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[bluebelle] 06/8/2007 08:34

Yes, as a matter of fact I am. And very nice it is too.

[bionicdog] 06/8/2007 08:18

That nice Bluebelle never came back , probably over in her chateau en France.

[isis] 05/8/2007 11:01

Don't know your Merlot from your elbow?
Tasting wine

By Sean Coughlan
BBC News

The label says it's got cedar oak and blackberry notes. Huh? We drink more wine but tend to buy on price. How do you learn to taste wine - and understand the jargon?

Britain has become a nation of wine drinkers. You only have to go around the summer pubs and back-garden parties to see how much wine we're swigging.

We're on less sure ground when it comes to knowing about what we're drinking. The language and the science of wine remains a foreign tongue, with its hints of hazelnut, wafts of cut grass and notes of blackcurrant.

Tasting wine
The second-cheapest red on the list
How do you actually taste all these flavours of a glass of wine - can ordinary drinkers be taught to discern the flavours and complexities swirling around in those bottles on the wine list? An international project, linking south London and South Africa, is seeking to answer just this question.

South Africa is a major producer of wine - and as hosts of the World Cup in 2010, there are going to be plenty of thirsty visitors wanting to taste the local produce. But there are concerns about a skills shortage in the country's tourist industry. So a project is being launched to provide scholarships to train the wine experts - the sommeliers - needed in upmarket restaurants.

Rather than importing sommeliers from Europe and the United States, the aim is for South Africa to grow its own by training "young previously disadvantaged individuals from backgrounds with little tradition of wine culture". The scheme will start with just one trainee, to be chosen from South Africa this autumn - someone who can't afford to travel, let alone become a wine buff - and the hope is to eventually run a wine school.

The recipient will next year come to the UK to work with Kate Thal, a South African-born wine buyer and founder of the Green and Blue wine shops in south London. For six months, they will work alongside Ms Thal, learning everything there is to know about tasting and buying wine. This will include trips to check wines in vineyards across Europe, tasks such as choosing wines for hotels and eventually working in one of Gordon Ramsey's restaurants.

Pour beginnings

But this apprentice will be someone who at present doesn't know their Merlot from their elbow. How do you teach something as subjective as taste? First of all, says Ms Thal, we should stop being dazzled by pretentiousness. She blames the way that food programmes like to make a meal out describing wine.


BBC
It's not a big mystery, it's not rocket science
Kate Thal on wine tasting

Using price to choose wine
"Television presenters are encouraged to get very purple with their prose. It does a great disservice to the cause of getting people to understand more about wine.

"It alienates people. They taste wine and they think they should be able to taste something like 'walking through the forest barefoot' or some other burbling like that. It's not a big mystery. It's not rocket science," she says.

And all that stuff on the labels about hints of mango on an autumn breeze? "Most of it is complete rubbish."

So how do you identify tastes? It's about the senses - before even tasting the wine, you have to look at it and smell it. Appearance is a powerful influence on what we taste, and much of what we think of as flavour is actually scent.

But that doesn't mean that every wine has to have dozens of separate smells. After a false start when three glasses all smelt of... er... white wine, it's possible to begin to distinguish the different scents. Yes, that's apple. Or a kind of citrus smell. I'd even claim cut grass.

Tasting is also debunked. There are basic elements to distinguish - sweetness, acidity and bitterness. With such a limited multiple choice - and a list of tastes and smells no more complicated than creamy, dry, flowery or flinty - it soon starts to become less baffling.

Scent packing

How each of these tastes is experienced will be different for everyone. But Ms Thal says it's like trying to talk about how you see a colour - we each might see a particular shade in an individual way, but we try to find a common reference point to describe it.


If you can tell the difference between orange juice and grapefruit juice, you can taste wine
Tom Forrest, Vinopolis
These shared descriptions then become a kind of benchmark for tasting other similar wines. To extend the colour metaphor, once you've established that red is like a ripe tomato, then you can start getting into more complex shades of scarlet, ochre or cherry.

