Your guide to wine tasting
By Ljudmila Petrovic
Photos by Mark Burnham
Illustration By Eleanor Qu
“Life is too short to drink bad wine,” Cesar Perrin tells me as he pours me a wine from his family’s Chateau de Beaucastel. The winery has been around for centuries, and has been in Perrin’s family for over 100 years. If anybody is an authority on good wine, it’s Cesar.
We are standing in the midst of the 35th Vancouver International Wine Festival, a weeklong celebration of the holy fermented grape. This year’s festival held 54 events — including tastings and meal pairings — at which 175 wineries from 15 countries featured 1,850 of their wines.
Wine events get a bad rep for snobbery that intimidates most of us away from attendance; the truth is, wine tastings are a great time, and not that hard to navigate once you get the basics down. So, without further ado, here is The Peak’s guide to tasting wine like an aficionado.
You can spit or swallow: Every table has a big bucket for excess wine. The general etiquette is to swirl your glass, then taste the wine (by swishing it in your mouth). The next step is up to personal taste: you can either spit the wine out into the bucket, or you can swallow the sip and pour the excess wine from your glass into the bucket.
You could also down the whole thing, but if you’re planning on trying a lot of wines, this can’t possibly end with class. It’s a wine-tasting, not a bachelor(ette) party. The point is to taste the wines, not get so drunk you can’t taste anything, so take it slow.
Carbo-load: A tasting is like the marathon of the wine world, so take it from elite long-distance runners and eat a lot of carbs. Wine tastings account for this: just like marathons have water and Gatorade stations throughout the race, so too should all wine tastings have stations with crackers, bread, and cheese — at the very least. So, hit up the cracker platter; you’re guaranteed to have an easier time maneuvering the event.
Pair it up: Wine and cheese is the most common pairing, hence why wine fests tend to also serve the delicious dairy treat. There is an extensive list of specific wines and the specific cheese they best match with: for example, provolone pairs with chardonnay, but a Danish blue pairs with a Cabernet. Ultimately, however, it’s about what tastes good for you — especially when you’re eating cheeses that are less intrusive on your taste buds (for example, blue cheeses are harder to pair for).
A lesser-known and more delicate area of pairing is wine and chocolate (I know, how can two things that are so right possibly go wrong?) As a very general rule, red wines complement chocolate, so if you’re going with dark chocolate (my personal favorite, so I’ll just assume everyone’s on board), your best bets are Cabs and Zinfandels.
Figure out what you like: Pick one type of white and one type of red that do it for you. That way, when you’re at a tasting station, you’ll be more likely to find the specific wine that hits that sweet spot. If they don’t have your specific favorite (some, like Pinot Blancs and Gewurztraminers are less common), they’ll at least have a better idea of what your taste is and can recommend something. Knowing what you like means that you’re more likely to get it.
But be willing to experiment: Don’t get stuck in a rut just because you have a specific taste. You may decide that you like Pinot Gris and aren’t a fan of Sauvignon Blanc, but every vineyard is different, so it’s very likely that you’ll love a wine that you don’t normally drink.
Don’t be scared to break the rules: This pairs with that; don’t drink that after that — there are so many rules surrounding wine, it’s hard to keep track of them all. So, don’t get hung up on details and enjoy yourself. If you know what you like and you’re confident about it, nobody’s going to heckle you for trying a Merlot between your whites.
Be safe: Seriously, don’t be an idiot. Don’t drink and drive.
Vino Vocab
It gets a little more difficult to BS to wine aficionados when the conversation actually steers towards the wines. When somebody asks you how a wine is, one word answers like “good” are rarely what people are looking for. Knowing some of the key terms in describing wines will help you save face, but will also help you find the kind of wine that hits your sweet spot.
Think of it as being in a country whose language you’re not familiar with: you can usually communicate in a broken combination of English and wild hand movements, but learning a few useful phrases from the language handbook will go a long way.
Fear not, for your friendly student paper comes to the rescue once again. The Peak has compiled a vocabulary cheat sheet to help you out in wine country, complete with example sentences. Keep in mind that nobody actually speaks like that, so take these with a grain of salt.
Balanced : Usually any flaw that can be found in wine is due to the fact that one of the aspects that it is judged on (tannins, acid, sweetness, and alcohol) overwhelms or is overshadowed by the rest. A balanced wine is the wine that integrates all of those components. It’s like that one friend that has all their shit together, but because it’s a wine that you’re drinking, you’ll never resent it.
“I think this might be my new favorite wine. It’s so balanced!”
Body: How does the wine’s alcohol taste? Does it leave your mouth overwhelmed? It’s probably full-bodied.
