For no good reason, I thought I'd make a quick blog posting on the "ceremony of wine tasting."

[xiphias]

You know, that whole thing where the person smells the cork, and tastes the wine, before letting the waiter or wine steward pour?

Actually, all the things in that are for specific reasons. And they're not too difficult to understand.

Okay. So the first thing is that the server puts the cork in front of you. You can feel free to ignore it, but there are three things that you can do with it: smell it, feel it, and look at it. And they all have a purpose.

See, there are two main categories of wine: fine wine, and table wine. Table wine is stuff you just drink. You don't go through this whole ceremony -- you just pour from the jug, or the box, or the bottle, and drink the stuff. There's a lot of really good table wine out there -- I've got two boxes of Australian table wine on my counter right now -- a Shiraz and a Chardonnay, about twenty glasses of wine per box, for seventeen dollars. And it's REALLY good stuff. The difference between "fine wine" and "table wine" is that "fine wine" is for sipping and tasting, and "table wine" is for drinking.

The whole "ceremony" thing is only done for "fine wine". And the vast majority of fine wines have the name of the vineyard or manufacturer printed on the side of the cork. So that's the first thing you're looking for -- does the name on the cork match the name on the bottle?

See, it's pretty easy to soak off a wine label. So it'd be pretty trivial to take a cheap bottle of wine, soak off the label of an expensive bottle of wine, and slap that label on the cheap bottle. And then sell the expensive bottle to someone else, or just drink it yourself. And it would look exactly the same.

But it's a lot harder to replace a cork. So if the side of the cork matches the label, it's probably the right wine.

The second thing you do is feel it, roll it around in your fingers. What you're feeling for is to make sure that the cork doesn't feel all dry and crumbly. Because if the cork is dry and crumbly, then the wine has gone bad. You can pretty much tell from just that.

I think all of you know that making food using microbes has all sorts of potential to screw up. Cheese, wine, beer, cured meats, other fermented foods -- they're great when they work, but you know that there's a real chance that some microbe other than the one you were going for is gonna get in there first, and make whatever it was into something totally nasty. So you maintain the conditions under which the food matures, to make sure that only the microbes you want are doing stuff.

If the cork is dry and crumbly, then it has become permeable to other microbes. And so you know that some other microbe has gotten in there and screwed stuff up.

That's what the smelling the cork is for, too. If the cork smells like wet dog, wet basement, or swamp, you don't even go on to tasting the wine.

So, what are you doing with the cork? You're checking to see if the cork is totally gross. If it's disgusting, you don't drink the wine. Simple, hunh?

So, let's say the cork isn't totally gross. So then you get a little bit poured into your glass. So, first, you look at it. If there's little things floating in it, you don't drink it. If it's just sort of cloudy, that may well be just how they make it, and that's not a problem. But if there's stuff in it? It fails, and you don't taste it.

Then you smell it. If it smells like vinegar, wet dog, crap, or stinky feet, you don't drink it.

Finally, you taste it. Generally speaking, if there was something seriously wrong, you would have noticed by now, so. mainly, you're just confirming that the stuff is okay.

See, that's the thing about the "wine ceremony." People think that it's a way to see if the wine is good. It's not. It's just to confirm that the wine isn't undrinkably bad.

So, there you go. Now, the next time you order a bottle of wine, you can go through the ceremony with confidence, knowing that each of the steps has an actual purpose -- to keep you from putting something that smells like crappy wet dog feet in your mouth.

Comments

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, that's very useful, I didn't know any of that.. not that I tend to stray too far from nice cheap drinkable stuff but all knowledge is good :)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I hope it's clear that I'm a HUGE fan of nice cheap drinkable stuff.

[navrins]

If at some point you were to provide some suggestions regarding nice cheap drinkable stuff, I might at some point make some use of it. I mean, more likely I'd say "cool, good to know next time I feel like having some wine," and by that time I will long since have forgotten. But it's possible I might use it.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Like I said, I've been really enjoying the Hardys Shiraz and Chardonnay from the box. I might suggest those -- yes, you can get a good bottle of wine for half that price -- but the box has the equivalent of THREE bottles of wine, and it's hard to get a good bottle of wine for a THIRD of that price. (But it's not impossible.)

[sezurei.livejournal.com]

That was a neat read. Thanks! :D

[holzman.livejournal.com]

That may be what they teach in bartending classes, but it's not quite what I got taught in oenophile classes.

I was taught you don't sniff the cork. Feel it, check the label, to see it matches the cork, yes. If the wine has gone bad, you'll know it when you smell the wine.

Looking at the wine is a check to see if it's gone bad, yes, but it's also an opportunity to appreciate the wine visually, and get some chance to know what to expect when you drink. (For example, the "legs" of the wine -- the residue left on the side of the glass after swirling, will be thicker and run down more slowly the more sugars are in the wine.)

Smelling the wine tells you if it's gone bad, yes, but it's also an opportunity to see get a sense of whether the wine has matured as much as it can as well as appreciating the complexities of the aroma and bouquet. It is indeed a way to see if the wine is good, and in what manner.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

All of this may be true, but it's not what you're supposed to do when the waiter or sommelier pours a little in your glass for you to taste. They're not waiting for you to give a discourse on the qualities of the vintage, they're just waiting for you to accept or reject the bottle.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Exactly. You do the actual tasting after the waiter's gone on to deal with other tables and stuff. They're busy folks.