After reaching the tasting equivalent of base camp, it gets more complicated, with talk of structure, balance, length, progression and a "hollow mid-palate".

But as Tom Forrest, the in-house expert at the Vinopolis wine centre in London, says: "If you can tell the difference between orange juice and grapefruit juice, you can taste wine."

There are so-called "super tasters" who are supposed to have particularly sensitive palates, and others with the tasting equivalent of colour blindness.

But Ms Thal says not to underestimate the importance of practice. "You can practice using your sense of smell with ground coffee or herbs."

Wine snobbery

But there is still a knowledge gap between the volume of wine we consume and the amount we know about what we drink.

A man rests after drinking champagne at Ascot
Wine sales are buoyant
Leta Overton, director of the London Wine Academy, says there is a British characteristic of "not wanting to be shown up or to look like you don't know what you're doing".

This has been a barrier to people feeling comfortable about choosing wines, and has created the habit for wine to be bought on price, rather than on preference for a particular variety.

Ms Overton also suggests that there has been a hangover from the days when sommeliers were rather haughty and French and the wine trade was filled with posh Oxbridge types.

"That exclusivity has gone now, the wine industry has worked hard to remove the snobbery." New world wines - those from South Africa, New Zealand and the likes - and new world attitudes are helping to bring about this change.

After all, if it's all about practice, there are tougher subjects to revise.

Add your comments on this story, using the form below.

If you have ever watched Jilly Gouldon and Oz Clarke you will have noticed that they don't always agree (although they may not be far apart either). The smell/nose/bouquet of a wine can be more revealing than the taste, try "slurping the wine" gently, as for me this always seems to release more of the flavours. I find that as I drink more and varied types of wine I can detect different tastes and qualities. I don't profess to be an authority on the subject but I do enjoy tasting the wine before I drink it
Justin Othergalass, Wickford

I went on a one-day wine tasting course with a friend and we both learned to think about the wine a little before knocking it back. We now keep the labels, mark each out of 10 and make some notes that are relevant to us, that way you start to build a picture of what you like. We extended it to beer and cider too. I usually buy wine around the "up to £10" price but drank a £50 bottle of wine for the first time the other day and it was wonderful.
Jo, Wilts, UK

My partner is a wine merchant and has therefore dragged me up from the gutter kicking and screaming in terms of wine knowledge. The only way to learn about how to taste wine is to taste it with people, discuss what you each find and see where that takes you. It's amazing how you can suddenly start to tell the difference between wines. The main problem, however, comes in the false marketing of wine to and by the supermarkets. People buy wine on price, so we have created a culture where wines are inflated to double their retail value and offered at half-price. Match this with the fact that premium products are offered at cheaper prices to large stores who don't make the effort to educate their consumers, and you have a widening gap in the UK wine market.
Andy, Banbury, UK

I prefer a nice grape juice, and tend to find it tastes of grapes...
Alex El Jundi, The Hague

There is a massive difference between tasting wine for your own enjoyment, and assessing wine for its quality and value. As a consumer it's not really that important knowing what flavours are synonymous with different wines/grapes, but it's more a question of do you enjoy the wine? You don't have to know what torque, top speed and fuel consumption your car has to enjoy driving it.
David, Edinburgh

I used to like most of the New World wines due to their full flavours (and usually high alcohol content). As time has passed I'm now more in favour of the old world wines, mainly French as you begin to appreciate the character of the wine rather than the punchiness.
Simon, South Cerney

A tip I was given once was to look at the labels. Better wines can get away with plainer labels. I tried this at a supermarket once, looking at labels and not price. It seems you end up looking at the expensive wines, so perhaps there is something in it?
Ed, Clacton, UK

The bigger the dent in the bottom of the bottle, the better the wine (so I've been told).
Kate, Bristol

I go for three things:
1. Full bodied
2. New world
3. Half price
It's served me well so far.
Sue, London

My criteria: 1. must be between £5 and £10; 2. must have an animal on the label; 3. must be from S. Africa, Chile or Australia and 4. definitely not French.
Derek Ramone Crawford, Edinburgh, Scotland

