Up-ing your wine game, Part 2. Use your words.

So you have finally started to regularly come out to the wine tastings but you haven’t gotten much past the wine description of “Oh I like this one.” One of the most common statements I get from fellow tasters is; “I just don’t have the vocabulary to describe what I’m tasting.”Anyone who has watched any of the “Somm” docu-movies on Netflix has heard the very precise-to-outlandish words used to describe both the taste and aroma of wine. Yet “garden hose” and “fresh can of tennis balls” should never come out of someone’s mouth when talking wine! Therefore, especially after hearing stuff like that, you are often left with the notion that describing wine is a task best suited for the fanciful snob.Fight against that! The practical use of descriptive vocabulary can be extremely helpful in Up-ing your wine game. The first step is to actual pay attention to what you are tasting, smelling, and feeling. The taste of wine has both a flavor component and feel component. Even if your first descriptive wine words are super basic, like “dry,” or “tart,” you have taken the first big leap in your wine journey, away from just “I liked (or didn’t like) that wine.”Here are two examples of the words I used at V.Paul’s this week to describe a white and a red wine during the tasting: “A little bit of green apple with a tart finish, too acidic; “Lots of fruit-plum, blue berry, light tannins, medium acid.” Simple, efficient, effective, nothing outlandish.So, use your words! I didn’t have all of those “wine words” when I started. Part of the fun and allure of wine is broadening your taste horizon. As you go to more wine tastings and begin to pay better attention to the wine in your mouth, your vocabulary will improve. That’s step one in Up-ing your wine game. In part two we will discuss a few very effective “wine words” to use.

Go to the “Special” Wine tastings!

I have said it before in previous posts: If you see a “Special” wine event, especially if it is a tasting featuring someone from a winery, do your best to go! These are not events to be afraid of! You are not going to be ridiculed, you do not need to “know” wine, these “Special” events are just plain fun! Most of them are during the week, which can be difficult, but if I can give any recommendation in the world of wine it is to go to the special tastings.Aragon’s Special wine tasting was on Tuesday, not on their normal Thursday. If you are having trouble keeping track of wine events look no further to OUR wine tastings and events calendar! And if you know of an event that is not on our calendar please let us know, you can email us or send us a message on Instagram and we will update our calendar.So back to wine. Aragon featured Famille Bourgeois Winery this past Tuesday. Famille Bourgeois has vineyards in the Sancerre Region, in the Loire Valley of France; and in the Marlborough Wairau Valley of New Zealand, specializing in Sauvignon Blanc in both areas. Their wines are certified “Biodynamic” which is the E.U.’s organic certification, but actually better. People like to lump things together; like all Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand tastes like Grapefruit. It happens all the time, to everything, not just wine. It is human nature, and it can very quickly lead to “bold wine statements” (see my post on bold wine statements). Their two wine families, Domaine Henri in France, and Clos Henri in New Zealand, were a great example of how you cannot just lump things together. We even started the tasting with the reds because the whites were so high in acid (something they intentionally did) that if we did the whites first your palate could have been toasted by the time you got to the reds. All of the wines tonight were unique and almost everyone enjoyed almost everything. So hopefully we will see you at the next “Special” tasting!

Why we like different wines. Aragon tasting 5 Jan 2023

I suppose that I will never say it enough; everyone has their own palate. So many things go into how you taste wine (alcohol) and what you taste. Not only that, but your palate can change, even slightly, during the course of a day. Did you eat before the wine tasting (something that I recommend), what did you eat, did you have coffee that afternoon, or burn your tongue on hot pizza? All of which I have done before a wine tasting. Is your nose partially stopped up? That will definitely alter what you will taste! I have developed a few rules to help decide what wine(s) I pick to talk about from a tasting. This helps keep me as unbiased as possible. You and I might like the same wines, have similar palates, but odds that half of you have completely different tastes. That’s just the science behind the human tongue.Something that you learn going through your Wine Certifications (the Wine & Spirit Education Trust out of London in my case, slightly different than Sommelier training) is how to recognize and differentiate a “good” wine, even if it is not a wine that you like. That way you are able to speak about that Australian Shiraz that you personally didn’t care for, but your audience loved it, and that Shiraz was “correct” in all ways.I also get asked constantly “What was your favorite?” Enjoying and talking about the wines is the best part of wine tastings. Often my answer to that question is not the wine I write about. So when tonight’s Crowd Favorite emerged from the line up, several other tasters could not believe that “that wine” was the one I had chosen to discuss here. “Well,” I answered, “that’s why I developed the rules that govern our Wine of Note or Crowd Favorite," etc., of which I have defined in several previous posts. Tonight’s Crowd Favorite, by a single vote, was Naturalist Sauvignon Blanc 2020 from South Australia. It is only a matter of time before you see this bottle on the Featured Shelf at Fresh Market and Publix, because it will SELL! Vegan Friendly, Gluten Free, made from sustainably grown certified organic grapes. The winery even promotes bees, thus the label, not kidding, and that’s awesome! This Sauvignon Blanc was approachable, easy to drink, not citrusy, not too mineral-ly, with hints of just enough white flowers, stone fruit and faint apple to give you something of an “okay, not bad.” A beginners wine, which we need sometimes. Coming in at around $14, there are very, very few wines like it on the market that do all of that.Wasn’t for you. Yeah, I get it, but many others ended up enjoying it enough to buy it more than any of the other wines at the tasting, and we should be thankful for that! Our differences ensure that we will continue to have the full spectrum of different and ever evolving wines. Some will be bad, yet others will be fantastic! Cheers to disagreeing on “good” wines!

Trione Vineyards Tasting 20 Sept

Hailing from California's second valley of wines, Sonoma, Trione Vineyard is noteworthy. They have several good wines. Their Sauvignon Blanc was one of the best Sauvignon Blanc (SB) that I have tried in recent memory. Everyone at the tasting loved it, and the most interesting part was that even the tasters who swore that they hated SB went back for seconds. It had all the good qualities of the big three SB regions: just the right amount of minerality from the Loire, just the right amount of acid and citrus from New Zealand, and just the right amount of body and stone fruit from California. Damn, it was just good. Some of the best wine events in town are the “special” ones, so keep an eye on the calendar for the next ones.