Years ago I was on holiday (accompanying my husband who was at a conference) and we had a meal in a hotel restaurant in Sydney and I loved the wonderful white wine. We had been living in the USA, where wines are inexpensive
and in England, Which did not have much wine then, unlike nowadays with the benefit of global warming
and in Europe (Spain), known for dry red Rioja and
Singapore, (where wines are expensive)
so the wonderful white wines from Australia and New Zealand were new to us. I wanted to keep the empty bottle and soak off the wine label.
The waiter took away the bottle and promised to give me the label. He forgot or somebody else in the kitchen threw away the empty bottle. I was so disappointed.
Lost Wine Name in Australia
Yes, of course, I had written down the name of the wine on a corner of the paper napkin in my pocket. The grand restaurant for our first night and last night dinner had fabric napkins. Yes, of course, I lost the piece of paper.
BYO in New Zealand
Off we went to New Zealand. All around New Zealand the restaurants were BYO, bring your own wine. Often if you did not bring a wine, the restaurant, which might or might not have a license to sell wine, would direct you to a wine shop next door, or a few steps away. In the wine shop we would look along the rows of unfamiliar wines from Australia and New Zealand wondering what to choose, in a hurry to get back to the restaurant for dinner.
No good relying on the waiter or sommelier to suggest wine to go with the food. You have to choose your own in New Zealand.
Photographing Wine Labels
Nowadays I have a mobile phone containing a camera. I make sure it is charged and take a photo of the label on the front of a bottle of wine I like and the label on the back and the top.
Wedding And Event Menus
If you go to a wedding or grand reception you might get given a menu with the wines which go with each course listed.
However, you might get given a separate list of wines at wedding or a wine tasting or wine and dine event. I like to give a single tick to a wine I like. I use a double tick for something I like so much that I want to rush out and buy a bottle or order it online the next free hour whilst it is still in my mind.
I usually don't staple the wine and food menus together because I don't like to damage the menu. Instead, I fold the wine list inside the food menu. Or I photograph the food menu followed by the wine menu or the wine bottle and label.
When I was first married, I had a book in which I stored the labels of wines I liked so that I could ask for them for bithdays and Xmas and order them for parties.
Labelling Wine Glasses
It is easy to see the difference between a white wine and a red wine. But when the wines have gone around the table, a latecomer is deemed to be an absentee, you might be allowed to take the last dregs from a bottle of your favourite.
If you get out of sync with everybody else, it is hard to pair up the wines in your glass with the ones on the list. Yes, you can taste the difference between the sweet you liked and the too dry wine - you think. But the taste of wine alters with your familiarity with it, and what you are pairing it with.
Changing Taste
Hence the old saying, buy on an apple, sell on a cheese. My family wine expert interjects and objects: 'No wine buyer would buy on an apple, which is too acid. You only buy or sell at trade shows with dry biscuits.'
You can try this at home. Drink red and white wines with an acidic pickle or apple or lemon and then a chocolate or marzipan.
At a wine tasting event such as a tutored tasting at a wine show you would be given enough glasses for every wine (usually only five or six) the glasses are placed on a paper placemat, in order with circles, sometimes with numbers drawn inside the cirles like the top of a clockface.
If I had anticipated this problem of muddling up wine glasses, I would have torn off strips of white paper and put numbers and wine names on them and put the paper under the foot of each glass.
About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
If you want a popular talk on wine tasting and testing for a group, you can contact me or my husband. I give talks to Toastmasters International groups in the UK and Singapore - anywhere else if you want to arrange the expenses of the flight and transfers and hotels and restaurants. If you want a technical talk with slides and a series of wines to taste from growers in one region, contact my husband Trevor Sharot
Trevor has spent several years doing the wine exams through WSET up to Diploma level. After that he was observed doing a wine tasting for a group and tested for admission to the Association of Wine Educators.
You fail the test if you serve a dud wine. You must test all the wines before giving them out to the guests.
That is why you as host taste the wine in a restaurant. You are not to see if you like the wine, but to check it has not gone off.
A little of the wine knowledge has rubbed off on me. See Trevor Sharot's blog post:
http://grapedeal.com/english-wine/
No comments:
Post a Comment