I agree wine tasting is not rocket science. Generally most people taste and smell the same things but I guess one of the skills that can be learned is how to put those perceptions into words so other people can understand what you are experiencing. Once you have learned this you realise that some lengthy descriptions that are written about some wines actually do not tell you much at all.
Andrew Shipway, Barossa Valley, South Australia

I manage a wine merchant serving wine up to £150 a bottle. I drink stuff that's about £7 or £8, anything above that is just throwing money away. But if people want to throw it in my direction...
Ryan, Belfast

I always choose my wine by the alcohol volume.
Mandy Phelps, Quedgeley, Gloucester, UK

All my family choose on the shape of the bottle. A nicer shaped bottle is bound to have nice tasting wine inside and a boring, plain bottle something not so nice.
Annabel Cook, Ipswich

I am French, whatever you can think about sommeliers and haughty, do not forget that the experience of making wine in Europe as well as England is part of 1,000 of years of experience which cannot be replaced by technology. Explain first to people how wine is made and why tastes are different, keep your wine from your chemicals to get wine.
Frederic, Manchester

[shorecrab] 26/7/2007 19:29

Bluebelle

Are you saying that Bulgaria doesn't grow Cab Sauv and suggesting that they import it? I think you'll find that winemaking goes back about 3000 years in that area with regard to indigenous varieties (including Mavrud), and Cab Sauv/Merlot has been grown there since about the 1930's.

[isis] 26/7/2007 19:18

I've been buying from Tescos for the past 5 years and have never had a bad bottle, but have saved a fortune and they give free delivery.
Tescos do not make wine they only sell it, so I could'nt careless who retails it. :-))
I snagged some Bulgarian CS for £1.80 a bottle after discounts and it's much better than a French equivalent at twice the price.

Domaine Boyar

Since its foundation in 1991, Domaine Boyar quickly developed to become the leading Bulgarian wine producer and supplier to the domestic market. Our best known brands are Domaine Boyar and Blueridge. In the competitive and highly demanding wine markets of the UK, Benelux, Canada, Scandinavia, Germany and Poland, the company is ranked among the leading Central and East European wine producers, and is known for both quality and striking visual presentation of the wines.

Domaine Boyar started life as an agent for selected Bulgarian wineries in export markets. Under the leadership of its CEO Mr. Margarit Todorov, the company name was associated with the increasing presence of Bulgarian wine in Western Europe. In the mid-1990s, the process of privatisation in Bulgaria provided opportunities for backward integration into production, and acted as a key moment in the company history. A strategy to gain direct control over production was adopted and the top management started looking at production facilities in the best white and red wine regions - The Black Sea and The Thracian Plain Vine and Wine Regions. The next stage was to introduce world-class production techniques, which demanded the construction of a greenfield winery. Blueridge was completed at the turn of the century and became the first facility of that scale and design to be built in Eastern Europe.

We participate actively in the new and exciting developments in Bulgaria through our vineyard project and various cultural, scientific, sports and high-profile events. Our winemakers travel the world to enrich their professional experience and find new areas of improvement.

[bionicdog] 26/7/2007 18:59

Bluebelle
Yes there is more to wine than the price and French wine is by and large overpriced rubbish. They simply haven't kept up and are operating on reputation alone , which still seems to impress some.
I did not advise anybody to go to Tesco instead of France. What I was pointing out is that Tesco UK was at the time cheaper than Tesco Calais. I would advise anybody to go to wherever thay can purchase their wines of choice cheapest.
I am not an oik and I have a pretty good palate.

[isis] 26/7/2007 17:33

Does it matter, it's the taste wot counts!
French wine is overpriced and overrated, that's not my fault - especially in Restuarants. I've been sold £12-£15- bottles that probably cost abour 2 quid.
It maybe better in France, but it's a rip-off in the UK.

Anyway Domaine Bayer is definitley Bulgarian.

