So! Class one. Exciting stuff!
On day one of my WSET I think one of the best things that I
walked away with is the wine tasting and evaluation technique. I kind of went
over this when I talked about the foundation course, but this is a more in
depth way of breaking it down. You can of course go much further than what I’m
going to talk about here, but it’s a great way of distinguishing it from just
red white or pink.
How do we break it down? It comes in 3 stages once it’s in
the glass: how it looks, what it smells like and how it tastes.
It starts with a look. Regardless of red or white wine you’re
going to be looking at the wines clarity, intensity and colour. With clarity
you need to take into account if it’s clear or hazy (turbid). The best advice I was given with this is to put
the glass of wine over some writing. Can you see through it? Yes, ok, if it’s
an inky wine it’s going to have too much tannin in it but use your best judgment.
Next is intensity, is the colour pale, medium or deep intensity. This one is
hard to describe in words, but try to think of it like this. Grammas dusty rose
couch vs. generic pink vs. electric Barbie lipstick pink. Each one is its own
distinct intensity of the same concept of pink. Finally in the glass we see the
colour of the wine – red, white, and rose. Colour can indicate age in a wine,
but that’s another topic for another day. Each one can be broken down further.
In white we range from lemon to gold to amber, in rose we get pink to salmon to
orange and in reds we get purple to ruby to garnet to tawny. There are of
course a MILLION other options in addition to these, but I feel that WSET and I
try to use the same lines when analyzing a wine. KISS – keep it simple, stupid.
Next up we have the nose, how does the wine smell? Does it
smell clean, clear and identifiable? Or does it smell muddled and off? How’s
the intensity? Is it light and reserved in the glass? Do you need to swirl the
crap out of it to make the wine come you? Medium where it comes to you or
pronounced where the sucker hits you from across the table with big fruit,
floral, spices, vegetables, or oak aromas? This is also where we are going to
find our first real fault; cork taint. WSET estimates that between 2-5% of
bottles with corks has cork taint. That seems really low to me. I would guess
that more than that are off, but people just don’t know what the wine they are
drinking should taste like. Cork taint is most easily identifiable by the wet
cardboard smell. Not pleasant.
Finally we have the palate. How do we break down all those
flavors into the good, the bad and the ugly? WSET recommends that you do it
like this. Start with sweetness, is it dry, off-dry, medium or sweet. Sugar is
first registered on the palete at approximately 4grams of sugar per liter, which
with all things considered it a fair amount of sugar, so sometimes when we
think we taste sweetness in a wine it may just be the fruit. Acidity is next;
this is the balancing force with sugar. We describe acidity in a range of low,
medium and high. A good indicator is how your tongue feels after the wine has
left your mouth. Does your mouth water along the sides? If so how much, acidity
makes a wine feel bright and refreshing and it makes your mouth water. Next we
have tannins and like acidity it’s measured in a low to high scale - but this
isn’t just for red wine. Because a lot of white wines are oaked they gather
tannins from the types of oaks they are fermented or aged in. Keep this in mind
when tasting some buttery chardonnays.
Next we have body, this can be described as light, medium
and full. This is the key to most food pairings and is why a light body red can
go just as well with a fish as a big oaky white will stand up to red meat or
heavy sauce.
Next we have flavors but lets do this with length, which is
just as important. We can get hints, memories and nuances of almost any flavor,
good or bad, on a wine. Some wines are going to be true to there varietals or
regional flavors while some blends will leave you guessing and reaching in all
directions for a hand full of different flavors. But what matters is narrowing
it down, going from fruit to stone fruit to peach. Build up your own flavor and
memory banks, try new things; you’d be amazed at the way it comes out in a
wine. And length ties in to this a lot. So you taste peaches on a wine, so what
if it’s gone in less than 5 seconds? (That would be a short finish) what if it
tastes like dirt and it lasts for over 3 minutes? (That would be a long finish)
the length of the wine should reflect the wine itself, specifically the
quality. As far as measuring a length of time, I would say it’s mostly
instinctual, but a 1-2 minute finish is where I like my wines because I
typically try to pair food.
