Simon & Schuster's Beginner's Guide to Understanding Wine - Softcover

Schuster, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671728938 ISBN 13: 9780671728939

Publisher: Fireside, 1991

Synopsis

An introductory course in wine covering wine tasting techniques, wine making, the major grapes and wines made from them, and methods of storing and serving

About this title

About the Author

Michael Schuster studied tasting in Bordeaux, gaining the Bordeaux University Tasting Diploma. In 1983 he won the top scholarship in the U.K. wine trade Diploma examinations. After creating an award-winning wine retail business, he now works independently as a writer and lecturer, and he offers a series of wine courses and tastings at his own tasting school. He has written for Wine & Spirit, Which? Wine Guide, Decanter, and Wine, and he is the wine correspondent for London Portrait Living.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

GLASSES

Why do winetasters make such a fuss about glasses? The answer is that when "tasting" consciously as opposed to just "drinking", one is trying to experience as many as possible of the sight, smell and taste sensations that a wine has to offer. Smell especially, because it is so central to the pleasure a wine gives and because it conveys so much information. The extent to which one can experience a wine's visual aspect and its smell in particular, is influenced respectively by the quality of the glass it is made from and by the shape of the glass.

Try comparing a line up of different glasses like those illustrated.

All of these glasses are perfectly good as drinking vessels. Only a couple are good for both seeing the wine clearly and smelling it effectively; most do neither very well, Why so?

DEPTH AND CLARITY (viewed from above) When each glass is filled with what would be an average tasting sample of about 35ml of the same wine, and the wine is viewed from directly above to assess its depth and clarity, only in glasses 1 and 2, both with a high lead crystal content, can you really see the wine well. In the cut glass (6), the reflected highlights are splendid but make it difficult to judge the wine's depth. The Paris goblet's breadth dilutes the colour, the sherry copita's narrowness exaggerates it, and in both of these, as well as in glasses 3 and 7, the combination of design and quality of the glass material makes the colour appear flat and uniform. As the photograph shows, the International Standards Organization (ISO) glass gives much the best view of both depth and clarity, though the Classic glass is a close second.

HUE AND NUANCE (viewed with the glass tilted) Tilting the glass "spreads" the wine so that its overall hue can be seen more clearly (particularly in red wines), as well as the nuances of colour as they change from the centre or "eye" to a watery rim. For this to be practical one must be able to tilt the glass substantially without fear of the wine spilling, and without the rim of the glass then interfering with one's vision. With the flared glasses (6 and 7), the danger of Spillage is obvious when tilting to examine colour, or when swirling in order to look at the wine's viscosity or to encourage its bouquet. With the shorter glasses (4 and 5) there simply isn't much room to either tilt or swirl before the liquid reaches the rim and spills over, and the rim of the glass also remains in the way when viewing. The more "tulip" shaped glasses (1, 2 and 3) are all good "tilters".

BOUQUET

Much more important than their practicality for looking at the wine though, is the way in which the glass affects a wine's smell.

The wider and more flared the glass's opening the less the wine's bouquet will be gathered, concentrated and directed; and the more (and more rapidly) it will disperse and escape via routes other than your nostrils. 1, 3 and 5 would all seem to be good in this respect. I say seem, because although they all have a narrow opening, in the case of the sherry copita (5), there is little room for swirling to begin with, little surface area inside for volatization, and barely any room for the bouquet to gather and develop in anyway. Glass (3) is good, but rather too wide at the rim. There is plenty of room for the bouquet to develop on swirling, but it also escapes too easily. A counsel of perfection? Maybe, but the ISO tasting glass is the most efficient all round tasting glass, at a reasonable price, and if you want to get the most out of your wines....I also think it is a perfectly good glass for the table, although the range of Classic glasses (2) is hard to beat for appearance and feel.

The extent to which a wine releases its aromas, and how efficiently they can be smelled from the glass depends on four principal, and inter-related factors:

1. The shape of the glass.
2. The surface area inside on which the wine can be spread by swirling or agitation, allowing the liquid to evaporate and the aroma molecules to volatize.
3. The space inside between the surface of the win e at rest and the rim of the glass, in which the aromas have room to circulate, develop and concentrate.
4. The size of the glass's opening in relation to the bowl This must create a fine balance between permitting the aromas to escape and preventing them from doing so.

Copyright © 1989 by Michael Schuster

Edition details

• Publisher: Fireside
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0671728938
• ISBN 13: 9780671728939
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 140