Salut/Hi Leo Bueno,
I've just read through most of the posts so far.
le/on Fri, 25 Feb 2005 13:48:53 GMT, tu disais/you said:-
>Wondering what your take is on the technique of evaluating a wine by
>the typical one sip and spit method, used of necessity at wine
>tastings.
I think the key phrase here is "used of necessity".
I go to quite a number of tastings, some of which may include well over 100
wines. It is a physiological fact that (sensory fatigue aside) alcohol has a
numbing effect on the palate, which limits the number of wines that can be
properly tasted to about 5 or 6 if you're drinking them.
So, if you want to be able to go on tasting all day, you HAVE to spit.
But it's equally true that wine was made (as Michael Tommasi said) to be
drunk, and much of the best, made to be drunk with a meal. So it is
certainly true that to get the best out of wine, you have to treat it as it
was intended.
So those of us who "taste" as opposed to "drink", do so, if we're wise,
knowing that we're doing a different thing. As I said in my articles about
Riedel glasses, sometimes you need/want to analyse a/some wine/s and
sometimes you want to drink them for pleasure. When I'm at a dinner with
friends, I'm not there to analyse whether the wine comes from this region,
whether it's well made or what grapes it's made from. I'm seeking to enjoy
myself, and gain pleasure from the experience. On the other hand, if I'm
tasting, although I get pleasure from doing so, it's the same _type_ of
pleasure as I get learning about anything. The wine may taste foul, being
completely unready for drinking, that doesn't matter, I'm seeking to learn
about something.
There have been occasions when I've been at tastings anmd I've not spat. Not
many, and usually only at the producer. For example, I couldn't bring myself
to spit when visiting DRC. However, these are very rare. Last fall, for
example, we visited the West coast of the USA as I'm sure you know. We
tasted in many wineries - often visiting 4 a day. We HAD to spit if we were
going to be able to talk as intelligently to the winemaker of the fourth
place we were visiting about the LAST wine they poured, as we had about the
first wine poured by the first winery. Further more, if we wanted to be able
to keep driving from one winery to the other, we simply couldn't afford to
drink.
So - and here I'm with Mike Scapitti, drinking and tasting are completely
different, and wine is meant to be drunk. BUT, and here I disagree both with
him and with a number of posters in this thread, I think you HAVE to be
prepared to taste (and that implies spitting competently) if you are going
to be able to maximise your enjoyment of wine later.
>I find that one sip can be used to rule out a bad wine, but it's not
>enough to fully appreciate the good ones.
Hmm, half true on both counts IMO. A very young wine, still in barrel can
show very badly indeed, amd most of us would perhaps reject it wrongly.
Equally, spitting isn't _supposed_ to let you "fully appreciate it", so you
shouldn't really reject spitting for that reason.
>If I am right, then this means that magazine point ratings derived
>from the sip and spit method are even less precise than we normally
>think.
Hang on!!! All these tasting points are never meant to be anything better
than one man's/team's ephemeral impression at the time. It's the punters who
read them that try to cast them into concrete.
--
All the Best
Ian Hoare
http://www.souvigne.com
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