Before any of this can really be done, rather, before it can
be done accurately, you need to make
sure you’re in the right circumstances to taste. You need to not be sick, or
have coffee breath, and please don’t have a smoke before you taste. Yes after a
time these flavors become part of the back ground and you can say they wont impede
your tasting and flavors. But what if you’re tasting a 1992 Freemark Abbey,
where it’s got that gentle tobacco finish? It’s going to get lost ‘cause you’re
used to that taste of cigarette tobacco on your pallet. Or espresso in a merlot
after a tall triple shot mocha latte, or anything that offers small wisps of
animal or telling the differences between cooked and stewed fruit when your
sick and your senses are dulled. Not judging, just sayin’. I’m not to say don’t
do have your cigar or your banana nut muffin, everyone’s got their own vice,
but maybe don’t mix those vices with the wine.
Cheers!
Chardonnay; sweet, sweet chardonnay. How we all love you so. 
White Burgundy - this is where you are going to see the most expensive and the best expression of Chardonnay in the world, undoubtedly. What determines the price? Well, that is determined by what's written on the label. Prices vary according to which region, district, village and vineyard the wine is made from. Specifically we have Chablis; the key to Chablis is to know that it is a bone dry white wine. Which I love. It's a crisp, refreshing, cool climate white. With high acid, austere green fruit and citrus, and notable limestone minerals. And it's got its own rating system - Grand Cru (being the very best), Premier Cru (being exceptional in its own right) and Village Level (which is still a Burgundy wine and still amazing but not as good as Premier Cru). Then we have the Cote d'Or; there are a few “smaller” regions included in this - we have the Cote de Beane, Puligny - Montrachet, and Mersault. These wines are typically fuller bodied, oaked and are a reference point to most chardonnays on the market. In Maconnais we have the warmest Burgundy climate because it is the furthest south. In here we see the sub regions of Poully-Fuisse and Macon. Because of the warmer climate, we see a larger volume produced and more of a tropical fruit expression - but it's also a bit simpler of a wine. Not necessarily a bad thing because some of these top notch Burgundy wines will cost you well over a thousand dollars a bottle. So selection is good for the non-millionaires among us.
Wine making technique plays a huge part in how a Chardonnay is going to taste. It can be tampered with a little or a lot, and its ability to stand up to this tampering is why it’s often called the Photoshop grape. You can take a Chardonnay that is less than what it should be, and makes changes to it after the fact. This can be a good thing, and this can be a bad thing. 
Another thing that winemakers do is ferment in stainless steel and just add oak shavings, chips, dust, and even something called “oak essences”, all of which progressively cheaper then the last. And you can taste the difference. But by using things like oak essence we are able to get bottles of oaked Chardonnay for under 10$. 
So
tonight, after the worlds longest shift at work, I got to take home a bottle of
this Okanagan wine. Based out of Summerland in British Columbia this little
French clone delight is exactly what I needed. 
I
was lucky enough to have this bottle dropped off with some tasting notes from
John Schreiner, one of Canada’s
most prolific authors of books on wine. He quoted the wine maker, Mark Simpson, as saying, “I started buying fruit and the next
thing you know, I tasted in the vineyards and kept saying, ‘Oh my God, I will
take it.’ That kept happening. I ended up with 14 tons and $100,000 invested
and [made] a whole line of wines.” What a way to start a winery! One of
everything! Mr. Schreiner goes
on to talk about siren’s Call and the rest of Mark Simpsons labels, I really do
encourage you all to read his blog. He goes on to quote Mr. Simpson explaining to
label as “It is from Greek mythology. It refers to the sirens that are
these creatures that are half women, half bird. The idea is that these
creatures are seductive and alluring. So the wine will be seductive and
appealing.” What a way to describe a wine label? Smooth, seductive and
inviting. Even the parent company, Artemis, had the tag line of “ Wine is the
Blood of Life”. Oh. My. God. What a magnificent line and ideology to have
attached to a wine and its company. Not only is that a brilliant marketing
idea, albeit not overly original, its still the icon of what the 20 something
wine consumer falls in love with. Sex sells, even if its just a ideology.
Over all I think this is a top-notch wine,
and for under 30$ in most liquor stores I would highly recommend it. Myself, I
had it alone but as for food pairings anything that came with a fine herbaceous
or tomatoes based sauce (“hello pesto!”)
would do magnificently. Just be careful that the protein that went with
it doesn’t over power the tannic structure. A chicken or turkey breast pesto penne
would be perfect.
