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+--- Thread: Too many flavors & no clue!!! (/thread-18961.html)
- curlyq - 06-05-2000
I am a TRUE wine novice in need of desperate help!!! I just want to find a place or someone that can educate me on what is sweet and what wines are the dry wines. I have figured out at this point that dry=bitter. So I just want to figure out the flavors, so when I go to the Wine Bar, I can order & sound inteligent... Please help me out!!! or at least tell me where to go for help.
- mrdutton - 06-05-2000
Dry does not necessarily mean bitter - and bitter and sweet can be present in the same concoction.
I'd like to suggest that you visit your local Barnes & Nobel bookstore. Check-out their section of books on wine.
One that helped me quite a bit was the "Larousse Encyclopedia of Wine". Another possible reference, if you are not offended by the title, is "Wine for Dummies". Some people have said it is informative. I have flipped through the book and it did have a lot of good information. I did not buy it. (Nor did I buy the "Larousse", it was a gift.)
If you have the time, pull several books off of the shelves and page through them while you are in the book store. Heck, you don't even really have to purchase a book at all if you are just browsing!
[This message has been edited by mrdutton (edited 06-05-2000).]
- hotwine - 06-05-2000
Good advice from MrD. I would add a couple of suggestions:
- Pick up a couple of wine magazines at your bookstore; Food & Wine, and Wine Spectator come to mind.
- Thoroughly explore this Board, and pay particular attention to the forums on the different types of wines. You'll find a number of tasting notes there, that will describe the tastes and aromas of different wines.
- Explore other wine-oriented web sites, such as winespectator.com and wineloverspage.com.
- Check the section of your local newspapers that deal with food and wine and the restaurant scene, and look for announcements of wine tastings at wine shops and hotels. Enlist a friend to go with you to some of them, then go and participate, and discuss your experiences and perceptions regarding the wines that are offered. Buy a couple of bottles from among those that you tasted, and take them home with you, and enjoy them with the foods that were recommended to accompany them.
Wine appreciation is really a matter of education, just as it is with any other activity. The process of learning about wine requires modest investments of time and money that yield wonderful life-enhancing dividends in a very short period of time.
- Thomas - 06-05-2000
Also, see if someone in your area offers a wine course for novices. A good course explains those tastes of sweetness and bitterness, et al,--how to identify and describe them, and what they mean when it comes to food and wine pairing.
- Randy Caparoso - 06-06-2000
There are, however, some simple concepts to grasp. Wines that taste slightly sweet or sweeter technically have levels of sugar in them at .5% or higher. Wines with less than that (0 to .4%) taste "dry."
Other than that, there are some mitigating circumstances. The palate also detects sensations of sourness (contributed by levels of acidity) and bitterness (contributed by natural tannin, originating in skins, seeds and stems of grapes and ending up in wine). Wines with higher amounts of acidity can, indeed, make a wine taste less sweet than it is. German Rieslings, for instance, tend to have higher acidity than California grown Rieslings. Therefore, a German Riesling with 1.5% sugar may taste slightly sweet, but not as sweet as a California Riesling with 2.5% sugar (more sugar but less acid). It's a matter of balance, like oil and vinegar used in a dressing.
With reds, wines made from particularly high tannin grapes such as Cabernet Sauvignon can taste slightly bitter, hard or even astringent; and so although it may be just as dry (i.e. 0% sugar) as a Pinot Noir, a Cabernet may very well taste "dryer."
In any case, a dry wine is basically one with almost no sugar.
- Randy Caparoso - 06-06-2000
There are, however, some simple concepts to grasp. Wines that taste slightly sweet or sweeter technically have levels of sugar in them at .5% or higher. Wines that taste "dry" are those with .4% or less residual sugar, going all the way to 0%.
Other than that, there are some mitigating circumstances. The palate also detects sensations of sourness (contributed by levels of acidity) and bitterness (contributed by natural tannin, originating in skins, seeds and stems of grapes and ending up in wine). Wines with higher amounts of acidity can, indeed, make a wine taste less sweet than it is. German Rieslings, for instance, tend to have higher acidity than California grown Rieslings. Therefore, a German Riesling with 2% sugar may taste slightly sweet, but not nearly as sweet as a California Riesling with just 1% sugar (which may have less sugar, but also less acid). It's a matter of balance, like oil and vinegar used in a dressing.
With reds, wines made from particularly high tannin grapes such as Cabernet Sauvignon can taste slightly bitter, hard or even astringent; and so although it may be just as dry (i.e. 0% sugar) as a Pinot Noir, a Cabernet may very well taste "dryer."
In any case, a dry wine is basically one with almost no sugar.
[This message has been edited by Randy Caparoso (edited 06-06-2000).]