i'm new to wine tasting

All the emphasis on 'tasting' presumes such. I NEVER 'taste' wines or participate in tastings. It's a lot of rubbish even to consider this, aside from professionals who buy and sell wine, and who are expert tasters.

Michael Scarpitti wrote

Most of here would have no quarrel with this statement - the key words are

Not **ALL**.

And although you personally prefer to only consume wine with a meal, many of us choose not to limit ourselves.

At the end of a long day at the coalface, my wife and I like nothing better than relaxing, *before* we start preparing the evening meal, and enjoying a couple of glass of wine - white or red - whatever takes our fancy.

Sometimes, that bottle may be empty before we even start the meal, if not we will finish it with the meal.

I have a group of friends who often get together and enjoy a wide range of wines with a few snacks - and no meal - what is wrong with that?

That is our choice - no rights - no wrongs - simply our way of enjoying wine.

Michael, yours is *not* the only way, or the right way.

It is just the Scarpitti way!!!!!!!

When you write constructive contribution on wine, you are interesting and knowledgeable.

When you continually rabbit on about *tasting*, you are just plain boring.

You have a strong opinion, and you have more than amply voiced that opinion, over a protracted period.

We have got the message - Now stop!!!!!!!

In other words, you cannot cite any reference where such a ridiculous sentiment is expressed, so instead you create a straw man to prop up your tiresome assertions.

Thank you for the clarification, Mark Lipton

What is the title of this thread? Hint: "I'm new to wine tasting."

What does that presuppose? Let me tell you, since it seems to escape your notice. The novice wine drinker might wish to become more knowledgeable. He goes to the newstsnd and sees a Wine Spectator or other magazines, in which there will likely be dozens of pages devoted to or mentioning wine tasting, and to each wine a point score assigned. Thus, the novice thinks that the best way to learn more about wines is to engage in similar activities, not knowing that this is utter rubbish.

How many points for that California Cab?

I'm talking about dinner wines, not Vin Santo or German sweet wines.

That's a straw man. It's not 'limiting yourself', just using the product the way it was intended. Is it 'limiting myself' if I choose to listen to Beethoven's 5th Sympony as it was intended, instead of walking up onto the stage and strolling over to the violin section and placing mny ear next to ONE violin, and asking everyone else to stop playing?

Ok, I see what I think your point might be (or perhaps what a valid point might be). Wine =scoring=, for novices, is probably a waste of time. If by "wine tasting" you mean the process of sipping, quantifying, and scoring wine on a scale from x to y is an activity that provides little more than beef by-products for the novice, then I agree. But that's not what I believe the OP had in mind.

Rather, when I use (and hear) the term "wine tasting" I think of what =I= do when I go to a winery or wine store and sample the wares. I sniff, sip, swish, and enjoy small samples of several different wines, and make note of which ones I =like=. Occasionally I'll actually make notes, but usually I buy (or don't) on the spot. Wines do taste different from each other (and they also taste different when paired with other comestibles), so there is also a process of education by trying things and seeing what works. I take the wines home and drink them with foods (usually) but sometimes by themselves, or before eating. I have a list of somebody's opinion on which wines tend to go better with which kinds of food, and I use that as a guide to pairing, but I also experiment (and these experiments have been quite enlightening).

I remember my experiences (to the extent that a fifty year old can remember anything! :) and the next time I'm tasting, I can picture in my mind a little better how the flavors I'm savoring will go with other foods I might serve with it. I pick out some more wines this way... and the process of learning and enjoying goes on.

Here's a little example - I am not all that familiar with viognier. It's a light white wine that in my original tastings I thought might go well with the kinds of foods I would pair with savignon blanc. However, when I actually tried that pairing, it did not work out very well. I did not enjoy the wine as much as I did in the winery when I was drinking it alone. I tried this a few times, and learned something. I've yet to come up with a good match for it, a problem exacerbated by the small number of bottles I have, and the myriad of other options I have ("do I want to drink this wine which I know goes well, or do I want to try this other one which I don't even remember all that well").

Petit Syrah is another one I learned about from tasting and drinking. I had originally treated it (in pairing) more like a syrah, even though it is different. I was not really aware of what the differences were, because each syrah is different from each other one, but with more experience and more tastings (both with food at my dinner table, and alone at a winery) I started to figure out the characteristics of petit syrah as opposed to syrah, and now I am more successful in putting that wine with food that shows it best (allows me to garner the maximum enjoyment from it).

All this is from tasting (which includes drinking, but is not restricted to it). None of this is from scoring on a ninety point scale. I agree that's a waste of time for a novice. As to the usefulness of those scores made by professional tasters, I find them about as useful as the "accuracy" scores Consumer Reports puts out for speakers. Helps weed out the really bad ones, but wines or speakers with similar high scores will taste or sound very different. There is more to it than a one dimensional scale.

Jose

Actually most wines are made with no consideration for how they will be consumed. IT is assumed that the buyer will put the bottle to whatever use pleases him

:-)

Mike, you know quite well that's not true.

