2/14/2006 04:16:00 PM|||Jodie Chase|||

Yes, it sounds gross to me too. But the week before last, I got to chase my morning coffee with not just a sip, but 21 glasses of wine, courtesy of our wine columnist Charles Olken. Kind sort that he is, Olken invited me to join him and colleague Steve Elliott as they tasted and evaluated the wines for their March issue of Connoisseurs' Guide.
The wines on tap that morning were all New Zealand wines, all of them white, all sauvignon blanc.
And thankfully, the one requirement of attending the tasting was to spit or pour every drop of said wine into the bucket to my left.
For me, it was a rare opportunity to see how the pros do it -- and also to see how much fun wine writing IS NOT. Wine at 10 a.m.? It's not just strange and distasteful to the novice, but it's sour. My tongue doesn't want it.
But I tried. By wine No. 4, I was in the game, tasting and smelling differences, and even making some decisions on what I like and don't like. I like a little oak. I like a nice bouquet. I like it crisp, but I also like some fruit, which made the professionals wince with displeasure. Even better, I get what makes New Zealand sauvignon blanc different -- and special.
Some of the most important things I learned that morning is that I CAN spit wine out, and that I can taste and enjoy a lot more different wines if I do it. I learned that while not everyone smells or tastes the same thing in a glass, bad wine seems to taste bad to everyone, and great wines tend to rate high with everyone. But the vast number of good wines found in the middle may in fact be fabulous to some, just not to others. Much of the evaluation of wines has to do with wine styles. For example, oaky wines may be out of fashion, but I like them. High alcohol wines may be acceptable to the experts, but I really hate them. I learned that my senses don't have the stamina to stay intact through 21 wines _ after the first 14, nothing tasted good to me. I also learned from Olken that rinsing a glass with water between tastings isn't a great idea.
``Wine is more like wine than it is like water,'' he says. A better idea is to dab the extra wine out of the glass with a rolled up paper napkin.
-- Jolene Thym

|||113996291808069914|||Coffee with a wine chaser