[ailsaek.livejournal.com]

I love my Flist. I learn the neatest things.

[yehoshua.livejournal.com]

As a fan of a couple of particular cheap wines, I have to say the sniff test is an invaluable quick step, even when devoid of ceremony. Anyone who has gotten a great big mouthful of Chaussette de Gymnastique knows how important this is.

[jim-p.livejournal.com]

Chaussette de Gymnastique

Thus proving that everything sounds more elegant in French :)

[richardf8]

"That's what the smelling the cork is for, too. If the cork smells like wet dog, wet basement, or swamp, you don't even go on to tasting the wine."

I don't care if its table wine or fine wine, the step is indispensible; learned that the hard way

A few years ago, Baron Herzog was distributing a lovely Bordeaux. Got a bottle, and enjoyed it muchly. Got another bottle. Cork smelled off. The wine was bad and went back to the store. Concluded from the cork's characteristics that the wine had been stored upright.

[rmjwell.livejournal.com]

Unless, of course, the name on the bottle says Crappy Wet Dog Feet Chianti.

[zachkessin.livejournal.com]

You know if they made it I am 100% sure that someone would buy it

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Including then. There have been wine producers that have tried to fob off wine faults as wine characteristics. There have been people that have claimed that "barnyard" is not a fault, it's a characteristic.

They are wrong. If it smells like crap and tastes like crap, then it's bad wine, no matter how many people say it's supposed to taste that way. (Sadly, this is an actual argument in wine circles.)

[rmjwell.livejournal.com]

So Crappy Wet Dog Feet Chianti must be a product of the Barnum label, no?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Precisely. Of which there are a truly staggering number.

[cellio]

Thank you. I knew some of this but not all of it. (I didn't know the cork was stamped, and I thought when you looked at the cork you were looking for cracks and dryness. Touch is a much better sense for that. And I'd also heard the "don't sniff the cork" advice.)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Well, making a huge deal out of smelling the cork looks kind of stupid. I mean, you're just taking a quick whiff in passing. Anything significant, you'll pick up when you smell the wine directly, and the cork is always going to smell, y'know, something like a cork. If the wine smells like cork, that's often a problem; if the cork smells like cork, that's fine.

[jim-p.livejournal.com]

Nice writeup! Perhaps it should be laminated as an insert into a restaurant's wine list...

[dandelion-diva.livejournal.com]

That was very informative, and fun to read.

Thank you.:)

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Very informative, and thank you.

I thought most corks were made of artificial material these days, in light of the shortage of natural cork from cork trees. Is that true, and how does that affect the retention of barnyard/swamp gas/etc. odors by the cork if the wine goes "off"?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Well, not "most", not yet. But it's definitely going that way -- and not mainly because of a cork shortage.

The future is in both artificial corks, and in screwtops -- and probably screwtops, more.

Both of them are better at keeping a long-term airtight seal. Screwtops are so good at it that they are changing how some wines are made: for a few centuries now, vintners have been adding trace ammounts of sulphur compounds to wines to kill off some of the microbes, knowing that the very small amount of oxidation that the corks allow -- including artificial corks -- will be enough to reduce those compounds.

Screwtops give a good enough seal that that doesn't happen, and so vintners have had to stop using sulfides in screwtop wines.

Generally, the artificial corks will pick up the nasty smells, but you can't tell anything from feeling them -- they don't dry out and crumble like natural corks do.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Oooh. That was really informative. Thank you.

The big battle screw caps are having is that they've long been associated with cheap, inferior-quality wine.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

*puts this in my Food Files*

[flouritephoenix.livejournal.com]

I have a drink question for you. Well, two. Mebbe possibly the geekiest drink questions you've ever been asked.

So my friend and I want to create Sonic Screwdrivers and Sonic Lipsticks. I googled and found that Sonic Screwdrivers are Vodka and Blue Gatorade, which is something I wouldn't have consumed when I was 14, much less now.

But I know that under a black light, the quinine in tonic glows blue. The sonic screwdriver and the sonic lipstick don't always glow. They only glow when you activate them.

However, I need your opinion on whether I could just add Tonic to the Orange and Vodka and still have enough quinine in it to glow. I would just try it myself, but I need to buy a blacklight to try this out, and I thought I'd ask first.

I also found a drink called a Lipstick.

I googled to see if there's a drink called Lipstick.

Lipstick Cocktail Drink Recipe
Ingredients My Bar
2/3 oz White Rum
2/3 oz Creme de Bananes
1 oz Cream
1 oz Grenadine

Lipstick Cocktail Directions
Pour all ingredients into a cocktail shaker half-filled with cracked ice. Shake well, and strain into a small frosted hurricane glass filled with cracked ice. Garnish with a slice of orange and a maraschino cherry, and serve.

I'm not sure Tonic would be tasty with that. So I'll have to keep working to be able to drink Sarah Jane Smith's little toy. Couldn't be further from pre-prohibition cocktails, I know, but still fun questions. (Oh, and the grenadine recipe? Was awesome.)

The color of the bottle

[(Anonymous)]

One thing which constantly surprises me about wine is that the cost of a bottle has almost no relationship to the quality of the wine.

Michael.
http://ukwinedirect.com