Wine knowledge for beginners

Welcome to all the pseudo wine lovers or ‘oenophile’, as you might call yourself, who somehow happened to trip onto this post whilst googling ‘how to become a wine connoisseur’. With a heavy heart I’d like to inform you that it is going to be hard becoming one by reading a 500 word article, but one must try. So bring out the cheap Sula you just bought and poured in the most inappropriate glass, and read my immense knowledge of this spirit that I gathered over a 3 hour google search, you should see my tabs right now.

• Nomenclature: There happen to be two wine worlds: Old Wine World and New Wine World. Geographically speaking, the Old World includes traditional wine growing parts of Europe, the rest being the New World. When it comes to naming the wines, the Old World way is naming it by the region it was made in. The ‘terrior’ as they call it, where the soil, rain, climate etc affect the taste of the wine. The New World way of naming the wine would be on the grape it is made from. For example a Pinot Noir and Burgundy are infact two different names of the same wine where Pinot Noir is the name of the grape and Burgundy is the region in France where it is made. Similarly a Chardonnay may also be known as a Burgundy because of the name it gets from the region.

• The glass: Most wines have a specific kind of glass that they are poured in, the shape and the size helping the aroma to open up to the fullest. While there are specific nitigrities of each wine glass, for a beginner knowing that the whites are served in a more ‘U’ shaped glass while reds in broader one is enough. The bowl of white wines are less wide to intact the aromas while it is bigger for reds to build up their fragrance.

• Holding the glass: A wine glass is held at the lower end of the stem. Period.

• Serving: Reds are generally served at room temperature whereas whites and sparkling, a little chilled. The temperature of white wine is brought down by keeping the bottle in ice and not by putting ice cubes in the glass, peasants. Pouring the wine is not really an art, unlike beer. Just leave the glass on the table, pour in, keeping some distance from the glass, avoid spills. The glass is filled till the curve of the bowl, an instruction I usually avoid.

• Drinking: I just learnt, bottoms up is not a thing with wine and there is a very elaborate way of drinking it. First: Hold up your glass like you held the test tube in chemistry labs and see your wine. This is you examining the colour. Apparently, wine may not be of wine colour. Second: Swirling is what comes next. Swirl the glass slowly by only wrist action to coat the wine on the sides of the glass to release the aromas. Third: Sniff sniff. It is now time to smell the wine. Whites usually smell lemon and citrus-y while reds have a berry like smell. The true understanding of the aromas of wine happens over time and try. Fourth: My favourite, sip it. As they say, you drink wine with your eyes and nose first, it’s true taste on the tongue comes with the combination of all three.

While this is the basic knowledge you can get about the spirit, you can only develop your palate by tasting and trying. Explore different varieties, ask for recommendations and suggestions, and don’t drink it to just get drunk. Also, to break the myth, the price does not always mean that the wine would be better.

Thus, one fine day you will find your ‘aha’ wine, whose one sip will send you flying to the doors of beautiful meadows in the clouds through the vineyards in France and old oak barrels in Italy. This, my friend, would be your wine. Don’t stop there, though. As, WikiHow rightly told me, I’d know when I am a wine connoisseur when I can identify a 2 fruit flavours, more than 3 characteristics, like smoke, chalk, cinnamon and the palate of the wine change from the moment you sip it, till you swallow it. Fancy.

Until then, I’ll get drunk on beers.