Monday Monday Monday - we meet again. Mondays never seem to get any easier, even when I know it's a short work week. I am heading out of town with my family on Wednesday morning, so only about a day and a half of work stand between me and five days of relaxation and family time :)
This weekend was spent catching up with old friends, treating myself to a manicure and some new clothes, visiting with family, and trying something new: a wine seminar. I was a little skeptical about how this wine event was going to be, but I learned so much and had a total blast and can't wait to share it with you!
A dear friend invited me and seven other fantastic ladies over for a wine tasting/seminar hosted by Sipping Pretty Consultants, LLC, a Baltimore-based company. After downing a few bottles of wine before the event "officially" started, our wonderful sommelier, Jeanette, arrived with three bottles of wine, cheese and crackers, and a great sense of humor.
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| Meet Jeanette |
Our tasting followed a curriculum centered on four S's: see, sniff, sip, and summarize. Jeanette showcased three wines and offered alternative ways to explore each of them, including how to master the art of tasting.
Our first wine was a Cardinal Moscato. Now, first things first -- I do not do sweet wines. I steer clear of moscatos and rieslings to spare myself a headache from hell the morning after drinking those. Most of our wine party agreed and turned their noses at the thought of drinking a glass of this sugar, but Jeanette had other plans for us.
The first S: see. The "see" category focused on clarity, color and legs of the wine. Clarity is measured as either brilliant, clear or hazy. I learned that wines that appear clear or hazy are best used for sangria or cooking. It was no surprise, then, that Jeanette brought us a moscato that was brilliantly clear! The color choices included green tinged, straw, gold, or amber. Jeanette explained that the color of the wine is instructive of how the wine is fermented. Lighter colored wines often are steel barrel fermented, which means they are tart and tangy. Our party decided that "straw" was the best color description for the moscato. Finally, I learned what the "legs" category was about. The legs are the markings that the wine makes on the inside of the glass when it is swirled around, and you can tell a lot about the sugar content and alcohol by volume based on these drippings. If the legs are slow and wide ("pronounced"), the wine likely is sweet, and if they are skinny and long ("faint"), the wine likely has a higher alcohol content. Our moscato was pronounced, which made perfect sense because the wine was so sweet!
We then moved to the second S: sniff. Although this category was broken down in to about ten different types of scents, the overall gist was whether the wine smelled fruity, earthy or mineraly. Fruity scents are what you smell when you put your nose to the very top of the glass; earthy scents are what you smell when you lean your nose toward the side of the glass; and mineral scents are smelled at the bottom of the bowl of the glass. One girl in our group guessed right away that this wine smelled like an apricot, and Jeanette applauded her sharp sense of smell. There was no mistaking that we were drinking a fruity wine.
Next, Jeanette FINALLY let us sip the wine. All this time we were holding this wine and learning about it but we were not allowed to try any of it, so this was a much-anticipated moment for everyone. I commented immediately about how I could not imagine having more than one or two sips of this ultra sweet wine, and this is when Jeanette blew my mind. She figured most of us would say something similar, so she invited us to try a grape before taking our next sip. I can't even tell you the difference this made! I grabbed a red grape, chewed on it for a seconds (Jeanette said we should make sure we chew on the skin), and then had a sip of the wine and it tasted like a completely different drink! So now I know: if a wine is too sweet, have some grapes while drinking it and they will balance out the sweetness. Conversely, if a wine is too dry, oily and fatty foods will grease our palates and provide a different flavor. Or, if a wine tastes too flat, we should pair it with something spicy.
The final S, summarize, was personal to each of us. Some ultimately enjoyed the moscato, and others vowed that we never would reach for another glass of it again. I think I leaned more toward the latter, but I still am impressed with the grapes trick.
The second bottle of wine we sampled was San Michele Pinot Grigio. Pinot grigios are my "go to" wines -- hands down. I find them to be light and fluffy and perfect for any occasion (and time of day for that matter, because we all know I can get into some day drinking ...). This wine was brilliant, straw-colored and had faint legs. We smelled earthy tones and tasted a dry flavor with this wine -- quite the opposite from our previous glass of moscato. Some ladies who felt the wine was too dry tried the tasting trick and sampled a piece of cheese or a pepperoni before giving the wine another try. I thought the flavor of the pinot grigio was great, but I tried some cheese just for the heck of it and definitely tasted a difference!
We then moved on to our third bottle of wine, which was a Mendoza Station Malbec. Like moscatos and rieslings, I typically do not do red wines either. Occasionally I will have a glass of red around the holidays, but for the most part I stay true to my whites. This malbec was a deep cherry plum color, which means that the grapes came from a younger vine. Jeanette explained that younger vines produce a mass quantity, but usually a lower quality wine. Most of us noted the wine smelled fruity and tasted fairly dry (cue cheese & pepperoni trick again). Jeanette taught us that the best foods to pair with this type of red wine are proteins, like chicken and fish.
Curious about whether the alcohol by volume on the label tells you anything about the taste of the wine? I was too. As a general rule, wines with 10% or less ABV typically are sweeter; 10-12% ABV are the off-dry wines; and 12.5-15% ABV are considered dry wines. If a wine has a high alcohol content but also tastes pretty sweet, it probably is fortified, which means sugar has been added. Fortified wines can run you over 500 calories per bottle (generally, a bottle of wine has between 325-375 calories), so these are the ones to watch out for! And of course, this comes before you factor in any of the foods you're eating with the wine ;)
Overall, I learned a ton about various wines and can't wait to impress my family members at the Thanksgiving dinner table this week! I highly recommend checking out Sipping Pretty and all they have to offer -- trust me, there is a lot more to learn than what I have posted. Below are a couple more pictures from this very fun night with great friends.
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| Me and my lovely mother |
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| The best picture we could get as a group |
Thanks to all the wonderful ladies who filled Saturday night with fun, laughter and lots of entertainment! This night deserves a serious Cheers!
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