How to tell if a wine is 'good'

You hear about all these wine ratings by critics who may, and probably do, have a completely different palate then your own. Let your own tastebuds be the judge of what wine is 'good'. I personally can't STAND South African Pinotage, I think it tastes like mud, I don't care if it was rated at 94-points. Just because I don't like it doesn't mean other people can't.
There are other factors in determining what makes a wine 'good' such as, whether or not it has any faults(TCA, its a bacteria that makes the wine and cork smell mouldy, like wet cardboard), or if it is well balanced(containing just the right amount of alcohol, fruit, body, tannin, sweetness, and acidity), and complex. The simple answer is just, trust your tastebudes, if you drink it and you don't like it, don't buy it again. If you like it, and nobody else does, drink it anyway.
So you see, go with what you like, and everyone will be happy. Always trust your 'gut'.

All this wine talk is making me thirsty.

Why is Wine so complicated?

As history has it, wine was sort of an 'accidental' discovery. It started with the Egyptians in around 6000 BC as you can see in some of their hieroglyphs with big earthenware jugs called 'amphorae' and grapes. Thank god for the Egyptians! I guess they figured out that when you leave grapes in a jar, over time, they ferment(the process of sugar converting to alcohol). I won't bore you with too much wine history, but I thought it was kind of interesting. Who can forget about Jesus' miracle? Turning water into wine, I hear about 6 amphorae worth! Jesus knew how to party;).

Really though, I just like to drink the delicious grape juice, who cares where it all came from! I thought I'd share the little bit I know about wines roots, but I'm leaving out some really important parts of wine history, because its way too long to write about and I simply don't know the whole history. If you'd like to know more about the facsinating history of wine, buy a book, or you can ask me and I'll check out some of my books and get back to you.

I'm just a gal who likes to drink the vino.
Cheers!

The Tasting Process

Quite a few of my friends both in Saskatchewan and in British Columbia drink wine, but not many of them actually 'taste' wine. I'm going to go through the process of wine tasting. As silly as it may seem, it can be a lot of fun, and it makes drinking the wine that much more enjoyable.

You should have large wine glasses, but any standard wine glass will do.

1st: You lift your glass up so thats its directly across from your nose. Have a good look at the colour of the wine, try holding it up to a light coloured background so you can really see through the glass. Is it a rich ruby red, or a pale dull red with almost a yellowish tinge? The colour of the wine will give you a hint as to the age of the wine. For reds, as they age, they become lighter in colour. When a white wine ages it becomes darker. If its a white is it almost water clear, or a rich golden yellow?

2nd: The second part of the tasting is the swirl. I usually set the glass down on a table or other flat surface like a counter, and holding the glass by the stem putting the slightest bit of pressure start circling the glass on the table or counter to create a sort of whirlpool with the wine in the glass. Don't be shy, really give it a good swirl. The purpose of this is to 'release the bouquet' when you swirl, the wine coats the glass to release the smell of the wine. You'll notice little drops of wine either slowly, or quickly making their way into the glass. These are called 'legs', some people call them 'tears', I call them legs. If the legs are slow moving and thick, they are said to be 'long legs'. The longer the legs the higher the alcohol content(sweeter wines have long legs).

3rd: The smelling of the wine is my favourite part of the tasting. After the look, and the swirl, I like to smell the wine while it is still circling the bowl of the glass from swirl. Put your nose right over the glass and take a deep breath in through your nose. Again don't be shy about this, smelling the wine, in my opinion, makes the wine taste that much better. As you all know, the VAST majority of your taste comes through your sniffer. Its difficult at first to determine what exactly it is that your smelling, but you should be able to detect a couple of key aromas. Does your red wine have 'earthy'(read:dirt) smells? or does it smell like rich ripe fruit, like cherries, or blackberries? Take a couple good whiffs before you move onto the next step.

4th: Last but not least, the grand finale of the tasting process is to actually taste the wine. After the big sniff of the wine, you tilt the glass and make sure to get a good mouthful. Roll the

wine around on your tongue and tilt your head back just slightly to let the wine cover all of your tastebuds. This is where you feel the 'weight' of the wine. To give you an easy comparison, think of milk, Skim milk would be 'light bodied', 2% milk would be 'medium bodied', and homogenized would be 'full bodied'. Wines have similar weight minus the creaminess of milk.
While the wine is still in your mouth, tilt your head back and opening your mouth slightly, suck a little bit of air onto your 'palette' to get oxygen on the wine. This will bring out the full flavours of the wine. Now swallow the wine and wait for the finish. The finish is the after taste that, if its a good wine, should linger. Often crappy wines will have NO finish at all, and that is just simply unacceptable!

Thats it for the tasting process! Enjoy, and don't worry about looking silly, try it at home first with a couple friends before you attempt it at a restaurant. It really becomes a habit, you'll find yourself swirling all kinds of drinks, I do it with pretty much everything, without even thinking about it, but thats because I'm a big wine nerd! Don't laugh, you may be a wine nerd one day too!

For my first post I'll explain how my amazing wine blog came to be. Rob and I went to a little restaurant in Saskatoon this evening called "The Living Room" where we had some dinner. I ordered the Thai Chicken noodle salad, Rob had the baked brie and garlic plate and we ordered a bottle of wine (Woodbridge Cabernet Sauvignon, which I will review later). We got on the topic of what living a life of content meant to both of us. We were both pretty much on par with our vision of 'the good life' which was good since we're getting married this summer ;).
My idea of what the good life is consists of the obvious simple pleasures in life such as love, family, friends, good company, warm climates, a view, good food, and last but not least, wine.

I've really only scratched the surface in the complex world of wine in the last two years. I held a position as a wine consultant at a specialty wine store in White Rock, BC, where I learned LOADS (thats right, loads!) about wine and got to taste more wine then I could ever possibly dream of. If you had asked me a couple years ago what my favourite wine was I'd have said "Arbor Mist" that GROSS sweet fizzy crap that they sell at beer stores and pass off as 'wine'. Now my palette is much more developed (read: expensive) which might not be a good thing since we can't afford my taste in wines, being poor students in Saskatchewan.

I may as well start with my first blog review on the wine we drank this evening (which got me a little tipsy).

Woodbridge(by Robert Mondavi) Cabernet Sauvignon
California (2003)
It consists of 92% Cabernet Sauvignon/2% each Cabernet Franc, Barbera, Petit Verdot/1% each Merlot and Zinfandel

It had very little finish (aftertaste). For me the finish is as important a part of the wine tasting experience as the swirling, sniffing, and slurping. It was just sort of a low-tier Robert Mondavi wine that I would classify as a 'table wine'; its cheap, its drinkable, not overly fruity with a little bit of spice. If you're not looking for something overly complex, not necessarily to pair with food, but to pair with good company, where the main focus isn't the wine, but the conversation, then this wine would go very nicely.

Thats my bit for today. There really isn't a huge selection of wines in beerstores, liquor stores, or restaurants here in Saskatoon, but I'll do what I can with what I've got available to me. We'll be back to Vancouver for the summer in 2 months where the wine industry is HUGE, so my posts will be about a wider selection!