01/05/07 Wine Tasting Pt. 4

Welcome to Vine to Wine! This is your host Linda Moran and today we are continuing our weeklong series exploring the basics of tasting and understanding wine. Yesterday we talked about the importance of smelling wine and the role our sense of smell has in our ability to perceive flavor. It is perhaps the single most valuable sense when it comes to enjoying wine. This is why so much emphasis is placed upon swirling and smelling prior to actually tasting. The written descriptions of wines are an analogy of what the wine is similar to, rather than a literal accounting of what is in the wine. When a wine is described as pineapple in character, is it doesn't have pineapple in it. What it does share are some of the same smells that pineapple has and consequently reminds us of pineapple. As you swirl your wine and take in the smells try to narrow it down to things you are familiar. In other words, if you do not know what a cumquat smells like you would not use that as a term to describe the wine. Thus, when you read a description of a wine including terms that you are not familiar, the likelihood of you finding other scents is bound to happen. That is why in a group often times the participants do not always agree on one description for a wine. We all have different points of reference. I smelled banana in a wine and a colleague said yes very ripe banana which, I realized was exactly what I was smelling. Listen in next week as we continue our series of understanding more about tasting wine and thank you for joining me on today's Vine to Wine.