Bouquet : Like those of a flower variety, but with alcohol. Bouquet refers to the various aromatic nuances you smell in a wine.
Crisp: Usually describes a refreshing white wine that has a nice balance of acidity. It’s like biting into a crisp apple.
“Ah, this white is so crisp. Just perfect for a warm summer evening lounging on private property that doesn’t fall under the jurisdiction of BC Liquor Laws ”
Dry: A wine that has little to no sweetness is described as dry. Wines such as basic Chardonnays and Sauvignon Blancs generally lean towards dryness. When looking at sparkling wines and champagnes, the dryest are labelled “brut.”
“This Chardonnay is too dry for my taste. Do you have anything slightly sweeter?”
Earthy: Your wine tastes like dirt, basically. It tastes like an uprooted shrub that was dipped in alcohol. Sure, it can be a positive quality if you’re into this kind of thing, but mostly it’s a tool for dodging the question, much like when someone tells their five-year-old that their art is “interesting” or that someone’s nose has “character.”
“Okay, that’s very . . . earthy.”
Feminine: This is meant to describe a wine whose aromas and tastes are more subtle and less intense. It’s not one of the more common wine adjectives, but it opens the floor up for friendly banter about gender roles and female empowerment, which is guaranteed to make you the hit of any wine tasting.
“Mmm, this wine is feminine. I don’t feel like it overpowered my palette. But it can still be empowered, and doesn’t need to be defined by the patriarchal standards for a Pinot.”
Fruity: Pretty self-explanatory, I would say. If the wine has an aroma or taste that is sweet and reminiscent of fruits such as apples or berries, then it would be described as fruity.
“Oh yes, I do taste the pear undertones (see below) that you were mentioning. Very fruity. It’s fabulous!”
Heavy: This is more or less descriptive of how the taste weighs in your mouth. It’s heavy, so it’s full-bodied, usually too much so, and usually heavy in tannins (see below). It’s the smooth (also see below. You’re going to learn so much!) wine’s ugly friend.
“Oh, this Malbec is quite heavy. It could really benefit from more time in the cellar.”
Mature : Simply refers to the quality of the wine in terms of the amount of time that a wine has been sitting.
Oaky: This is a big one. Major. If you remember one descriptive word to remember, it’s this one. Usually the oakiness of a wine is associated with time spent in oak barrels. To describe the wine as such, just think of what characteristics are brought to mind by “oak”: toasty or smoky, with a creamy body, and an aroma reminiscent of sweet Christmas spices. Okay, I’m using equally arbitrary adjectives, but bear with me. If there’s no fruitiness to counterbalance this, you’re allowed to say that a wine is “too oaky.” I’ve said it and I wasn’t slapped with a Merlot-shade letter, so it must be an acceptable opinion.
“Mmm, it’s excellent. Maybe a little too oaky for my taste, but a good choice.”
Palate: This pretty much refers to how the wine affects the feeling of your mouth, more than a taste specific to the wine itself.
“Be a dear and pour me some water. I must cleanse my palate before I move on to the reds.”
Robust: As seems to be the pattern with wine descriptors, they are pretty much the same as when describing a person. A robust wine is usually one that has aged well and now has a very distinct and strong flavor. If my Serbian grandmother were a wine, she would be described with this. These wines don’t give a shit anymore because they don’t have to.
“My, that Malbec is robust! I’m not sure if I’m ready to handle the punch it packs.”
Sassy: Think of how you would describe a sassy person: bold and in-your-face. Now apply that to the wine flavor. It’s not one of the usual suspects in wine vocab, but c’mon. It’s a fun description! One might even say it’s sassy.
“Woweee, what a sassy Syrah. Sure packs a punch to my tastebuds”
Smooth: This term is an indicator of how easy a wine is to drink. “But what’s easier than having a spout for your boxed wine?” you may ask. Philistines, all of you. It refers to the flavour; for example, a white wine with low acidity or reds with little tannins (see below).
“Oh yes, I quite enjoyed that one. It was very smooth, went down quite well. ”
Tannins: Not really a good thing. If you’ve ever had a cheap red wine that was made in the year you’re drinking it and left you with cotton mouth that no amount of water could quench for 24 hours, that’s probably a wine with a lotta tannins. This is a bit of a strong example, but there’s a reason that good wines, especially reds, are aged: the wine softens as it ages and after long enough, you might be calling that bad boy “smooth.”
“I can’t possibly drink this $9 bottle of red. There are simply too many tannins for my delicate palate.”
Undertone: The more subtle nuances, aromas and flavors of wine.
“Hmm, this Chardonnay has an earthy undertone”
