This weekend is the annual ZAP festival in San Francisco. ZAP stands for Zinfandel Advocats and Producers, and this event is a tasting of zinfandels put on by them. To my knowledge Zinfandel refers only to the red wine version of this grape being served at the festival. I don't recall any white zinfandel being poured in years past, and as a general rule, if you want to refer to the pink version, make sure to say "white zin".
The arrival of the festival made me think about the word tasting. Usually when people say they are going wine tasting, it means they are going wine drinking, and just about everyone at ZAP is there for wine drinking. When a member of the wine trade is tasting, they are usually spitting the wine out each time they taste, so that they can actually taste the wine all day and make decisions on which they liked the best. When most people are tasting, they can't remember much about any of the wines they tasted after the first two wineries, and they often end up with a couple bottles in the trunk that they don't remember much about the next day (not to mention a strong desire to down a bottle of aspirin). When I was working at a winery a few years back, we actually had a guy call and say he "accidently" bought a few cases of wine the day before and was wondering if he could return a couple of them.
I'm not advocating that you stop going wine drinking. Its fun, and as long as you remember to have a sober driver, go wine drinking as often as you can find friends who want to go with you! However, in case you do want to go wine tasting so that you can pick out some new wines to drink, or if you're going to ZAP and you want to be coherent and impressive enough in your wine know-how to grab a date afterwards, (its known to be quite a meat market) here are some quick wine tasting tips for you:
1. Don't argue with the pourer about the small pour she gave you. The 1 oz. pour is pretty standard for how much wineries suggest you need for tasting.
2. Once you have some wine in your glass, put your nose in there and take a big whiff. You don't have to say anything about smelling rose petals or blackberries, but the smell is part of your sensation of taste, so if you like how it smells, you are probably going to like how it tastes.
3. Now you are ready to take a sip. Breathe in through your mouth, and put a little of the wine inside. Close your mouth just for a half second and let the wine sit in there. Now open your mouth and breathe in a little more air over your tongue so that the wine hits all the sensory spots (sweet, salty, and bitter). This will help you really taste it in all its glory (or demise). If you like it now, you'll probably like it when you drink it.
4. At this point you can spit the wine into a spittoon or cup, or you can let the wine go down. Spitting takes a little practice to look elegant (female), or cool(male), but you can always practice spitting at home with one full glass of water and one empty (spitting into the empty of course), before you head out on your tasting journey. I recommend doing a little spitting and and a little less letting the wine go down, but that's entirely up to your desire to remember the occasion.
4. This process will not only help you taste each wine, but it will also slow you down, in effect making you more likely to remember what you tasted enough to decide whether its worth the $30 they're asking. And if you are at ZAP this weekend, it will help you ask that attractive man or woman you've been watching all day, where they are going after the show. If you don't have the guts to ask, its safe to assume they'll be somewhere along Chestnut Street.
PS. My apologies to those who live outside of the Bay Area and can't benefit from this last piece of advice. The scene on Chestnut is probably not worth moving here for, however.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment