Tag Archives: appreciating

How cooking improves your wine tasting abilities

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Through tasting more and learning more about tasting wine, I have continued to improve my wine tasting abilities and experiences.  Yet, I was always surprised how many of my chef friends seemed to have a better palate than mine.  I assumed it was because they were super tasters (people with significantly more taste buds and lower sensitivity to certain tastes) than me.  I attributed their skills to their in-born capabilities.  My wife was taking cooking lessons several years ago and I was highly supportive because I was benefiting from eating better at home.  We ate better, more healthily and far less expensively now at home than when eating out (except for a few known restaurants that are among our favorites).

I decided to follow my wife’s lead and took about 10 cooking lessons myself, including a 6-part beginners course for ‘blokes,’ a knife skills lesson, a pasta making lesson, and a Christmas dinner banquet lesson (including ham and turkey).  But it was really practicing making meals from beginning to end at home that opened my nose and palate to being able to smell and taste many more flavors and with greater sensitivity.  What became apparent to me was importance of sauces, spices, and all the ingredients necessary to alter or enhance the flavors of the primary ingredients be they meat, fish or vegetables.  Noticing what a teaspoon of paprika (or smoked paprika), saffron, chili flakes (or freshly cut chilies) or nutmeg could do to enhance flavors became noticeable.  Understanding why chopped basil worked better than mint or parsley (or Spanish onions better than spring onions) in certain circumstances also became apparent.

Cooking spices 2

By learning to understand and appreciate various flavors, I was able to more immediately determine when to drink a softer, more versatile wine such as a Verdelho over a Pinot Gris (or vice versus) with the meal, or a sharper, edgier wine such as a Riesling or Sauvignon Blanc worked better.  What I really noticed though was that instead of being able to match up broad categories of wines with food, I was now able to much more easily ‘micro-match’ a wine style with a particular meal.  I was able to determine which  sub-category (young or aged Semillon, for example) and sub-style (Hunter Valley versus Barossa Valley Shiraz) and determine which wine more uniquely was a better match with food, even to the level of individual wine makers (a young Andrew Thomas Semillon versus a Tyrrell’s Johnno Semillon) and vintages.

Most people believe they are limited in their ability to taste and appreciate good wine (and often as a result, buy wine based on price, thinking a higher price is better quality), but this is simply not true.  There are rare exceptions of people who were born or through a severe illness, have lost the ability to smell.   However, for the most part and within usable tolerances, almost every one of us is able to with a high degree of accuracy be able to smell and taste wine.  Through practice and learning, any one of us can influence our abilities to taste and enjoy wine more so than through our natural abilities.  And by learning some basics of cooking and what ingredients are used to make meals, you can learn much more quickly.

“Learning to cook has improved my ability to taste wine more than any other activity over the last several years!”

My book Wine Sense helps you understand how to train and use all of your senses to improve your wine tasting experiences.  But on its own, learning to cook (even a little as in my case) has greatly improved my ability to smell and taste.  I am able to much more quickly identify flavors and nuances and determine why I like one wine over another with a particular meal, whereas before I would have thought they tasted pretty much the same.  Do not limit your ability to enjoy wine far more than you currently do, and make learning to cook an important part of that training.

 

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, out early 2014. Published by InkIT Publishing
© 2013.  Steve Shipley
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Twitter:  Steve Shipley @shipleyaust;   InkIT Publishing @inkitpub

 

When to open that truly special bottle of wine

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It is always difficult to determine when to share a truly special bottle of wine and who to share it with.  We recently gave our good friends a bottle of 1993 Penfolds Grange for their wedding and within four months, they wanted to open it and share it with us when we came over to their house for dinner last week.  While honored that they would love to share such a special bottle with us, we convinced them to save it for a more special purpose like their first anniversary, getting their Australian citizenship, having a child, or something like that.

I have had some truly great wines over the years where I have originally bought a couple dozen bottles, but as I have consumed them and gotten down to my last few bottles (and knowing this vintage of this wine can never be found again, except possibly at auction or in a private cellar), the responsibility grew as to when to serve this bottle and with who to share it.

When I was less mature as a wine drinker (and less mature as a person!), I would want to target a truly special occasion for that last bottle of a truly great wine.  It actually got to the point where it was a burden to decide instead of the joy it should have been.

