Understanding Wine

Wine is a hydro-alcoholic solution containing 20 to 30 grams of substances in solution, which constitute the extract and give it flavor, and several hundred milligrams of volatile substances, which constitute its odor." By deciphering these diverse substances, an attentive taster can learn a great deal about the wine they compose.

Every wine is a complex web made up of natural and man-made components. The final taste is determined by forces as non-negotiable as the number of hours of sunlight during the grapes' growing season, and decisions as personal as whether the grape juice should macerate on its skins for 10 days or two weeks or a month.

While no introductory guide can even attempt to link all the ways flavor reflects the particular history of a wine, the more of them tasters can identify, the more complete their appreciation will be. Here are a few of the most important links between the real world and the liquid. We'll use a hypothetical Cabernet Sauvignon as an example. Most of the time, most of us drink young, simple wines. What you taste is what you get--they may be flavorful and refreshing, but they don't repay extended analysis. Even so, it can be amusing to taste them blind, to try to reach back through the wine to its components: grape variety, vintage quality, wine making techniques.

Sometimes we splurge, drinking a bottle from a top-flight producer in a great vintage. Then, good tasting technique is essential to full appreciation. If the setting or the company is distracting, or we can't be bothered to concentrate on the data our senses are providing, then we've wasted our money and insulted the winemaker and the wine. Appreciation is impossible when conspicuous consumption is filling the glass. But when you put senses and imagination to work, tasting a great wine can be more than a great pleasure; its memory can illuminate all the other wines we drink, majestic and modest, from then on. And once in a while we get lucky.

Every passionate wine lover tells the same story: a special night, close companions, an extraordinary bottle of wine. Maybe it's an old Burgundy, fragile and recalcitrant at first, blossoming into magical complexity. Maybe it's a honeyed Château d'Yquem drunk with an unctuous terrine of foie gras, proving that a sophisticated disdain for "sweet wines" was utterly mistaken. Suddenly we have the impression that rather than analyzing the wine we're practically worshiping it, and what began as superficial sensory pleasure becomes as profound as a religious conversion. Eating and drinking will never be quite the same again. Life goes on. Corks are pulled, glasses broken, wine racks fill and empty and fill again. If we're paying attention along the way, though, our memory's cellar grows and grows, and every addition adds meaning and value to each wine we drink.

Wine tasting is a technique that can enhance our everyday experience of eating and drinking. But it can also be a way of life that enriches our perceptions and deepens our connections with every aspect of the sensory world. That's a large claim for a common activity, but those who know wine well know it to be true.