Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Understanding Wine - White Wine

Tonight was white wine night.  Our presenter tonight had a pretty cool name - 'Chas' - and he was much more enthusiastic than last week's substitute.  His absence was explained by a bout of bronchitis last week.  The first thing Chas did was make us all wear name tags and forced us to interact.  He reasoned 'What's the point of drinking wine if you can't talk about it with your classmates?'  Hear, hear.

We tasted eight white wines tonight and pretended to be wine judges.  We assessed each wine by their appearance (colour), their nose (smell, bouquet) and it's palate (taste).  By the end of the night my table had decided we were the class rejects.  Could we detect the citrus-y smell?  Err, no it smelled like banana.  How about the meaty, earthy smell?  No, it smelled like a dusty bookshelf.  Despite Chas telling us 'everyone will smell it differently and there is no right or wrong', he still gave one of my table-mates a resounding 'No' when she thought her wine smelled like foie gras.

All that smelling became a bit too confusing for my nose but if I only learned one thing, I am quite confident I can identify the smell of an oaked chardonnay versus 'any other white wine'.  That tuna and melted cheese smell is quite distinctive.  I might be able to pick a riesling and a sauvignon blanc... I might.  I don't know.  One of the whites (a semillon) was actually deemed by Chas to have excess sulphur dioxide and a bit disappointing.  I had no clue!  The girl next to me judged that particular wine to be her favourite!  Hohohohohohohoho..

In regards to taste, again I'm pretty sure I can pick out the chardonnay but the other seven wines just tasted like 'white wine' to me.  My next door neighbour thought that same.  Hehehehehehehehehe.

Yes indeed, we are the table who needs remedial wine tasting lessons.  We've been given some homework in preparation for next week's lesson - drink some sparkling wine!  Will do!

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