Recently I have changed heart and instead of putting on the pressure to find the a special event to justify that special bottle, I am now looking at how I can consume that special bottle to make an ‘ordinary’ event much more special.  Let me give you two examples of that.

I have a group of guys that formed a great team on the last big project I worked on and they are respected and trusted colleagues and friends.  Six of us are getting together next Wednesday for a reunion and a great meal out.  While the place we are going is not a BYO (Bring Your Own), I know the owner and the sommelier and because I bring a lot of business to them, they are happy to allow me to bring my own wines for special occasions.  I have done that for my and my wife’s birthdays for example.  And I am doing that again for our reunion.  Because of the respect I have for this team of guys, I am bringing some great wines to the meal.  It is not a matter of waiting for the right occasion to break out the great wine, but how to make every occasion much better by opening and sharing those special bottles.  That is what will make an ‘ordinary’ reunion that much more special.

If we keep waiting for a better occasion, we end up either dead or with a ‘dead’ bottle because we waited far too long.  This recently happened to someone with a 1962 Penfolds Grange which was no longer any good because they waited too long.

One of my wife’s all-time favorite wines is the 1996 Wolf Blass Grey Label (which is a blend of 30% Shiraz and 70% Cabernet Sauvignon similar in style to the Penfolds Bin 389).  These blends are iconically Australian and make for a tremendous drop.  We were fortunate to have bought three dozen bottles of this excellent wine in the late ’90s and I think we paid about $16 per bottle for this wine, but I can’t remember for sure.  Several years ago, we put this wine up against the Penfolds Bin 389 in a vertical tasting and compared the 1996 Wolf Blass Grey Label to the 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998 and 2004 Penfolds Bin 389, and the consistent pick for the best wine that evening was the 1996 Wolf Blass Grey Label!  That is how good this wine is!

Well, now a decade later, we have one bottle left and I have been thinking about the right time to have it, but I am waiting no more.  Instead of finding the right occasion for the wine, I am just going to have the wine tomorrow night as I wanted to make the night more special for my wife and myself instead of it just being an ‘ordinary’ Saturday night at home.  We are not sure if we are making spaghetti bolognese, wagyu beef burgers, lamb or whatever, but we know the night will become special because we will be sharing that last bottle of a great wine together.

Therefore, instead of waiting for that absolutely special occasion, my recommendation to you is to look at how you can make ‘ordinary’ occasions far more special by bringing that great bottle of wine to share!

Looking back, I now believe it was a mistake to pass on the 1993 Penfolds Grange at my friends house and we should have made the evening more special by enjoying it together.  And (hopefully!) the next time he offers, I will say ‘yes!”

Educating your wine palate and taste buds using potato chips

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I have a number of friends who will drink any wine with any food and the combination does not seem to matter to them, but then many of them are drinking for the alcohol effect, not the taste.  Any many other friends know and can appreciate the basic and simple rule of ‘white wine with fish, red wine with meat’.  However, there are a number of nuances the make a food eating and wine drinking experience even more pleasurable.  There are certainly wide variances between the taste of different white grapes such as Chardonnay, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, and so on.  The same goes for various red grapes.

Wine tasters believe that the Sauvignon Blanc grape is the easiest to determine in a blind tasting and stands out as being the most different and distinguishable from other grapes.  And it is a classic to go with fish, making it a safe bet for most fish.  However, for a gamy, more solid fish such as swordfish, I find a good Pinot Noir is a perfect match, especially if the swordfish has a bit of light salsa or tomato sauce with it.  Therefore, people may look at what you are eating and drinking and believe you have made the ultimate wine / food matching mistake in pairing a red wine with fish, but I can assure you that this is a most pleasant pairing!

The sauce (and amount) and the method of cooking (broiled, roasted, BBQ, steamed, etc.) also has a big impact on what wine goes best with a particular food.  Even the difference between different styled wines from the same grape can make a huge difference.  And the aging of the wine changes the wine greatly over time, so it is important to select the wine close to the optimal time for drinking it.  You may find a white wine more acidic when young and more buttery and smooth when older.

