A Crash Course in Wine: Part II

Ok, now we're getting to the good stuff! It's natural to think that when you drink wine, you're only using your sense of taste. However, we actually use three senses: sight, smell and taste. When pouring a glass of wine, it is tempting to jump right in and drink; but there are a few preliminary steps you should take to assess it and record your thoughts.

Sight: Clarity & Color
The first thing you should do once you've poured a glass of wine is evaluate its appearance.  Hold the glass at an angle against a white background. Does the wine appear cloudy or clear?  Generally speaking, if you can see through a wine, then it's ready to drink.

Next, you should note the color of the wine, and the consistency or concentration of that color. What is the color? Is it all the same hue, or does it fade at the edges? Color can tell you a lot about the age or condition of a wine, and even the varietal.

As seen below, white wines can range from pale yellow green to gold to brown, while reds can range from purple to ruby red to brown. As whites age, they generally get darker. Conversely, as reds age, they generally lose color.

Source: Windows on the World Complete Wine Course

Smell: Aroma & Bouquet
Contrary to popular belief, smell is likely the most important part of appreciating a wine. As Kevin Zraly notes, a person can only sense 4 tastes (sweet, sour, bitter, salty), but can identify 2,000+ different smells, with more than 200 of those commonly found in wine.

After you've evaluated the color and clarity of the wine, swirl it around in your glass. This motion "opens up" the wine by exposing it to oxygen to strengthen its smell. The aroma is the particular scent of the grapes, while the bouquet is the overall smell of the wine. Often, wine drinkers refer to the smell of the wine as its "nose".

Given the countless smells one can extract from a wine, it can be challenging to articulate many of them. Something that's been helpful for me is the scent wheel, seen below. This tool opens your mind to all the seemingly unconventional smells (stuff you seriously didn't think was possible) you can find in a wine. With it, the possibilities are endless!


After some smelling practice, you can begin to recognize patterns in common aromas associated with a certain grape, and even better anticipate what the wine may taste like once you actually drink it :)

Taste: The Major Components
Finally, on to the best part! Once you've noted the color and aroma/bouquet, it's time to drink. The first few times, let the wine sit on your tongue for 3-5 seconds before swallowing. This lets the wine warm up to your body temperature, sending the smells up through your nasal passage. Since 90% of taste is actually smell, doing this will actually enhance your tasting experience.

The major "tasting" components include: Residual Sugar, Acid, Tannins and Fruit. All of these elements can be recognized on a certain part of your tongue.

Residual sugar is any sugar from the grapes that wasn't converted to alcohol during fermentation. The sweetness from this can be felt immediately at the front tip of your tongue.

Acidity (sour or tart) can be felt on the sides of your tongue, cheek area and the back of your throat. White wines and many lighter red wines often have a noticeable level of acidity. Meanwhile, many fuller-bodied wines are lower in acidity. This occurs because grapes with more sugar - to be converted into alcohol - typically yield fuller-bodied wines. And as a grape's sugar level rises, its acidity falls.

Tannins are not a taste, but as Kevin Zraly says, a tactile sensation. They are a natural preservative that come from the skins, stems and pits of the grapes, as well as oak that may be used for barrel aging. Tannins tend to dry your palate. They are usually recognized first in the middle of the tongue, and if the wine has a lot of tannins, it can permeate your entire mouth.

Red wines are typically more tannic because the grape juice they come from is more frequently fermented with its skins, and they are aged in oak for longer periods of time. When wine, particularly powerful reds, is too young tannins can dry the palate too much, obstructing the fruity character of the wine. That said, as a wine ages, its tannins will fade while its fruit and color remain fairly intact, creating a "smoother" wine. This is why many robust wines are aged, and then consumed years later.

Fruit is also not a taste, it's actually a smell. However, the weight of the fruit (known as "body") can be felt down the middle of the tongue. Naturally, every drinkable wine will create that fruity sensation...since we know it's made from grapes!

Once you've swallowed the wine, pay attention to its aftertaste. Think about how long the overall taste and medley of components linger in your mouth. Typically a good wine will yield a considerable aftertaste, which wine drinkers call "length". The length of some really great wines can actually last for up to 3 minutes.

