Sweet and dry -- now I get it
It took a while for me to understand the difference in taste between "sweet" and "dry" wines. My first (and I hope not too dopey) question was, how can a liquid be dry?
The distinction can still be hard to grasp, because some of the characteristics of wine, like high alcohol levels or the presence of oak, give a sensation of sweetness where in fact the wine's sugars have fermented away. Tannin in red wine can also leave your mouth with a dry, "chalky" feeling, even if the wine itself may have standard alcohol levels and therefore some residual sweetness in it. (No wonder the great aim of winemakers is "balance"!)
Sweetness, the wine books say, is a taste that you will recognize at the tip of your tongue, even if you hold your nose and don't smell a wine's fruitiness or other aromas. A dry wine will not show up at the tip of your tongue. What made all this more clear to me was a taste of champagne.
At a "bubbly" tasting, I learned that a Moscato d'Asti is very sweet, with an almost lemon-syrup flavor; a French-made sweet sparkling wine, Toad Hollow Risque, had a fresher, clearer flavor, and was a shade less syrupy. A "California champagne" of higher alcohol levels smelled like tart apples, and had a plain hard feeling in the mouth that was very different from the first two wines. And then came the real (if basic) thing: Laurent-Perrier. I sipped. I savored. I swallowed. And I thought: if you cooked stones in water, and then added bubbles, it would be this.
I didn't care for it, though it pains me to say so because champagne seems so sophisticated that I feel I should like it. It is supposed to be the perfect experience. I understand that the work that goes into making champagne is Herculean in itself, so I have a new and slightly snobbish horror at what happens to whole cases of the stuff in Super Bowl locker rooms.
And I'm told that with time, everyone's palate "dries out." You start appreciating champagne. Okay. I'll wait.
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5 Comments:
Not a big champagne lover here. Mr Tomato says it is because imported champagne is nothing like it is in France, where he grew up. MIL tells me that on Air France you get real champagne not the americanized version.
I am an asti person. I don't like anything brut. I want the flavor to dance on my tongue with flavorful notes and bubbles. Brut to me is bland.
JerzeeTomato at 12:40PM on 04/14/09
@JerzeeTomato -- how funny -- my boyfriend's mother is from france and says the same thing about the champagne on air france! she of course talks wistfully about the days of the concorde. i guess i would too if the commute to see my parents back in paris was upped a couple of hours each way now that i think about it!
megannesta at 4:12PM on 04/14/09
i started drinking champagne in my early twenties, didn't particulary care for it then (i'm not going to say how many years have passed... but let's put it this way.... i remember fountain pens )... but anyway....
i'm not a fan of champagne now either....
experiment -- find what you like, don't be afraid to say you don't like something..... it's all relative. don't look at the price tag and think you should like it. i've had memorable wines that have been under $10 a bottle.
it's all about the "terra" -- sun, warmth, soil .... all of those elusive elements that coincide to make a bottle of wine taste divine. or a tomato that tastes sweet..... it's all about nature.
pooch at 6:33PM on 04/14/09
i love wines, but i have this painful after-reaction to the sourness in some of them. my jaw aches. i would love to know what the "key" word for tart in wine talk is.... anyone know?
blizcheetah at 12:10AM on 04/16/09
Tart I think is the same as sourness, which if balanced by a bit of sweetness and fruit is not a flaw. If you are tasting acidity, that's what makes you salivate after you swallow. You'll notice it even in grocery-store rieslings. But if your very jaw aches ... could that be tannin? Does your mouth feel "chalky" after a red wine?
mrslucas at 2:55PM on 04/18/09