While this may seem like a lot of effort to understand and rightly match food and wine, it really does make a great difference.  Even if you do not understand it, you will usually recognize it and notice the difference in how good the food and wine tasted (even if you cannot describe it).

However, what I really want to focus on today is much easier to appreciate.  A good first step to educating your palate is to just try different foods and taste them with your eyes closed and focus on what the flavor is telling you.  Try to pick out how dry or sweet the food is, is it acidic?, or bitter and so on.  This makes you more aware of the common taste characteristics of food.

Tonight I was a bit hungry, but it was a while until dinner, and my wife had an open bag of sour cream and chive potato chips.  I had just poured a glass of a Cabernet Sauvignon.  I grabbed a handful of the sour cream and chive potato chips, ate them and then took a sip of wine.  I thought the flavours would be competing against each other and it would be a horrible match, but it worked far better than I thought.

Then I poured a glass of a Sauvignon Blanc / Semillon blend (I had both bottles open from a day or two before) and tried it with the sour cream and chives potato chips also.  I would have expected this to be a better combination, but found out that was not the case as the Sauvignon Blanc / Semillon blend was a bit acidic, and did not work well with the sour cream taste.  Then I opened a few more bags of different potato chips and tried them with both wines.

Why do I suggest potato chips for this?  Because it is a lot cheaper to open a few bags of potato chips than it is to used real honey-glazed ham, chicken, etc.  Of course, you could always go the sliced meat route for another lesson.

By trying several different wines with several different flavors of potato chips, you can quickly educate your palate and zone in on grape and food flavor combinations you like and don’t like  I will not tell you my findings of the various combinations of grapes to potato chip flavors to let you focus better and really learn more by tasting than reading.  I would also suggest you do this in the company of friends and discuss your findings.  You will be amazed at how quickly you will learn to identify tastes and combinations that work or not.  And talking about it while doing the tasting is a great way to learn (and socialize!).

When doing this, I would suggest using Kettle or Red Rock brand potato chips as they tend to have more intense flavors than other brands, and also have a wide variety of flavors including sweet chili, peri peri chicken, caramelized onion, honey coated, etc.  These wide contrasts can help you quickly zone in on categories of combinations that work – or don’t!

Let me know what combinations of flavors and wine grapes work for you!  I am anxious to hear your feedback.

Wine Snob versus Wine Enthusiast – which one are you?

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I must admit that I have a true avocation for wine.  I enjoy wine on its own, with food, and to share with friends.  I also enjoy reading about wine and learning more about how it’s made, where it is best made, how to buy and store it, and how to drink it.

Over time, I have developed a deeper appreciation for the exquisite and multi-dimensional nature of wine and it has become an important part of my life, but no more important than my faith, my job, my friends, my passion for reading on a wide variety of topics, and a general zest for life overall.  I have been able to achieve a deeper experience and understanding of the wines I drink, and that has enhanced some of my other experiences.  For example, we are having a chicken and mushroom risotto for dinner tonight.  My wife makes a really good risotto (you can view the chopped-up chicken and mushrooms below)!

With the chicken, Parmesan cheese and mushrooms, I knew I wanted a rich, aged chardonnay to go with it.  I selected my last bottle of the 2003 Saddler’s Creek Reserve Chardonnay. (Look at the beautiful golden color of a perfectly aged white wine!)  I did so because I have had a few bottles previously and felt it would pair beautifully with a chicken and mushroom risotto, and I also knew the bottle should be drunk in the next few years and I did not want to wait too long or it might go off.  Fortunately the wine was perfect and I am drinking some as I write this posting.  We paid $10 per bottle for the wine as Saddler’s was trying to clear older inventory and we bought the last 8 bottles they had.  But it drinks like a $130 bottle of Penfolds Yattarna or a decent Montrachet.  This turned out to be one of the best buys of my life!

As you can tell, I put a bit of thought into buying the wine in the first place and also when to drink it and what food to drink it with. Some people would claim “I take my wine too seriously, so I must be a wine snob”, but I hardly think that is the case.  To me it is a natural passion or avocation as I mentioned, much like others have a passion for working out or art or literature.  Because I have developed a bit of knowledge over the years, it has become much easier to select a good (and good valued) wine to go with an everyday dinner.  And I put more thought into the wines that match up with dinners when we host our “Single’s and Strays” dinner parties, have friends over, or a special birthday or anniversary.  (BTW, all birthdays and anniversaries are special!)  But then, most of those events become special occasions and lifetime memories.  Does that make me a wine snob?  I don’t think so.

