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In an earlier post, I provided pertinent and polished information to help you – the wino – take advantage of the depth of your experience and become a "classy" wino, someone who can imbibe and discuss white wines with the best of them.
Conversing about white wines – the invariable choice for serious wine drinkers – is easy, however, in comparison to talking about reds. White wines are usually served chilled, rendering their taste-highlights and other features less pronounced. This means that when you describe their merits, you can get away with saying inane things like, "Oh Percy! This Chardonnay is awesome with its mineral hint of sea-salt and a lick of cold granite!*"
When drinking red wines, however, the casual sentiments favored by white wine bon viveurs fade and are replaced by dour and slitty-eyed evaluations, involving words like "fat" and "body" said with a pompous air.
Scenario (red wine sophisticates talking)
Host: I say... Percy, old boy, I want your opinion about this claret I bought at a small chateau in France last year when I was there on vacation. The vintage is 1977, a wonderful year!
Percy (swirling the glass delicately, holding it up to the light and putting his nose to it): Rather, Charles... a very full bouquet and very nice legs indeed. 1977, you say? Charming color...
Host: And how about the oak, Percy? You WILL notice the oak, won't you?
Percy (sipping with a slight chewing activity to enhance the flavors): Oh my... quite... almost a rich coffee finish, I would say.
Host (beaming): Yes... rather my thought too... precisely.
What could a wino such as yourself contribute to a conversation of this sort even if you did speak with a pompous accent? It seems impossible to ever be THAT cool, doesn't it?
But it isn't!
Yes, with only a few simple hints, you too can be the center of attention as you show off your wine expertise, a stature you have earned from your years of drinking. All you require are some basic tools to give you the appropriate finesse.
First of all, now that you have mastered white wines, we need to point out some of the differences between reds and whites.
Even while benefiting from some aging, once opened, whites can usually be drunk right away. If you think about the ones you buy, you don't stand on ceremony before serving them to your guests, do you? You press the little spigot and pour. It's simple.
Reds are different.
High-class reds have a substance in them called "tannin" which – frankly – has a bad taste. This is included during the production process so that people will buy the wine but not drink it right away, thus increasing sales. The tannin disappears with aging, so red wine buyers tend to buy wines and "lay them down" for many years, sometimes decades before drinking them. These people are called "sommeliers" from the French "somme", meaning "let sleep" and "~liers" from the root meaning "people who lay".
While I have never understood this attitude – after all, I want something to drink RIGHT NOW – it is very common among red wine sophisticates who tend to be good at postponing pleasures even unto the next generation.
If you are serving red wine to these people, you need to be sure that your wine does not have a strong, residual, tannic flavor before serving. Open your reds before the guests arrive. Immediately after removing the cork, take a sip directly from the bottle. If your mouth feels puckery, it is probably due to the fact that you drank the wine that was right next to the cork. Have another swallow. If the puckery taste continues, your wine is tannic and needs to be aired out... no... ventilated... wait... what WAS that word... breathe! Yes. The wine needs to breathe. This allows much of the tannin to dissipate into the atmosphere where it will contribute to global warming, making the next year's vintage that much better.
Suggested Technique
You can allow your wine to breathe faster by "decanting" it. This means you need to pour it from the bottle into a "decanter", another flask or narrow pitcher of a similar volume. You can do this in the kitchen and bring out the red wine in the decanter with the empty bottle alongside, showing how sophisticated you are. In fact, I would recommend decanting even if the wine is not tannic as it does make you appear very cultivated and sauve. It's bad form not to decant the whole bottle though, so if your flask doesn't quite hold all the wine, chug down the rest in the kitchen yourself before you bring it out.
Another thing that red wine drinkers like to hear about is the vintage of the wine. Surprisingly wines produced in many countries do not taste the same year-on-year. Some years are better and others not so good. When you are drinking wines from these countries, notably "old world countries", you have to pay attention to the labels.
Suggested Technique
Always buy a red wine that has some date on the label. By "date" I don't mean "September", but rather a year that is already at least 10 years old. No, you cannot pencil this in yourself. You bring the wine in from the kitchen in its decanter and proudly exclaim, "This wine is a 2003! A very good year!" Everyone will be amazed at your expertise and sophistication. Once in a very long while, however, you will get some jerk who really knows wine and who takes issue with you.
Scenario
You: This wine is a 2003! A very good year!
Jerk: Oh... really? I think the 2002s and even the 2001s are MUCH better than the 2003s.
(Since you have no clue about vintages and 99% of your guests don't either, you need to have a quick comeback line to cover for this sort of intrusion.)
You (condescendingly): Oh, Percy, you are so right! But in those years the tannin was high, so they would need at least another 5 years of aging before they would be ready to drink. This is ready now!
And you quickly move away to pour the wine, avoiding further questions that you cannot answer.
Finally, to round out your lesson in red wines, you need to have some handy vocabulary to talk about what you are drinking. If you look at the vocabulary you are "supposed to know", you can see that remembering the right words is next to impossible.
It need not be that complicated.
Since the wines you serve are "good" and the wines your host serves are "excellent" too, you only need to have positive-sounding vocabulary to talk about red wines. It is utterly unimportant that the words you use to describe the wine be "correct" or appropriate to the wine; you simply need to have some sophisticated verbiage to bandy about to make it SEEM that you know your stuff.
This describing process can be divided into three steps:
1. smelling the wine
Suggested Vocabulary: This wine has a well-balanced oak.
2. drinking the wine
Suggested Vocabulary: This wine is absolutely mouth-filling.
3. after swallowing the wine
Suggested Vocabulary: This wine has an extraordinarily long finish.
Scenario
Host: I say... old boy, I want your opinion about this claret I bought at a small chateau in France last year when I was there on vacation. The vintage is
1977, a wonderful year!
You: Oh yes... that WAS a great vintage.
Host (pouring into your glass and then looking at you with expectation): I do so want to hear your impressions.
You (smelling the wine): Oh Percy! This wine has an incredibly well-balanced oak!
Host (beaming): Yes, indeed... I thought so too. I actually let it sit uncorked for an hour before decanting, but as you can see, the nose has only been enhanced... and if I might say so, I believe the legs become more pronounced.
You: Quite.... (taking a small sip and holding it in your mouth) Oh my... this (name of wine) is absolutely mouth-filling!
Host: Rather! The balance expressed in the nose comes to full fruition in the drinking. It is remarkable.
You (swallowing and closing your eyes to savor the experience): And what an extraordinarily long finish. It seems to carry on forever.
Host: I absolutely agree. I say! Some people buy wine like pork and beans at the super market and swill it like peasants, but I knew you would appreciate this (name of wine) as I do. Here... let me recharge your glass.
You: Cheers!
I hope this short report will enhance your enjoyment of red wines and help to bring your wine appreciation skills to the high level of adulation you clearly deserve.
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* Expressions actually used to describe Chardonnay in wine reviews (see earlier article)
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