Understanding Wine - Red Wine

This was the class I was hanging for - red wine.  Our dunce table decided were going to enjoy this to the max and we had brought along three different cheeses to compliment our wines.  All of the other tables watched us with envious eyes.  Hey, our table may be full of wine dumbos but the rest of you were pretty stupid to not bring any cheese for tonight's class.  *nyah nyah!*

Tonight I learnt that pinot noir grapes are difficult to grow in the warm Australian climate.  All 'burgundy' wines from France are pinot noir and decent Australian versions are few and far between.  I shall keep that in mind!  Where Australia and especially the Barossa does excel is the shiraz.  No news to me.

Tonight's tasting began with a rosé.  Chas was a bit 'that's interesting' as he considers rose to be a 'pink white wine'.  They are mainly made from grenache grapes which were historically used for cheap cask wine.  In other words, rosé is a quaffing-style wine.  We were advised that rosés generally tend to be either very dry or very sweet and it's hard to tell until you open the bottle.  I'm not big on dry rosé wines generally but tonight's one was slightly sweet and finished dry.  It was actually quite nice and I would pick up a bottle if the occasion demanded it.

We also tasted a pinot noir (ok), a nebbiolo (Whut?  Never heard of that.) and sangiovese.  The last two are associated with Italian wines with the sangiovese being the main part of Chianti wines.  The nebbiolo I really quite liked!  Aaah yes, wine tasting class has opened up a new world for me.

I (predictably) liked the merlot.  It's the wine you should drink to ease yourself into the whole red wine scene due to it's soft tannins.  I still don't quite understand what tannin is.

The tempranillo wasn't that great.  This is a grape which is abundant in Spain and is usually one of my picks from a wine menu.  However that was when I was in UK and had easy access to many Spanish wines.

We finished off with a shiraz and the king of reds - a cabernet sauvignon.  Both were pleasant.  Chas also ran through why wines are blended e.g merlot blended with cav sauv makes it 'softer' and easier to drink.  *thumbs up I say*.  Our dunce table polished off our cheeses and left the night a happy bunch.