[bluebelle] 26/7/2007 17:24

I just love it when you oiks advise one another to keep away from France and go to Tesco instead ! Makes France so much pleasurable for those of us with houses there and who appreciate that there is rather more to wine than just the price.

By the way isis, have you ever wondered why it is that you can buy Bulgarian Cabernet Sauvignon when they don't produce any ? Think about it and speculate as to where it might come from. Clue. It ain't Europe !!!

[isis] 26/7/2007 17:03

Have virtually stopped buying French as there are definitely better bargains from Aus, SA, California and Chile at Tescos Wine.
Even a Bulgarian Cabernet Sauvignon tasted better the French one at half the price!

[bionicdog] 05/7/2007 08:15

Quick trip to Tesco last night.
They have Robert Mondavi Woodbridge Shiraz on special anyway down to £4.99 from £6.99. Nobilo regional collection Marlborough sauvignon blanc is also down to a fiver from seven. With the offer , they both some out at £3.50. The Douglas Green chenin clanc comes out at £2.80. Why go to France? Especially if like me you think that they produce overpriced rubbish.

[thmk] 02/7/2007 20:11

Sainsbury "taste the difference" are good-Margaux at £12 particularly.

[knarf] 02/7/2007 18:37

Posted before but always worth a look.

[bionicdog] 02/7/2007 17:51

I'll do the shopping this week dear.

[isis] 02/7/2007 12:50

Guggers:-

30% OFF ALL WINE AT TESCOS

We have a truly fantastic offer available to our Wine Club Customers this week.

30% or more off ALL Wines and Sparkling lines.

This means that there are some incredible savings to be had including our best selling Bricout Cuvee Prestige Reserve Champagne Brut with 50% off equating to a single bottle price of only £11.88!

This event finishes on Sunday 8th July and stocks are limited so order early to avoid dissapointment.

[maxk] 01/7/2007 14:00

Sainsbury's launches low-alcohol wine
01/07/2007 - 12:49:46

British supermarket chain Sainsbury's is launching a range of lower alcohol wines in response to customer demand.

Is branding the four wines "Ten%" because of their alcohol by volume content.

Standard wines have crept up to between 12% and 14.5% in strength, the chain said.

Many shoppers now want wine which has slightly less alcohol, making it healthier and lower in calories.

Sainsbury's wine buyer Julian Dyer said: "Our research shows that customers are put off low alcohol wines due to their perceived poor quality and lack of taste.





"However, with new winemaking and growing techniques, we are now able to produce fantastic wines from several countries with a lower alcohol level with no compromise."

The Ten% range includes Australian Chardonnay, Australian Sangiovese Shiraz Rose, Italian Pinot Grigio, and South African Chenin Blanc.

The wines are naturally lower in alcohol due to the grape varieties used and early harvesting techniques, Sainsbury's said.

They go on sale in mid-July priced at £4.99 (€7.40) per bottle.



Lower duty too...but they dont seem to be passing it on.

[ffp] 26/6/2007 22:19

Well I thought it was mildly amusing, Hic! hic!

[ffp] 19/6/2007 21:27

me...hic!!

[loverat] 19/6/2007 19:55

This looks like an interesting thread...

I wonder who Lord Butterstock left the contents of his wine cellar
to when he snuffed it...

[bionicdog] 06/6/2007 15:13

I dunno how the Penfolds got mixed in with the rest of this old tat.

[bionicdog] 25/5/2007 20:28

I think he wanted to before stumping up 3 quid.

[maxk] 25/5/2007 20:11

Sounds like the old gimmer had sampled the bottle........

[bionicdog] 25/5/2007 19:59

When I was in Asda earlier a daft old gimmer was giving one of assistants grief because he wanted to talk to the resident wine expert. Eventually she had to relent and got someone to meet him despite the shop being extremely busy. Later on I saw him (now with his good lady wife) shuffling along clutching a £3 bottle of rose. They ignored the queues and went to a till that was closed. When they were refused service there , they shuffled over to the customer service desk demanding to be served. That's what I like , people who shop at Asda and Argos who demand Harrods standards of customer service.