How has this become such and fun game to play and such an impressive one to be good at. I’d like to think I’m OK at it but I’ve had some really embarrassing moments getting there. I still have them, those embarrassing moments, fairly regularly.
It’s party season now. The Summer holidays are a distant memory and the bars, clubs and restaurants are, or should be, busy. The wine’s flowing and I’m pouring lots of it. We’re thick in to the wine events season and more often than not, the party gets started when some joker gives me a wine to identify blind in front of 40 or so of their friends.
There’s not a lot I find more terrifying than being jeered towards a glass of wine with the expectation that I’ll magic up the grape, year, country and vineyard of the wine and the chest size of the winemaker for good measure …. and it sometimes, in fact all too regularly, goes a bit awry.
Here’s the tail of the Brazilian Grenache …
I mean, really, a Brazilian Grenache? When I was learning about wine, Brazil was only exporting onewine to the UK I think. It was made by my winemaker boss and it was … absolute foul. Fast forward a few years and I’m given, in front of 50 wine fuelled enthusiasts, this deep dark wine (red) that smells of the garbage can and looks like sewage water. This was 15 years ago and since then, I’ve fine tuned the art of not looking like a complete arse when I have absolutely no idea what the wine could be. So, youthful and confident as I was, I dived straight in. I look at the colour. It’s deep so I go for a Syrah, a Cabernet, perhaps a Malbec or Tannat. It could be so many more but that’s what I was thinking. I smell. It smells of …. sewage water with a redcurrant floating on the top. This tells me nothing at all. I taste. It’s got a fair whack of tannin. It’s grippy and tough with the fruit frightened to show it’s face.
I’ll stop at this point as it’s making me sweat just thinking of this. The raucous crowd of 50 are quiet now, awaiting my analysis of exactly what the wine is. I wait. I smell and taste again.
‘It’s a young wine – 2008’, I say. It’s a deep colour so I’m thinking Cabernet etc. etc. but I’m going for a Tannat. I’m going France as it’s quite grippy and tannic and I’m saying Madiran. Is it Chateau Montus?
The room is silent in hope. They’re willing me to have nailed it. Off comes the cover and there it is. A Grenache from Brazil. A more different wine than Chateau Montus would be hard to imagine and why on earth did I go for Montus. It’s a niche enough wine as it is and there I was making even more of a fool of myself than I needed to. And I still had to send an invoice to this business for my time as a wine professional.
And so to the dark art of wine tasting. I have learned, as time has passed, that wine tasting is a great deal more simple than we make it. It becomes simple by approaching it the other way round. Of course we look, smell and taste in that order but then we should think in the reverse order. What’s it not, and, to ease us in gently, perhaps we start with the vintage or the grape variety. What’s it not? And rather than eliminate every grape and vintage there ever was, just start with a few. It’s not a Sauvignon, it’s not a mature wine, it’s not an Albariño etc. etc. Then we taste and we look for acidity and tannin. The higher the acidity, the cooler the climate it hails from, so, if you’ve got your chops around a big blousy Californian Chardonnay, you can safely eliminate England as your country of origin. Likewise, if you’re knee deep in a Barossa Shiraz, you can probably eliminate France, in fact, most of Europe, as your country of origin.
And that’s how I play now. And yes, I do still get it wrong but I never shy away from the challenge and I always start from the bottom up. What’s it not? And often enough, like last Tuesday, I’ll thankfully nail the Albarino 2023 from Rias Baixas, Spain at £15 retail, and with it, I’ll get the cheer that, as a fully fledged wine tart, I love … but would I get the Brazilian Grenache if it came around again? - let’s hope it doesn’t.