Wine for Spain and Portugal Exam

Had the theory and blind tasting today. Did surprisingly well considering I missed three out of four lectures and still can't smell much of anything through my stuffed-up nose.

That said I guessed correctly that the white wine was a Chardonnay from the USA, and I guessed that the red wine was a Syrah, which was also correct, but didn't get the country of origin right. I honestly don't know what I was thinking with this one. I had basically chosen Syrah based on how purple in color it was, since my nose wasn't quite up to snuff, but I wasn't sure where it was from. It didn't seem dark enough or potent/tannic enough to be from Australia or the US, and I completely forgot that the Rhone in France is a huge area for Syrah, and I ran out of time, so at the last minute I ticked off New Zealand, which is kind of out in left field, because New Zealand is just not known for Syrah (Shiraz). Even after I ticked off the New Zealand box and handed my test in to the teacher, I thought, Now why on earth did I say New Zealand? It was panic test-brain, that's my best explanation.

Apart from being a bit nervous during the blind tastings, I actually quite enjoy the detective aspect of them. It's fun to look at different elements and see what answers I can get from them. For example today, from the color of the red wine alone I was able to narrow the grape varietal down to Syrah or Gamay. And with the white wine, the vanilla and buttery butterscotch aromas tipped me into Chardonnay territory.

The piece that was so frustrating today with not being able to smell properly was that it was really hard to tell what part of the world the wines were from. As I think I mentioned before, a big clue can be found in how much fruit aroma there is in a wine vs. earth and mineral aromas. So if the wine is more fruity, or fruit-driven than anything else, that can be a sign that the wine is from the New World (North America, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina, etc.). Whereas if the wine is more earth/mineral driven (chalk, clay, leaves, mushroom, etc.), then the wine is more likely an Old World wine from France, Germany, Italy, Spain. This is not 100% all the time obviously, but it's a pretty good rule of thumb.

Today I just couldn't tell the difference. I got just a muddle of aromas, but couldn't pick out whether there was more fruit or earth in either of the wines, so in the end I just had to guess. At least though, now I know what it is that I'm not able to figure out, which is progress!

I know I said I was going to talk about Madeiras, but I've already gone on too long, so I will try to remember for tomorrow. We move on to wines of Germany and Eastern Europe tomorrow. This will mean Rieslings, which I love, and a dessert wine from Hungary which I have never tried but is supposed to be delicious.

I wanted to give you the details of the Chardonnay we had in class today, because it was a nice mix of buttery, vanilla oak and apple, without making you feel like you were just drinking a glass of popcorn butter, but I didn't write down all the details, so I will owe you a second wine tomorrow.

Cheers!