Overall, when consuming a quality wine that's ready to drink, good balance between the fruit, acid and tannins should be expressed - creating a complex, yet smooth, sensation in your mouth.

Part III coming soon...

A Crash Course in Wine: Part I

Ahead of my posts about North Fork tastings, I thought it would be helpful to do some Wine 101 for those who do not yet consider themselves wine connoisseurs :) Since it can be a lot of content to digest, I’ve split the entry into three parts. In Part I, I’ll cover the major wine regions and varietals. Part II includes the major components one can see, smell and taste in a wine. And Part III will be a quick wrap-up.

As we jump into the fundamentals of wine, this is a great time to mention Kevin Zraly, who runs the Windows on the World Wine School in New York City, an 8-session class I took last spring. In the class, I not only learned the basic facts of wine, but also discovered key characteristics and how I most prefer they be expressed in a wine. The many amusing anecdotes Kevin shared with us during class were quite helpful as well!

Since most of my fundamental wine knowledge came from Kevin, much of the content below can be traced in some way back to his book, Windows on the World Complete Wine Course and detailed tasting notes I took during his class. For anyone in the New York area who is curious about the subject, I highly recommend the course.

                             
                                                   

No matter what you glean from the information below, the best way to learn about wine is to accumulate lots of tasting experience. Through this, you begin to develop a basis for comparison, and gain a familiarity for common characteristics in particular varietals and regions. How about that adage? Less reading and studying...more drinking!

What is Wine?                                                                                                             
I’m going to go with the bold assumption that everyone has a general understanding of what wine is. As Zraly mentions in his book, for the purposes of this lesson, the simplest definition of wine is fermented grape juice. Fermentation is the process in which grape juice is converted into wine. Essentially, the sugar in the grapes is mixed with yeast, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide. The CO2 is released into the air, unless you’re making sparkling wine, in which case it would be captured.

The three major types of wine are: table wine (8-15% alcohol), sparkling wine, and fortified wine (17-22% alcohol). Unless noted otherwise, my entries will be about table wine.

Wine Regions                                                                                                              
Zraly notes that there are 70+ wine producing countries in the world today, and that more acres of grapes are planted than any other fruit crop in the world. Go grapes!

The top five wine producers in the world, in descending order are: France, Italy, Spain, United States and Argentina. Typically, the most important factors that make a region suitable for grape growing, and consequently wine production, are the right climate and ideal soil, or what the French call “terroir”. At the end of the day, a wine is only as good as the grapes used to make it, so these elements are very important.

Most grapes cannot thrive in just any climate or soil. To that end, familiarity with major wine regions can be very powerful, as it helps you learn what grapes will likely yield good wine, and which varietals to avoid from a particular region. For instance, the most venerable Rieslings (whose character is best expressed in wine when cultivated in cooler climates) often come from upstate New York, Washington State, Germany and Northern France, not California or Southern Europe.

In addition to the traditional wine superpowers, there has been a lot of growth in other regions around the globe, particularly in New Zealand, Chile, and South Africa. And, fun fact, there are now wine-producing regions in all 50 states here in the US! That said, after a recent visit to a winery in a remote part of North Carolina, I certainly cannot attest to the quality of wine produced outside of New York, California, Oregon and Washington.

Major Varietals                                                                                                           
Below are the most popular grapes used to make wine. They are listed from light to full-bodied. The notion of “body”, or the weight of the fruit and level of alcohol, is very important. Body dictates the order in which one tastes a series of wines. When tasting multiple wines in one sitting, you start with the light-bodied ones. Body also helps you determine which wines will best complement a particular meal.
                                                  












                                                                
                                                       
                                                              
                                                              
                                                              
The best varietals on the North Fork, based on the region’s climate and terroir, are light-style Chardonnay and Merlot. A less common grape, Cabernet Franc, has also shown some success. There are a number of other varietals produced in the region, but I’ve found that the caliber of wine produced from them is less consistent, depending much more on the quality and style of the particular winemaker.

Meanwhile, it’s more challenging for the North Fork to produce robust “big reds” like Cabernet Sauvignon that are frequently found in California, as the region's growing season isn’t warm or long enough for those grapes to ripen to their full potential.

Stay tuned for Part II...

Welcome Newbies!

