Wine Class: Intro To Tasting - How To Taste Wine With A Master Sommelier

Hi, I'm Laura Manek, Master Sommelier for The Weekly Tasting. This is the best class you've ever taken on wine. It's an intro to wine. So in this class that we're about to do, we're going to talk about everything you ever wanted to know about wine. So first and foremost, you might know that wine is a fermented beverage made from grapes. There's so many grapes and I know it can be daunting, can be confusing, especially if there's 1,400 grapes in Italy alone. Well, let's not get too far. Let's just keep it basic, back to basics. So we're talking about sugar plus yeast equals alcohol. So this intro to wine is saying let's talk about everything from color to nose to taste, appearance, and how to describe wine. So first, this wine is a great example of the formula for fermenting wine. If it says sugar plus yeast equals alcohol, there's one little thing I forgot to tell you, carbon dioxide. It's a byproduct of fermentation. So the way you get sparkling wine to sparkle, to be bubbly, is because alcohol and sugar produce carbon dioxide. If somehow you trap the carbon dioxide and you don't let it release into the air, you'll have a sparkling wine. It's kind of basic, but if you like sparkling wine, then that's how it's made. One of the other things that's important about wine is to think about how do you, what do you do? You know, you pick up your glass, it's just been poured. I don't know. I kind of look at it on the side. I might note the color. In this case, it's like this pale onion skin or slightly pink color. I might say, oh wow, I love the bubbles on this. So effervescent. So anyway, there's a little bit of a swirl you can do if you're feeling so adventurous. If you're not, you can leave it on the table and swirl it like that. The next thing you want to do is just kind of nose the wine. You just smell it, see what you think. The reason we give it air is because we want some of those delicate flavors to come to the top so that we can smell what the wine is like. Take a sip. That's the best thing to do. Just kidding, but not. Really what you're looking for is flavor. If you can't describe something, you don't know what you're getting, keep trying. It's always great to go to a green market, stop and smell the roses, but literally stop and smell the roses, and to just explore what does dill smell like, thyme. How are you going to pick those up in the wine if you've never had them? I get it. So in the beginning it might smell just like grape juice, but over time you're going to start to understand all of these flavors. And sometimes you're just going to be like, I never get chalk in wine. I have no idea what chalk even smells like. I don't even know if it has a smell. Don't worry. Just have fun doing it. That's the most important thing. So there's this concept called old world versus new world, and this is a really interesting thing. Old world regions are regions that at some point had kings and queens. So we're talking about Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Austria, Portugal. Anyway, old world wines, they are mostly earthy. They're not as bold. They're more subtle. Generally they don't have as much oak. And the new world's regions, by contrast, are regions that the kings and the queens sent explorers, or some cases, convicts. That's just, that's not really a joke. But at any rate, the old world wines, they're earthy and they're kind of mushroomy or leather or tobacco. Those are the smells that we get. And the new world, they're bold, they're bigger, they're fruitier, they're blockbuster. So I have in this class, I have an old world wine. This is a really good example of a white wine that is bold and intense, but also more earthy and less fruity. So it's a really good idea to take this white Rioja and take the California Chardonnay and compare them. Sit there and smell how one is earthy and more subtle, the Rioja from Spain, and smell the California Chardonnay. Just immediately when you put your nose in the glass, it just jumps up and grabs you. It's really a great new world, old world comparative. Winemakers have a choice, and will always have a choice in how they age the wine after they finish fermenting the sugar into wine and grape sugar into wine. So let's say you just finished and you have this big container of wine. Right away, you can put the wine in the bottle and then it's going to be just capturing that, like a Polaroid of exactly how it went into the bottle. So it's fresh, it's zippy, it's clean, it's citrusy, whatever the wine tasted like. It's exactly that wine. Or if you're a winemaker, you can choose to age your wine in an oak barrel. So an oak barrel is something that you cut down a tree, in this case, the species is oak, and you take these oak planks from this tree and you form them into a barrel. And the way you form them into a barrel and shape these planks into like a cylindrical shape is by heating the oak. So when you heat the oak, it becomes pliable and then you can make it into a barrel. And then you put the wine in the barrel and the wine starts to take on the flavor of that toast. So for example, when we describe oak in white wine, we say it tastes like cinnamon or clove or nutmeg. And those are the flavors that come from the fact that the wine is seeping deep into the pores of the oak barrel and getting all of those delicious flavors. This California Chardonnay is the perfect example. If you've never had oak, I recommend you try this. It's that kind of vanilla, clove, cinnamon, and nutmeg flavor. And you can also tell a wine is aged in oak because it has that slightly golden color. Oak is allowing oxygen in. So in addition to the wine getting those flavors, it's seeing a little bit of oxygen. So it's almost like keeping an apple on a table and having that slightly brown oxidized flavor. Not in the point of a flaw, but just allowing that wine to breathe, basically. So we're on to red wine. So let me just explain something. The reason we have red wine is because we have red-skinned grapes and we have technically