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what is wine

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the self-preserved juice of the grape

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a pleasant alcoholic beverage

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a complex liquid sensory stimulus

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grapes used for making wine seldom taste like the wine they are going to make

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walking through the vineyard tasting grapes, they're delicious

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but they don't specifically taste like Cabernet or Pinot or Chardonnay or Zinfandel

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people often think that the grapes and the knowledge of when their ready to pick and harvest, is automatically implied by the flavors we are tasting in the grape at that stage

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wine is a complex translation, transformation, biosynthesis of elements found in the grape into the final product that we love as wine

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Gay-Lussac (1778-1850)

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knew about sugars

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wrote the first balanced equation to transform sugar to wine

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sugar is converted into alcohol with some gas escaping (CO2) and heat

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Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)

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confirmed the existence of yeast as a transformative microbe

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raw material stage of the grape

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energy source for yeast is glucose and fructose

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contains much more

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tannins (makes wine taste dry)

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vitamins

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flavor precursors that the yeast will use

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yeast are the biosynthesizers

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creating a medium that is more and more alcoholic

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final product

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not just ethanol and water

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sweetness

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bitterness

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acidity

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aromatics

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flavor in wine

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has many parts

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odors

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taste

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mouth feel, oral sensations

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weighty or watery

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four senses used

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seeing

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smelling

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tasting

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touching

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to evaluate viscocity, density, smoothness, roughness, temperature

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they overlap

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when I look at a glass of wine, I can already smell it

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when I bring it up to my nose, I'm still looking at it

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I see it

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pull some air through it to make it turbulent and pop off some aromatic

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all of our senses are used when we taste a glass of wine critically

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wine tasting

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tends to be social

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while visiting wine country

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while at a friend's house

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sensory evaluation of wine is a more focused activity

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every time you taste a wine, you can acquire a large amount of sensory information

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in a more rigorous setting when you are wanting to learn about a wine

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characteristics of being a good wine taster

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knowledge of basic sensory properties

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knowledge of flavor and odor components

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critical wine tasters spit, wine-tasting party goers swallow

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wine has quite a bit of alcohol in it

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some insist that they cannot grasp the full sensory experience of beer unless they sip a little bit at the end

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beer is effervescent and perhaps they like the feedback they get from that

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but most wines are 3 to 4 times the alcohol of most beers

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not compared to modern craft beers which can be 15% alcohol, but in general

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if wine tasters started sipping they were very quickly lose their focus, probably after the second sip

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spitting is important

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there are no taste buds down your throat

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keep a spit cup and pure water handy to rinse in between wines

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what you need to taste and smell in the wine can be perfectly derived while the wine is on your palate