wine is Carlo Rossi Sangria, which is easy to drink with bright fruit flavors and a fresh sweetness. Just as red and white wines complement certain kinds of food, sangria can also enhance the flavors of food. Sangria is great with spicy or fried food like mozzarella sticks, calamari and even tempura. Carlo Rossi Sangria is available in supermarkets and wine stores in screw cap bottles of 750 ml.

Enjoying a certain type of wine and not liking another is all a matter of personal preference and not about trends.  Wine appreciation is really all about understanding and appreciating the quality of a particular wine.