Drinking wine is simple: tilt the glass and swallow (and keep repeating till satiated or under the table!). This approach works for those who equate wine with spirits and with “getting a kick”, and couldn’t care less if they were quaffing plonk or something sublime.
However, if you’ve moved beyond that stage, you want to be able to appreciate your wine, and to at least be able to tell good wines from not-so-good (and perhaps great wines from the merely ‘good’). Mind, we’re not seeking to unmask a wine, merely to appreciate its qualities, and one doesn’t have to be an expert to do that.
The mechanics of tasting wines is too well-documented to need elaboration: just google the subject and one gets 98.5 million results. Quite simply, you see how the wine looks (colour, clarity), sniff the aroma to check how pleasant it is (and equate to various fruits, flowers, vegetables, and other substances), and sip the wine for balance, complexity, body, taste, and aftertaste. Along the way you may swirl the wine in the glass to concentrate its aromas, and savour the taste by aspirating and swishing it round your mouth (rather like drinking very hot tea!). At the end, if you’re tasting many wines (and don’t want to be under the proverbial table by the 10th glass) you spit — and perhaps scribble down your impressions.
Of course at normal social occasions all this has to be done in a flash (and no spitting or scribbling!) as one would look awfully stupid or supercilious doing the whole nine yards.
But how does one really determine whether one wine is better than another without formal training?
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One easy (and misleading) shortcut is to assume that quality improves with price — surely a wine at Rs 1,000 per bottle must be much better than one at, say, Rs 500? Often not true, particularly when (as in India) high taxes and trade margins distort end prices; so very often a cheaper Indian wine would be at least as good as an imported wine at twice the price.
The harder (but much more satisfying) option is to decide for yourself — which leads us into deep waters since most people know little about what wine is or what it should taste like. Here it’s best to trust your own choices: a wine that tastes good is good for you, and don’t let anyone tell you differently. Of course, tastes change with experience — the more wines you taste, the more you would be able to differentiate quality. Nevertheless, there’s a lot to be said for starting with young, fruit-forward, easy-drinking (and relatively inexpensive) wines and moving to older, more complex (and ‘austere’) wines that are a lot more expensive.
So the solution to becoming good at wines is actually quite simple: taste (not just drink) lots of wines of different grapes, regions, producers, and price points. Along the way, perhaps you would discover (as I have) why Pliny the Elder opined that “in vino veritas” (in wine there is the truth)!
Wines I’ve been drinking: the Santé Chenin Blanc 2010 from Grover Vineyards, terrific value at Rs 375, and a case in point about less expensive wines. The label (an original by Mario Miranda) says it all — the wine is cheerful and drinkable with a nice lively citrus & apple aroma and a clean, balanced off-dry taste, and is fine both on its own and with spicy food. Something one can afford (and savour) every day.
As the French say, santé!
Alok Chandra is a Bangalore-based wine consultant