Wine School: 01/10/14

Irish college students generally hold an “ignorance is bliss” and snobby attitude towards wine. No evening society event is complete without it as a loophole to serve alcohol, often being so putrid that there’s a bottle of 7Up offered to dilute it down.

If you think Bordeaux is definitely the best for pre-drinks, all Chardonnay tastes like muck and “a red with nice legs” refers to something totally different, not to fear — I was once in your shoes. Although I am a bit of a wine nerd, I still find wine features in newspapers monotonous and inaccessible, and no, I don’t know whether the year of a given bottle is a “good vintage” off hand. With relation to food pairings, take them lightly: as Basil Fawlty’s perpetrator John Cleese said in his documentary Wine for the Confused on BBC, don’t let anyone tell you what wine to have — taste and think yourself. Not every wine is going to be your bag in general, but the taste notes should be helpful in predicting what you like or don’t like. This month, I’ve chosen a popular, relatively neutral red and white I often recommend to confused friends, and I haven’t heard a bad word back since.

Tasting 101 goes as follows:

  1. Pour yourself a small glass and swish around two to three times (in a wine glass preferably — what you’re doing here is increasing the surface contact with the air to unlock the aromas).
  2. Before giving it a whiff with the rim of the glass close to your nose.
  3. Take a sip after, let it sit in your mouth for a few seconds and then swallow: the flavours, acidity and body become apparent afterwards.

Red: Pinot Noir
Pinot Noir is one of the lightest coloured and least intense reds you can come across: placing a glass in front of a white napkin and you should be able to see a ruby, transparent blush. Typically you should be picking up on hints of black pepper and red fruits such as cherries. Alcohol content is generally around the 12% mark so it’s not too overpowering and in the mouth, the fruit and pepper notes should be detected very feintly. As a light bodied wine, this one comes with a warning: it’s very easy to knock back. Some describe it like lemonade due to its subtlety and gentle flavours. This meticulous grape to grow is minute in size, but varies greatly depending on the region it grows in (known as terroir). Although PN produced in the Burgundy region are among the best wines in the world, I’ve recommended a new world (wine is also produced outside of the traditional French, Italian and Spanish regions) from the popular Marlborough, New Zealand.
Recommendation: Ara Pathway Pinot Noir, Marlborough, New Zealand, €14.99

White: Alsace
Alsace is a French region which is lost in translation along the German border, with the capital being the Tudor-style Strasbourg. Alsace wines are marked by their eye catching, sharp conical bottles and are famed for their semi-sweet wines with balanced acidity. Although many grape varieties are characteristic to this region, I’ve chosen a melange of grapes from one of the best wineries in the region, Hugel et Fils. Gentil is a popular house wine choice, and rightly so. It has balanced flavours, with the pallet focusing on white fleshed fruits such as peach and nectarine (from the Pinot Gris grape), floral to rosey notes (Gewürztraminer) with the slightest hint of citrus (Riesling).
Recommendation: Hugel et Fils ‘Gentil’, Alsace, €15.99

Both available at O’Brien’s Wine Outlets, www.obrienswine.ie
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