tasting 102 - WHy we don’t just say “citrus”
To become a better taster, you need to become a better eater. Diversify your weekly menu. Pick up strange fruits from the farmer’s market. Visit aisles of the grocery store you never venture down and take home spices you don’t recognize. If you want to improve your wine tasting skills, you need to create a bank of scent memories. Half of tasting is smelling. Sniff everything before you eat it. Inhale and exhale as you chew with your mouth open, though preferably not in public. Allow your entire olfactory system to experience your food as you eat.
Experiment. Do you eat the same salad every day for lunch? Mix in a new vegetable each week and take notice of the new flavors. Add fresh parsley or cilantro. Play around with textures. Compare fresh blueberries with frozen, try them next to blueberry preserves, then find a blueberry muffin. Notice how each one is different but also, distinctly blueberry.
This is what I do when I taste wine. Whenever I swirl a new wine around in a glass, my mind races to attach it to a flavor and smell I recognize. Like the Combe, Vin Gris. At first sip you get a smack of lime Sweet Tarts, it’s too easy to drink. Or the Fattoria del Pino, Vin Vale which tastes like homemade cranberry sauce with the faintest hint of maple candy in the background (edgy tannins and a dry finish, a must-try if you haven’t gotten to it already).
If you’ve perused our website at all you’ll notice similarly specific descriptions, though not necessarily lengthy ones. And we never use words like “citrusy” or phrases like “full of red fruit”. Limes and grapefruits are both citrus, though I don’t think anyone would confuse the two. Strawberries, cranberries, and pomegranates are all red fruits. But is it fair to lump them into one category? We also discriminate within fruit families. Sour cherries do not taste like Rainier cherries, and perhaps it’s the West Coaster in me, but I’m very protective of my Rainier cherries (their season lasts about thirty seconds, so I always try to get my fill).
Providing a brief, but accurate, snapshot is more important to us than waxing poetic or giving you another vague and, sadly, ubiquitous description that’s essentially meaningless. “Sumptuous red and black fruits with leathery tannins,” cue eyeroll, but taken from an actual tasting note from a publication I once trusted.
So, the next time you cozy up to a new glass of wine, try to taste past the familiar flavors and try to name the ones you don’t recognize right away. Notice the black fruits but challenge yourself to decipher the blackberries from the plums and black currants. And if you ever need the practice, just pop by one of our weekly tastings!