Hello all. Or, to be more realistic about my current audience, hi Mom! Welcome to the North Fork Newbie.

First, a quick introduction: My name is Carey. I live and work in New York City, and spend some of my free time in the North Fork of Long Island. After immersing myself in a comprehensive wine class more than a year ago, I have developed a passion for the subject. I certainly wouldn't call myself an expert (yet!).  Instead, I simply take pleasure in tasting wines from numerous regions, grape varieties, and vintages, and focus on refining my own abilities to recognize subtle smells and tastes one can find in a great wine. And, as a New Yorker passionate about wine, I take pride in the wine-making region closest to the city - the North Fork.
                                                          

Now, I'm sure you have some follow-up questions, so let me indulge you...

What's your connection to the North Fork? I did not grow up there; in fact, it was just two years ago that I first visited the region! However, it was closer than I thought. As a child growing up in Connecticut, I spent a lot of time on the state's southern shore. On a clear day, you could spot a stretch of land along the horizon, just across Long Island Sound. This mass of barely visible land was cloaked in mystery. Although it was just a few miles across the water, I had never been, as it would be a multi-hour journey by car (sadly, no bridges, but there were ferries!). I'd often think about what those "strangers from another state" were doing. Little did I know that some of these strangers were working hard to cultivate what was at the time, a burgeoning wine industry. What's more, I had no idea it would someday be one of my favorite escapes from the city.

How poetic. So what exactly is the "North Fork"? The North Fork - about a two-hour drive from New York City - is one of two regions making up the eastern stretch of Long Island, where the Peconic River empties into Peconic Bay, creating a two-pronged "fork" of land. The area south of the bay is the Hamptons, while the land along the bay's northern border is the North Fork. The Hamptons is hip, trendy and chock-full of A-list celebrities, while the North Fork is its gentler, down-to-earth sibling. In the North Fork, you have access to nearly everything that draws New Yorkers to the Hamptons, plus one other thing...

Wine country, which includes about 40 wineries adorning a 20-mile stretch along or between two main roads, Routes 25 & 48. The earliest vines in the North Fork date back to the 1970's. Since then, there's been considerable growth in wine production in the region. Yet despite this deep history and proximity to Manhattan, one of the world's culinary meccas, I have struggled to find many restaurants or retailers offering a critical mass of (if any) Long Island wines.

Note: In the spirit of full disclosure, there are a handful of reputable wineries in the Hamptons. However, this pales in comparison to the extensive offerings you can find in the North Fork.

                           

Carey, that's great, but why the blog? Good question. First, this blog will encourage my friends and I to record our thoughts on the tasting rooms we visit and wines we consume. When tasting a new wine, taking some time to record your thoughts and observations can be very helpful. There are so many nuances from vintage to vintage, region to region, and producer to producer, that it's nearly impossible to catalog them all in your head. As such, tasting notes can be a great reference when you're seeking a particular wine to accompany a meal, enrich a special occasion, or just satisfy a particular craving.

And for those of you with a limited knowledge of wine, no fear! Reading someone's tasting notes are actually a great way to hone your own ability to see, smell and taste the many (and sometimes, surprising) characteristics in a fulfilling wine.

My goal: to visit each Long Island winery and share my thoughts with you.  From the observations I chronicle in this blog, I hope to provide you with a good reference point when planning your own visit the Long Island wine country. More broadly (and ambitiously) speaking, I'm trying to do my part to raise the profile of the North Fork :)

I'm hooked. And also thirsty. Which North Fork wines should I try? I like the enthusiasm! Stick around, and hopefully I can help you. I encourage you to take a look at the "Long Island Wineries" page above, which includes a complete listing of Long Island wineries. As my friends and I frequent each winery, I'll post a new blog entry and update the aforementioned list by adding summary thoughts, recommended wines, and an overall rating. And, to any readers who have experienced some North Fork wines yourselves, feel free to share your thoughts as we go along.

Up next: A crash course in wine, followed by some notes from a recent Long Island Rose tasting. But for now, I leave you with this...an evening shot from the backyard of the summer house we are renting in the North Fork. Picture yourself here, and just add some fresh fish from the grill and a glass of summer wine, cooled to perfection. No need to wait and age...uncork and enjoy the North Fork experience now!