3 minute read
Wine Not Give It A Try?
By Guy Boursot
Guy Boursot is a wine presenter and consultant and is based in West Cork. Over the last 30 years, he has given upwards of 1,000 talks on wine - in person, on radio, and on television. Guy comes from a long line of passionate wine enthusiasts, and you can experience this passion in An Culúrlann on Friday October 20th.
Contact guy@boursot.ie
The words “wine” and “tasting” are enough to frighten off many people. It is assumed that there will be much swilling, sniffing, gargling and spitting. But that’s not necessarily what it’s about.
The appreciation of wine is subjective, like reading a book – everybody has different taste and what one person loves, another doesn’t. There’s no right or wrong and it’s all about what you enjoy: pure and simple. Some people think they should know something about wine. This is based on an old regime in which people with money were generally more wine drinkers than beer drinkers and so, whether they liked it or not, wealthier people had a hand in linking wine to money. But wine drinking is now universal, whether it’s a bottle from the supermarket at a knockdown price of €9.99 or whether it’s a fine Bordeaux at €500.
However if you are curious, look at the colour of the wine. A white will be anything between colourless, through lime to a deep golden colour. A red can be anything between deep purple through to brown. Colour depends on various characteristics such as grape variety, climate, winemaking techniques and age of the wine. Colour change, in the main, is caused by oxidation.
A warm climate is likely to give a deeper coloured wine, as does putting the juice into oak casks, when the liquid breathes (oxidises) through the oak. Time in bottle also leads to deeper colour, again via oxidation from the wine being in contact with air through the cork. Wine is alive and evolves constantly.
For a bit of fun, you could smell it. There should be no smell of cork – assuming of course that the wine has a cork! What do you smell? Elderflowers, blackcurrants or gooseberries –almost invariably signs of Sauvignon Blanc? Or a more cherry-ish aroma, and it could be Pinot Noir? There’s a whole array of flavours, but the curious thing is that wine seldom smells of grapes!
Before swallowing the wine, try rolling it around in your mouth a little, perhaps breathing in through your mouth at the same time. Take at least five seconds and you should find that its flavour is multiplied.
There is no science to tasting wine – it is more useful to professionals who, in one session might try tens or hundreds of different wines, trying to work out which will fit their buying criteria.
Appreciating wine should be fun and don’t get too hung up about the “what should I do?” - after all, you’re only pouring it down your throat!
