Photo by Anto Meneghini on Unsplash
Wine Mind
What are all those wine experts noticing while they are tasting wine? What are those guys thinking about anyway?
Well, it might be their laundry. Or the person next to them slurping and fumbling for the crackers. But how did they learn about wine in the first place?
Most people learn about wine unconsciously, in random ways that they may or may not be aware of, or remember. A glass here, a bottle there, a cask of Amontillado in Jeres during a short Spanish winter—each experience unplanned, realized only as they become available.
Without a framework for learning and how their mind works when tasting wine, the whole process becomes hit and miss.
Sometimes it’s great. Sometimes it sucks.
But wine is not a thought, it is not even a thing from the standpoint of tasting, it is a sensual experience—electrical vibrations running through your nervous system that your brain learns to label “cherry” or “leather” or “wet crushed rocks”, God help us.
The point is, that naming all those aromas are something you learn through practice. Anybody can do it.
You just need to develop a wine mind.
Don’t think, thinking is too slow
When I was training to be a Blackbelt in Aikido I went through several phases of learning—ask any top athlete and they will tell you the same. Repetition is the key—300 reps to be able to do it at all, 3000 reps to do it under pressure, 10,000 reps to master it.
You go through the same four stages of learning to taste wine:
Unconscious incompetence (The Dunning-Kreuger Effect)
Conscious incompetence (Know your limitations)
Conscious competence (Where most people stop)
Unconscious competence (Mastery)
You also need constant feedback from someone who knows what they are doing or you’ll just get really good at making the same mistakes over and over. Taste with experts any time you can.
At the Mastery level, you’re not thinking anymore because it takes too long.. You have trained all the forms involved, variations, etc. hundreds or thousands of times. So you just need to stay present in the moment, keep your attention on the wine and your body knows what to do.
And you’ll be surprised to learn how much better your unconscious is at doing things than you are (once it’s trained). Including wine.
So how are you going to do that at home?
It’s easier than you think. But it does take repetition and paying attention.
Descriptor Tasting
The standard way of training wine professionals is the descriptor tasting. It helps to remember that you’re training your memory not your palate. You are teachig your conscious the names of different smells and tastes.
Most people have trouble naming even 10 smells if they are not trained. If you cook you can probably do a little better than that.
It’s not that your brain doesn’t recognize the smell—your brain recognizes over 1 trillion smells (aromas). I know that sounds impossible, but it’s true. The problem is that your brain doesn’t know 1 trillion different names for those smells.
So you have to teach it the names of things.
Basics
Suppose you want to recognize lemon in white wines. You cut a fresh lemon and smell it, concentrating as much as you can on putting the name “lemon” on that smell.
Close your eyes and see if you still can name it. Do that several times until you think you’ve got it.
Now, if you have someone to play along, keep your eyes closed and have them put a different but related aroma under your nose. Say lime, or orange or grapefruit. See if you can name it.
If not then close your eyes and do the same thing with a lime and an orange and a grapefruit (or whatever) still naming each smell for your unconscious. Once you have three, have whoever is helping you to put all three of them, one at a time under your nose in random order; Mix up the order and see what you can name.
More advanced
When you’re ready for a little more cut up fruits, grass, vegetables, etc. Put them in little cups and label each one with a card or sticker in front of it. This works well for parties or home tastings since y0u have more people.
You can seek out the descriptors before hand in any wine review (wine.com is one) and gather the smells and use those in the cups.
Then you pour wine blind (from bottles in a bottle sack or otherwise covered) so you don’t know what the wine is. Smell the descriptors, then smell the wine. Teach your unconscious how to recognize “Lemon” for instance in a Chardonnay.
Going forward
There are all kinds of variations on this idea—enough to make whole book by itself. Feel free to experiment. For now I’ll just note that you can do this anytime your eating—recognizing aromas in food is exactly the same as in wine even though it’s a totally different context. Or drinking tea, or coffee, or beer—you get the idea.
You don’t need to get tight over how many you get right because there’s no official scorer for eating and drinking. If you’re in a competitive tasting, you need to go a little farther but this is still the foundation.
Notice this part though: you don’t need to swallow 10,000 glasses of wine to master it. You can just smell. Or you can spit.
If you swallow an ounce each time that’s 10,000 ounces, or about 400 bottles of wine. So be careful. Don’t say I didn’t tell you. Tasting is not drinking.
Sonoma Vineyard lined by Olive Trees
photo by Larry Leigon, © Larry Leigon, June,2022, all rights reserved
Larry Leigon, Author and Wine Expert
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