I discussed this with some other wine aficionados and we felt that a wine snob had the following characteristics:

Wine Snob

  • They bragged about the excellent wines they had, but never found the opportunity to share the wine with friends or to give a bottle to a friend
  • They want to have you admit to them having a superior knowledge of wine over you – they are as uninterested in sharing their knowledge as they are their wines – they just want to ‘show off’.
  • They talk a great deal about how much they have paid for expensive wines, and seem to only drink expensive wines

Whereas a wine enthusiast, we felt, had the following characteristics:

Wine Enthusiast

  • They are happy to share wine, either by contributing a bottle, or by asking all who share to chip in for a special bottle of wine, or by setting some rules to have each person bring a bottle according to the rules established
  • They listen to others and want to learn and also share their knowledge and are excited to help others develop an appreciation of wine and mature as a wine drinker and possibly collector
  • They get as much and even greater pleasure out of finding a ‘cheap’ but great wine and would rather drink that than an expensive bottle of wine

We have two friends who are studying to become international Masters of Wine (MW).  An international MW costs about $200,000 to buy, taste and compare wines to develop an internationally acclaimed palate and ability to compare and describe wines to others.  (There are only about 475 MWs globally!)  They are also professional wine judges (in addition to their full-time jobs), but in no way are they wine snobs.  They get great excitement over finding a Canberra (ACT, Australia)  Sangiovese for $20 per bottle and a Marsanne for $15 which they have introduced us to.  A wine snob would not even try a wine from Canberra, yet alone a wine under $20.  We have had a 9-hour lunch at their house (he is French, she is Australian – what can I say?) and we bring over wines we really want to share with them and they pick out wines they really want to share and introduce to us.  These wine may be in the $10 – $20 per bottle range or they may be $40 – $60 per bottle, but it does not matter – what matters is sharing our wine, our knowledge and our friendship with each other.

I therefore, prefer to call myself a ‘wine enthusiast’, not a ‘wine snob’.  How about you?

Maturing as a wine drinker and collector

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In my last post entitled “My first wines”, I discussed how and when I started drinking (fake) wine during my university days and real wine during my graduate school days.

For the next 10 or so years (approximately 1978 – 1988), my wine drinking experiences did not evolve much.  I enjoyed decent enough wine, and had a few great wine drinking experiences which showed me how ethereal wine drinking can be.  Unfortunately one was truly wasted on me.  As a favor for a friend, I wrote a pretty complex COBOL program for him after he complained his company’s IT department could not understand and deliver what he needed.  He paid me $400 for the effort, but was so delighted that when I had him over for dinner and celebrated the success back in 1978, he brought over a bottle of 1961 Château Lafite.  I think we drank it while eating beef strogonoff or something of the like.  I just did not have the palate for great wine back then.

I also started to travel more internationally for work and was introduced to more varieties of food and wine.  I remember once getting upgraded to First Class on Singapore Airlines and being served a 1975 Château Brane-Cantenac and really enjoying it.  (The whole experience of First Class on Singapore Airlines in the late 1980s was a great experience!)  I then found and bought two bottles of it while going through the Frankfurt Airport a few months later.

But the 1961 Chateau Lafite and the 1975 Chateau Brane-Cantenac were exceptions to my wine drinking, not the norm.  However, they did provide a taste of how great wine drinking could be and generated more enthusiasm for drinking good wine as a regular activity.

It was really during 1988 – 1990 when living in New Zealand and drinking more wine with meals and out with friends that I really started to enjoy wine more.  New Zealand is know for some great Sauvignon Blancs and Pinot Noirs, and has an excellent wine growing industry.  Drinking more wine on a almost daily basis became the norm.

Then when I moved to Australia in 1997 for a long project, I started to collect and drink far better wines (including having a business dinner with 18 bottles of the 1986 Henschke Hill of Grace (for 14 of us!) – but that is a story for another posting!).  I was fortunate to have a few good friends like Michael Axarlis and Rob Tudor who had very good palates and an appreciation for fine Australian wines and they got me headed in the right direction to better understand and appreciate how many different and great Australian wines there were.

