Educating Peter

How to Taste Just as a would-be golfer is introduced to the game by first learning how to hold a club, so too did Peter need to learn how to hold a glass properly before he began tasting wine. While this may seem like a simple thing, it's surprising how few would-be oenophiles, and even some pros, know how it's properly done. When I first met Peter (who, by the way, doesn't golf), he clutched his wineglass so tightly it looked as if he expected it to be ripped from his hand. Where had he cultivated such a death grip on a glass stem? Were movie screenings such rough-and-tumble affairs that he needed to guard his glass of Chardonnay with two hands? It wasn't just that Peter's grip looked particularly punishing, but that his hand position made the glass impossible to swirl. And swirling is key when it comes to releasing a wine's aromatic compounds, or "esters." I mentioned esters to Peter, knowing he would appreciate a technical term. Swirling increases the evaporation of a wine and lifts its aromas, its esters, above the rim of the glass. "But I'm left-handed," Peter protested, "I don't think I can do it" -- as if swirling were something that southpaws weren't meant to do. "If a southpaw like Babe Ruth could pitch a fastball at ninety miles an hour, you can move a glass of wine around a few times," I said, though I knew that any baseball analogy was lost on Peter, unless it was couched in movie terms, specifically the 1948 classic based on the Bambino's life. "You don't even have to swirl the glass in the air," I said, to reassure Peter, who was currently holding his glass uncertainly aloft. "You can just swirl it on the table a few times. In fact, plenty of professionals swirl their glasses on the table, not in the air." Peter looked skeptical but set his glass on the table and gave it a hard push or two. It was at least a movement in the right direction. "Now you're volatizing your esters," I said to him as he made a slow but complete 360-degree swirl with his glass. "I'm going to do that for Scorsese next time I see him," Peter declared. "I'll volatize my esters for him." This seemed like an odd way to entertain one of the greatest directors in film, but I figured Peter knew what Scorsese would like. He was the famous film critic, after all. In fact, aroma is all-important when it comes to judging the nature and the character of a wine. The famous French enologist Emile Peynaud (the great Bordeaux guru and so-called father of modern winemaking) once posited that aroma is what gives a wine its personality. Some have even dared to put an exact figure to its importance, rating it a neat 80 percent of the overall impression of a wine. But whether a full 80 percent or otherwise, there is a great deal that can be learned about a wine from its aroma alone. For example, the aroma can tell you if a wine is dry or sweet, if it has lots of acidity or too much alcohol. Aromas also offer the first indication of trouble: a corked wine can smell like a damp basement or a pile of wet newspapers. "Wet newspapers!" Peter exclaimed, putting his nose deep into the glass as if he were now smelling sodden headlines and type. "This wine isn't flawed," I reassured him. "You won't find those aromas." But Peter kept his nose plunged deep into the bowl, as if to be sure. I asked him to take a good long whiff. "How long should the whiff be?" he replied, a stickler for detail. "Three or four seconds," I replied. Peter nodded, swirled his wine, and gave a sniff of exactly four seconds -- his nose a few feet from the glass. (We'd have to work on glass position as well.) "After I shake the glass, can I taste the wine?" Peter asked. Like most would-be oenophiles, Peter considered smelling the wine more of a ceremonial prelude to drinking than an end unto itself. And yet a person can't taste anywhere near as much as he or she can smell; after all, only four things are detectable by taste: salty, sTeague, Lettie is the author of 'Educating Peter' with ISBN 9780743286787 and ISBN 0743286782.