Regional Italian wines (as opposed to the international-styled Merlots and Cabs, etc. made in Italy) evolved over time to match the dishes of the regions. I'm sure roughly the same thing is true of France. The wines and dishes evolved together. The Piedmontese or Tuscan or Campagnian or Puglian wine-maker is in principle making wines to accompany the common dishes of Piedmont, Tuscany, Campagna, or Puglia. He knows it, I know it, and you know it.

In fact, the market is beginning to recognize that regional Italian wines are something special, and demand for them is increasing. Why should I buy an Italian Merlot instead of a Taurasi? Wines that express not only the uvaggio but also the region and land are what wine is all about.

You should try sweet German wine with food sometime.

Many of the better known French wines evolved to meet the needs of their export markets - Paris, Britain, Holland.

In the case of Alsace the wine produced did not so much evolve as flip

- depending on whether France or Germany was providing the market.

I mean 'tasting' alone as an evaluative exercise, whether 'scoring' or not.

At best, such activities are misleading, as the wine when tasted alone often tastes quite different from the way it tastes in the context of a meal. To be able to make that 'leap' is very difficult.

Pairing is not that complicated. I like a medium-weight Chianti with salmon. Simple wines go with complex dishes. Complex wines go with simple dishes. Almost any red goes well with lamb, unless you smother it in some ridiculous sauce.

I have somewhat less interest in and experience with whites, and to me the issue of matching whites with foods seems of less than Earth-shattering import. I wish you luck.

Precisely. I have made mention of the high ratings Vietti wines have received, but my experience with them was poor.

Indeed.

In that case I most heartily disagree... unless you have a special meaning of "evaluative" in mind. Consider going to the grocery store trying to come up with a really good pasta sauce. You have tomatoes, garlic, mushrooms, onions, and you are considering adding something else to give it some oomph. So, you try some (for the sake of argument) unfamiliar foods - a little pepper, a little anchovy, a little saurkraut, and a little feta cheese. The actual sauce you will make is at home; you didn't bring it with you. But you can remember what it tastes like, and mentally integrate it (imperfectly of course) with the flavors you are here experiencing, and decide that anchovy might be just the ticket, but saurkraut just wouldn't cut it.

Next week you are making hot dogs and want to give them a little interest. Anchovy? I don't think so. But you might remember what the saurkraut tasted like. Not very appetizing by itself, but just the thing to bring out the hot dog.

Same with wine.

Yes, wine with food tastes different from wine without food. Actually, the same can be said of many things - try pizza with orange juice for a nice surprise. However, by both tasting (alone) and drinking (with food), one can learn to make the connection and make good predictions. Any chef, including the new housewife, does this with food, and some get very good at it, being able to look at a recipie, make alterations based on their experience (including sniffing spices and such) and come out golden.

Another point is that wine tasting is entertaining in and of itself. Even if it is useless, so is riding a ferris wheel or waterskiing. But they can entertain. Nothing wrong with that.

No, it is not (except for the wide varieties of wine available). It can easily be learned by a novice - not just "rules of thumb" but "taste this and tell me if you think it would go with that". It's the same thing that happens with two foods. But it's hard to do if you don't know what the foods taste like alone. Ditto wine.

Taste is a matter of... er... taste. No right or wrong.

Jose

I think it is true in SOME rare cases.

Italy's gastronomic genius paradocixally developed in periods of scarcity and hunger which lasted until less than a century ago. This is true genius, I am biased I know, but there it is.

Wine came into the picture by accident, until relatively recent times you had no real choice, depending on the region, in the Veneto for example one would distinguish between local wine and headier stuff from Puglia, anything else was luxury for the few. The marriage with local dishes is purely accidental IMHO.

So it happens that in the Emilia region one can find spritely fairly acidic reds which happen to go perfectly with the local taste for fat dishes, mostly pork. And look at Liguria, they now produce some of Italy's most interesting whites (shhh dont tell anyone), in fact the tradition there is such that serving a red is considered an insult, and yes they eat fish and seafood and stuff that goes really well with the local wine vermentino.

So you see, the best examples I could come up with are obscure at best, Liguria and Emilia do not even figure on most wine region maps, yet they have the best food-wine coordination.

It is spelled Campania...

Like I said I am not convinced. Back then, who could afford the red meat that goes so well today with Chianti? I cannot see Chianti going with beans or with the local charcuterie frankly. Piemonte nebbiolo does not make a particularly great match for the local habit of cooking veal to death in Barolo, nor do I see it with vitello tonnato, nor with insalata russa, and it is even too tannic for the fantastic agnolotti of the area. Have an overoaked Gaja white rtrendoid wine, it will do better. And Campania did not produce drinkable wine until very recently, and same goes for Puglia. OK so now they have a few star producers, but by and large Puglia was the region that produced plonk for the north, and still produces it today...

For the whites the situation is even more recent. As you know the really good whites are mainly from Friuli (and sigh, they tend to be overoaked like a Cal chard), but 40 years ago that area only produced heavy reds that would have killed the local cuisine (hams, a preparation similar to sauerkraut, stuff that goes well with beer!).