green-skinned grapes. Say that two times fast. Red wine is made from red grapes and white wine is made from green-skinned grapes. But all grape juice is white. What? So what's rosé all about? Rosé is a red wine grape that's been gently left with the red skins and the white juice until it becomes slightly pink, rosé, blush, orange, you name it. So these two red wines were made from two different grapes. Some grapes, the DNA of the grapes says that the skin is thin or the skin is very thick. So if you imagine the cross-section of a grape, it's like a lot of pulp and a little bit of skin or a little bit of pulp and a lot of skin. So if skin is the coloring matter and juice is white, you can imagine a thin-skinned grape will be light in color and a thick-skinned grape will be dark in color. Well, I have news for you. The thicker the skin, the more tannin. Tannin, it's a grape descriptor that we use that means the wine dries out our mouth. Like there's no moisture in your mouth. Tannins have texture. Tannins have a crunchiness, a chewiness, silkiness, a dusty flavor. They're tactile. So what I love for you to do in this class is pour yourself a little sip of Sangiovese. That's an Italian wine from a region called Chianti. You're going to notice this is like orange in color. It's slightly garnet. It's not a thin-skinned grape, but it's not a thick-skinned grape. So it's somewhere in the middle. Then I want you to pour yourself a glass of the Grenache. And the Grenache, my favorite grape, is a light thin-skinned grape. So in the Grenache, you're going to have almost no tannin. So no dustiness. I'll start with that because you really do want to try low tannin wines before higher tannin wines. It's just that the wine is silky and so you don't really need food. Thin-skinned grapes, grapes like Pinot Noir, grapes like Grenache, those are the wines that you can just sip on while watching Netflix. Next, you're going to try your Sangiovese. And in general, Italian wines tend to be very tannic. It doesn't mean they're bad. I love tannin and a lot of people love tannin. They like structure. They like the way the wine feels. So this wine feels silky and this wine feels chewy. So the Sangiovese, you take a sip and you feel your mouth pucker. That's acid. They both have high acid. Then when you're not paying attention, all of a sudden you're like, wait, my mouth is dry. You'll start to see people go like, salivate, that's acid. Or feel like, god, I can't wait to have a piece of bread with ricotta. It's just so fatty. It cuts through the tannin. So acid and tannin, they're kind of contrasting. One makes your mouth salivate and produce moisture and the other one takes all the moisture out of your mouth. But you can really see a good example of that if you compare the Grenache with the Sangiovese in this class. Okay, the last thing I need to tell you is all about body. You probably heard this word before, the body of the wine. What does that mean? The body of the wine. Can I tell it, the body, by looking at the legs? Well, there is some truth to that. So let's explain this. Body is the weight of the wine on your palate. Is it heavy? Does it feel rich? Or is it super light, almost like it's gone before you even knew you drank it? Or somewhere in the middle. So the body of the wine generally comes from the alcohol. So you can kind of cheat and look at a bottle of wine in a retail store or pick up the wines that I sent you in this class and see what is the relative alcohol. And then imagine that alcohol gives wine body. So if you have a 10% alcohol wine, you're probably going to get a light bodied wine. If you have a 16% alcohol, it doesn't mean you're going to get a hangover, but it does mean you're going to get a full bodied wine. So alcohol is one of the ways we get body in wine. The other way is oak. So if a wine has a lot of oak, it's feel bigger. It's going to feel richer on your mouth. If a wine has a lot of tannin, it's also going to add to the volume of the wine. So there's time and place for everything. There's times when you just want that half a glass of something big and rich, kind of feels like a sweater. And there are really some times that you want a red wine that's just light and refreshing. It's a cocktail party and you're talking to dozens of people. You don't want to feel weighed down. So this is a really great way to learn about body. I would recommend you take your Grenache in the pack. It's relatively light in body. It has that light tannin and it's silky. And then you compare it to your Petit Syrah. Petit Syrah is not petite. This Petit Syrah in particular is big and Petit Syrah is one of the boldest of all of the grapes. So you have this intense wine and you have this relatively light wine and just feel the way they coat your mouth. It's really cool, actually. You might imagine food. There are lighter foods and there are fuller foods. So even just thinking about the cuts of steak with the Grenache, you might think, oh, that's textural, very similar to filet mignon. It's easy. It's relatively tender and light. And then you might say, you know what, this Petit Syrah is deserving of a porterhouse. Like I want fat and grizzle and I want something that's a little bit more intense. So you kind of get the point of that. Same is true with cheese. That's been fun. This is the best class I've ever taught, I think. The best thing about wine is you have to learn in small doses. You have to kind of, you know, take a little bit. This whole video, it could be overwhelming. Watch it again and again. Think about it. Just like, I don't have to know everything there is to know about wine today. But, you know, these thoughts of comparing and contrasting, they're really helpful if you kind of feel out of it and you don't know what's going on. The next video that we're doing is a class all about the common grapes. Like you've heard of Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir, Cabernet, Shiraz. All of these kind of grapes that grow everywhere in the world. It's like, what's up with them? Where do they grow? Tune in for the next class.