They recommended and I started to collect some bottles including the 1992 Penfolds Grange,  1996 Lindeman St George, 1996 Penfolds 707, 1998 Bannockburn Pinot Noir, 1995 Yarra Yering Dry #1, etc., etc.  I started to learn to appreciate some of the differences between different wines from different regions, different vintages of the same wine, and how sinful it is to drink a wine too early or too late in its maturation process.

When I moved permanently to Australia in 2000, I started to collect and sample even more wines and have been loving it ever since.  For a while, I was so hooked on the quality and value of Australian wines that I drank very little of anything else.  However, during the last several years, I have now been appreciating a broader variety of French, Spanish, Italian, and American wines.

Probably the biggest lesson I have learned through 35 years of wine buying and drinking is not to buy too much of a single wine and limit your tastings to a limited set of wines, as exploring the vast variety of great wines is a joy in itself, and no matter how much you really enough a particular wine, there is always a better one to be found.

My first ‘wines’

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I started drinking alcohol while at university during my first year.  I used to drink vodka (because my dad did) gimlets while playing cards, beer while playing softball, bowling and other activities, and wine when we had nothing else.  My first ‘wines’ were not wines at all per se, but homemade concoctions my father and brother used to whip up with sugar and some flavoring.  Therefore, we had an assortment of flavored wines including apple, orange, dandelion, potato (which I think was just vodka under another name!), and others.

My dad and brother made this wine over several years until the cost of sugar rose too high.  I also think they got tired of cleaning up after numerous bottles exploded because they did not really understand the fermenting process!  I would then bring these wines to university to drink as required.  The ‘Shipley Vineyard’ classic was a bottle of the 1971 Orangeato.  My dad had some leftover Orange wine and leftover Potato wine, mixed them together, fortified it with a bottle of 100 proof vodka and bottled up four bottles.  The only remaining bottle in existence, sits in my friend’s wine cellar next to his prized Nepalese Plum wine!

We also used to buy Boone’s Farm wine, a low-level brand within the E & J Gallo Winery (my God, how bad it must have been to be considered the bottom of the Gallo wine tree!).  It came in Apple and Strawberry flavors and cost about $0.93 per 750 ml bottle.

The point of my wine (and other drinking) during university was to get inebriated on alcohol, not to enjoy the flavor of the wine or the experience of wine drinking with friends – we were just getting bombed!  It was not until I entered graduate school at the University of Minnesota that I started to drink real wine.  I am not sure why or how, but I assume some friend introduced me to wine drinking and I felt it a pleasurable things to do with a meal or while studying or being involved in other activities.  Fortunately, there was a wonderful wine store near the University campus called Surdyk’s.  I did not realize and certainly was not in a position to discern what a great wine store Surdyk’s was at the time.

The people were really helpful and friendly, provided great advice on wine, and steered me towards very good valued wines.  This was during the time when Chili was just emerging on the global wine scene and I was able to find some great Chilean reds for $3 – $5 per bottle.  I also was told by one of the staff to buy some of the 1977 Dow Vintage Port and I got two bottles.  I had one bottle several years ago and it was beyond superb.  I am pretty sure I paid only about $12 – $15 per bottle for it then, and it was one of the great buys in my life!  That was just the type of place Surdyk’s is.  That whole experience changed my life and I started to experiment more with wines, pay a bit more and start to enjoy it more.

Therefore, it was visiting and getting help at Surdyk’s that got me on the journey to finer wine drinking.  Last year, my wife and I were visiting Minnesota again to see my parents and I went by Surdyk’s.  It looked and felt the same and I told some of the staff how much I appreciated their help some 35 years ago and what a great store it still is.  They also introduced me during that trip to the 2009 Hugel Alsace Riesling for $22 in the US which is an outstanding value.  I have since bought a dozen in Australia (where it was $30 per bottle) and it is a great, great Riesling.

In my next post, I will explain how my ‘fallow’ years as a wine drinker, but how I was introduced to several great wines which provided a true appreciation for how great an experience wine drinking can be, and how I became a real wine enthusiast while living in Australia, one of the great wine countries of the world!