So please take this idea of local food and wine matches with a grain of .. salt.

I think I know this wine - is it from Frass Canyon?

Yes, but also in many periods of abundance. Toscana was not poor, not by any stretch of the imagination. Nor was Veneto. And Genoa? Please! There has been much wealth in Italy over the ecenturies, as well as much poverty. Feasts and famines.

The grapes that produced wines that married well with the dishesand local products were cultivated from indigenous strains, or they were brought in because they throve. But you know that Sangiovese tastes different in different areas. Nonetheless, Sangiovese has a certain signature (one that I am not as fond of as say, Nebbiolo, Negro Amaro or Aglianico or Carignano or Nero d'Avola).

Are you unaware that Grignolino goes marvelously with many Piedmontese dishes? Do you really think that this is accidental? Do you think that Grignolino was cultivated for no good reason?

Ligurian Vermentino is not readily available here. I tried some Tuscan V, but I prefer the Sardinian stuff.

Oh, come on. You cannot be serious.Take Grignolino:

"The grape probably originated in northern Italy where the climate matches the needs of the vine and the taste characteristics of these wines match well with the local foods."

"These are good wines to have with salamis and cheeses of medium seasoning, and also match well with beef."

The same is true for Barbera:

"Barbera is a wonderful companion to simple, everyday fare: pizza, pastas, grilled meats (chicken, pork, or beef ), sausages, salamis, and other high-fat foods. More robust versions complement savory stews, roasted cuts of duck, beef and venison, grilled wild mushrooms, and aged sharp cheeses such as Parmiggiano and Asiago."

Right. My error.

Who paid for all that art?

The best Italian white I know of is Valentini's Trebbiano d'Abruzzo.

It's expensive.

See:

My friend, Italy was poor in the 19th century and the early half of the

You grow what gives the best results (in those days, criteria would have been stable predictable production, and high alcohol content). There were no oenologists back then, just farmers trying to make high octane wine.

This is an obscure wine that would have only been known within a few miles of the growing area. Back then it would have been a shadow of today's product.

I'll bring you some, where are you?

Agreed on the first part, it adapted well, after trying many other grapes they setled for that one. It happens to go well with the food. Look Michael, just like my examples, yours is an obscure one, most people in Italy don't know what Grignolino is, or could not locate it on a map... ;-)

Yes, very good.

Spelling and correction: "Parmigiano Reggiano".

That is true TODAY. But:

Barbera used to be a wine to get pissed on, it gave a terrible headache, it tasted terrible (you know barbera has a particular taste, prized today, now imagine it badly vinified!), it was consumed in large quantities in the osterie, it was a wine to get drunk and sing with... Only in the last 20 years has Barbera been made correctly and turned into what it is now. Some wineries even age it in oak, man what has the world come to! Barbera in a barrique, international barbera!

Naa, they evolved to become better tasting, nobody said "around here they eat such and such, let's steer the wine in this or that direction". You cannot do that Michael. Wine is wine, you can make it well but you cannot take Grignolino and make it more or less acid, or change its aroma signature, so as to adapt it to food. You don't screw around with wine, or it is no longer wine. Sure you can stick it in a barrique, but that's what you do when you want to make a Bordeaux blend in Tuscany that pleases speculators and Parker. I'm talking of traditional wines.

I might allow for the opposite, that food adapted to the local wines, but even then I would be very careful.

Not the "people", nor taxes. All that art was paid by the private fortunes of the very few, or by a fabulously wealthy Church.

It's very good. And a Trebbiano at that! Try Elisebetta Foradori's wines. For value try some of Friuli lower priced good stuff like Kante's wines.

But to be honest, good italian whites are the exception, this is because, apart some peculiar areas like Liguria, the average italian expects nothing more than a light quaff out of a white, and therefore is not willing to pay a premium for a great white, they consider the latter an oxymoron. I brought a fabulous burgundy white to my cousin (who knows wine), I told him to keep it for himself on a special occasion, he decided to be generous and offer it at lunch to the whole family... they stuck ice cubes in it!!! I almost fainted Michael, ice cubes in a great Mâcon...

You just cannot compare the variety of great whites in France (think Alsace, Loire, Burgundy, South-West, Rhone, such superb whites, capable of such fantastic evolution with age, often aging even better than reds, and esch region so dramatically different) to Italy, where apart from the notable exceptions you either get fairly dull whites or whites on steroids.

cheers

Lousy Pinot's do. I find a good Pinot to be similar to a light Zin. Spicy without being overly potent. I'm visiting a great Pinot growing region in Southern California next week. Can't wait.

Thats odd. I tend to feel most Merlots are on the weak side. Not really watery, just lacking in depth and character. I've only found a handful of Merlots I felt were decent wines. I have been told thats because the popularity of Merlot has created a huge market thats flooded with low end drink now Merlots so good ones aren't as easy to find among so many selections.