Writing down notes is useful while tasting. It helps you concentrate your senses. Here is a quick list of questions you can browse:
Date:
Location of tasting:
Brand:
Variety:
Vintage:
Appellation:
Place of Purchase:
Price:
Appearance:
Aroma:
Taste:
Overall Impression:
This list is also available as a nice PDF sheet waiting to be filled in.
A competing sheet is available with more explanations at The Frugal Oenophile.
This film is the fourth in a series of eight by Neil Smith, owner of the WineSmith wine shop in Ashburn, Virginia. At the end of the video, you will have the opportunity to click to watch the next one.
Neil Smith: Hi, My name is Neil Smith with WineSmith and today, I am showing you how to pair wines with food. Right now, I am going to talk about the first rule which is the most important and that’s to match the weight of the wine with the weight of the food. The reason why this is an important rule is because you don’t want the wine to overwhelm the food. So if you think about something like a very lightly prepared fish, like a Tilapia that has been baked in the oven, you wouldn’t want to pair that with something very heavy like a Cabernet Sauvignon because the weight of the wine will overwhelm the food.
So let’s illustrate this point by doing another taste test. So we are going to use the grilled chicken and the barbeque sauce and the same Cabernet that we talked about in the intro and what I want you to do is take a bite of the chicken first, just by itself, small bite. Very simple, just a grilled chicken breast, not much flavor, very light and then take a sip of the Cabernet. It immediately washes away any of the flavor from the chicken. Now let’s do another taste test. Take another piece of the same chicken and now dip it thoroughly in the barbeque sauce to get it covered. Take another bite. Then immediately take another sip of the wine. The wine actually stands up to the barbeque sauce and the barbeque sauce stands up to the wine. So you can see how something like a sauce or a side item with your meal can really effect which wine you would want to choose to pair with it. So chicken breast by itself, perhaps a lighter white wine or a very light red wine like Pino Noir, but if you are going to have it with barbeque sauce or some other kind of heavy sauce, you might do a Cabernet Sauvignon or a Shiraz or a Zinfandel or something like that. So that’s an example of the first rule of pairing wine with food which is to match the weight of the wine with the weight of the food. Now we are going to talk about the second rule of food and wine pairing which is to either complement the flavors or contrast the flavors when pairing wine with food.
Here is a guest post by author: Sandee Lembke.
Many of us have been to wine tastings at a winery or a local liquor store but have you ever hosted a wine tasting party at home?
It really is quite easy. First you need to decide what kind of wine party you are going to host.
Vertical — A tasting with an assortment of the same wine, from the same producer and vineyard, across several vintages (the year the grapes were harvested). An example is to taste Chardonnays from 2001, 2003 and 2006 all from the same vineyard.
Horizontal — Tasting various wines from the same vintage and ideally, wines from the same region and general style. The purpose of tasting one vintage is mainly to compare the different producers and vineyards. For example, Napa Valley red wines from 2001.
Blind — This is where you hide the identities of the wine by either wrapping them or putting them in paper bags. The bottles are numbered and scored without the tasters having the benefit of label, price, producer or anything else.
Guest Choice — This is the easiest wine tasting party to coordinate. Simply tell your guests to bring whatever kind of wine they choose. If you want to narrow them down a bit, be specific in your invitations, like “Bring a bottle of your favorite red wine, $20 limit” or “Bring your favorite bottle of Chardonnay, $15 limit.”
Obviously, you can combine some of these. How about hosting a Blind-Horizontal wine tasting party?
If you have the room set up 3 wine tasting stations; one for red wine, one for white and a third for the dessert wines. At each wine tasting station, have on hand:
A corkscrew
Measured pourers (serves exactly 1 oz. each time) Bottled water for rinsing mouths and glasses between tastes
A container for rinse water
Crackers for cleansing the palette between tastes
For the white and dessert wine stations, an ice bucket to keep the wine chilled
If you have separate wine tasting stations, you can increase the number of guests that you invite because everyone can spread out and start at different stations as opposed to everyone crowding around a single station. Either way, limit the number of guests to no more than 15 people. You want to easily be able to discuss the wines and having more people makes conversation difficult.
If you are providing the wine yourself, keep in mind that a regular sized bottle of wine holds 750 milliliters or 25.4 ounces.
Using the Flip Top Measured Pourers, ensures that every guest receives an exact 1 ounce measure every time you pour. For $16.95, you get 3 of these nifty little gadgets and because they have a flip top, you can also store your wine with these
If you have 12 guests and use the pourers, you will only use half of each bottle (about 12 ounces) during the tasting process, leaving the rest to enjoy after tasting is over. Make sure you buy additional bottles of various wine to serve before and after the tasting.
How wine savvy your guests are will determine if you score the wines during the tasting and if so, how you go about scoring them. Keeping things casual is usually your best bet because after all, it is a party. Typically, people do not want to be bothered with a complicated scoring process.
A good way to keep it easy is to give your guests a simple scorecard which lists the names of the wines. Ask them to force rank the wines in each category. For example, in the white category there are 5 wines to taste. Each person will score those 5 wines; 1 being their favorite and 5 being their least favorite.
At the end of the wine tasting, collect the scorecards and determine which wines are the party favorites in the wine category (reds, whites, desserts).
Lastly, to keep things simple, offer your guests meat, cheese, fruit and nut platters that complement your wine choices. This is a very important step in hosting a wine tasting party. You do not want your food choices to conflict with the wines you have chosen.
Hosting a wine tasting party at home is fun especially if you take the time to pick out some quality wines and pair those wines with good food. Your guests will appreciate the special care given when planning this type of party.
Article Source: Wine Tasting Party
About the Author:
Sandee Lembke from Theme Party Queen.com invites you to visit her site for a Free Wine Tasting Scorecard that you can download and a Free Wine-Cheese Pairings Table to help you select complementary food.
The Cellarer search engine highlights very interesting articles about wine tasting parties.
This film is part of a series of eight by Neil Smith, owner of the WineSmith wine shop in Ashburn, Virginia. I have selected some material by other wine writers while I am too busy to write my own articles.
Neil Smith: Hi, my name is Neil Smith with WineSmith and today, I am showing you how to pair wine with food. Right now, I am going to talk about the connection between wine and food and that connection is very important because it’s only in the fairly recent history that we have started to enjoy wine or think about wine as something to be enjoyed by ourself, but the origin of wine is actually, to have a beverage that helps enhance your meal, the flavors of the meal and brings in a little more sophistication to the meal. Most wines, I have talked about dryness and sweetness earlier in the video, most wines are on the drier side and are not necessarily meant to be enjoyed by themselves.
If you think about European cuisine, it’s very common to hear about Europeans having a glass of wine with every meal and there is a reason for that and to illustrate that point I would like to invite you to do a taste test with me. We are going to do is take a sip of the Cabernet Sauvignon that we talked about at the intro clip, then we are going to take a small bite of the cheese and then take another sip of the Cabernet Sauvignon. We are going to discover how the wine actually changes flavors in profile when it’s paired with the food. So start with a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon and notice how the full bodied wine it has those tannins that I talked about in the last clip. It has that mouth drying feeling and now we are going to take a bite of the cheese and then I have a sip of the wine and even a small bite of cheese has already helped to soften the tannins on the finish of the wine. So the wine is much smoother and softer now than it was by itself and likewise, the wine actually brings out the flavors of the cheese a little bit more so the two really do complement one another.
So, you will see in future clips as we talk about the other rules of how wine and food can really complement the taste of one another and the feel of one another in the mouth. So that’s a little bit on the connection between wine and food and now we are going to get into the first rule which is matching the weight of the wine with the weight of the food.
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