Jottings from my African Kitchen Table: Wine Tasting Class - Week Three. A flavourful and emotional journey.

I think this is what BBC World would call ‘live feed’ I am sitting in the tasting room at www.wineshop about to start my third class. My regular class mates are here including John and Ciku. Lorna is moving around making last minute finishing touches as we wait for Juan.

During the first class, which seems so long ago now, we learned about the wine making process, looked at the major wine growing areas of the world both new and old and discussed the pros and cons of each. Finally we were introduced to the art of tasting wine and how to fully appreciate and assess a wine through colour, clarity, fragrance and finally taste. I must admit my glass swirling technique needs some practice. Juan holds his glass by the foot and swirls it around as if it is an extension of his hand making a perfect wave in the glass, mine sort of sloshes from side to side until I find that resting it on the table and moving in a circular motion creates a similar wave AND greatly reduces the risk of losing the contents of the glass. Of course we also discuss what to eat with different wines as we are all here for the full experience and already thinking about lunch and supper.

In our second class we worked our taste buds through ten wines – five white and five reds – in an attempt to differentiate grape varieties and their individual characteristics. Ciku and I are both feeling a bit tipsy after number 6 but we soldier on, after all it is Saturday and we can relax at home afterwards.

Juan has arrived and is pleasantly surprised to find everyone seated. He has a cold (it must be going around) and is unable to guide us in the tasting so we are reliant on our experience of several weeks as wine tasters, this should be interesting!

Today we are looking at sweet or dry and what this really means in the world of wine. Up to now ‘sweet’ wine means totally undrinkable in my books BUT I am here to learn so maybe at the end of 2 hours I will appreciate them more (maybe I have just been drinking them with the wrong foods!).

We start with sweet or desert wines. Talking about sugar and alcohol content and the art of getting a balance of both.
How do they get the optimum sugar levels in the grapes in order to make ‘sweet’ wines.
Naturally sweet, fortification; stopping fermentation process;
Adding sugar – not so good in Juan’s book as your body has to deal with the excess sugar.
Then there are wines made from different grapes such as raisins – drying the grape first increases the sugar level; and interesting concepts like the ice wines from Alsace and Germany – end of season harvest which has the highest sugar, picked after the first hail storm when the grapes have frozen. This holds the sugar in the grape.
Nobel Rot wines – results when the growers leave the grapes until October when it starts to get cold and the grapes have been affected by a fungus which also acts to concentrate the sugar.
Sauternes, the best sweet wines in the world. We pass around a bottle of 1986 – it is the colour of rich honey, even the label is honey coloured, we are all in awe holding the bottle as if it is a delicate flower! Of course the first question from John is ‘but what do we eat with it?’ the answer is music to my ears – ‘Foi gras or Roquefort cheese – two of my favourite treats from France.
We move onto sherry from Spain, straw wines from France.

Sitting up the front of the class I can see that Juan is struggling, he obviously feels like crap (much the same as Jim has been all week, I imagine). But this is a man who is passionate about his wines and obviously loves teaching and sharing his knowledge and he is going to get through this class if it kills him. We don’t have the aid of the internet screen today so he is having to do a lot more talking that usual.

Woops but here is the screen and we can see exactly what Juan has been describing when talking about ice wine and noble rot. And I can get my spelling correct without asking!

Tokaji from Hungary is on the screen – a beautiful bottle and box with medieval style art work

Pedro Ximenez – originally from Germany brought to Spain by a soldier centuries ago and now know as a Spanish desert sherry. It is a name very familiar to me, often referred to in many recipes but I have never had the pleasure of ‘meeting’ it.

Time to taste

1. First up is a Muscat from Western Cape – VERSUS sweet ‘tropical sensation’. Very pale in colour, fresh and peachy on the nose. High viscosity which apparently is a way of identifying a sweet wine in a blind tasting. I am pleasantly surprised and may have to change my opinion of sweet wines; it is quite refreshing but still exotic tasting.
2. A red from the same winery – the ‘legs’ fall slowly down the glass another identifier of a sweet wine. Sulphides on the nose and no fruit at all which thankfully don’t come through as much in the mouth. It is a pleasant taste; quite light but a few mouthfuls is enough for now.
3. Another Muscat, grapes not raisins so again the colour is quite pale. Woow, go slow it has 15% alcohol.
Too sweet as a wine for me but it gives that lovely warm glow similar to sherry or whisky as it goes down.

The air-conditioning is affecting our expert noses as it literally blows away any fragrance we created with our swirling. Juan manages to get it turned off.

4. Boschendal from SA Cape area Vin D’or 2011 natural sweetness from the noble rot. Beautiful gold honey colour but surprisingly only 10% alcohol. The nose is not attractive – nail polish acetate. Very pleasant on the tongue, honey but light.
5. The last bottle is De Bortoli Noble One Botrytis Semillon 2007 25^th anniversary vintage from Australia. Beautiful amber colour, deep and rich and the aroma is wonderfully smoky, it reminds me of walking into a timber yard and smelling newly cut cedar. The taste is, to use Juan’s words luscious. After a few minutes it suddenly comes to me – soft, plump, French prunes – there is a very slight bite with deep complex sweetness.

We all go for a second taste of the De Bortoli and on my first mouthful I am transported to a paddock of sun bleached grass, a few sheep in the distance, the voice of the crow and kookaburra and the scent of the eucalypts on the warm dry breeze is so strong on the palate. This is such a weird feeling. How can a tasting a wine evoke such a feeling of home; suddenly whisking you 1000’s of miles across the Indian Ocean? It is ridiculous; it is so real I feel the tears welling up with home sickness. But then there is something very familiar about the name, my obsessively logical mind tells me it is not just the fact that this is the 6^th tasting of the day! We ‘google map’ the address on the back of the label

BilBul 2680

And all becomes clear. This wine was born less than 50kms from where I and my brothers, our cousins, our mother, were born. This wine and I have our feet planted in the same soil, the soil of the New South Wales Riverina.

In wine speak we are of the same minerality – the unique characteristics of the soil in which a vine is grown being detected in the fragrance and taste of the wine.