Canapes and dessert wine, not too shabby for a Tuesday afternoon. I have to admit I was not looking forward to this wine lecture, even though no one should really be dreading an afternoon where you get to learn all about wines, but my previous exposure to this experience in Basic was less than informative and bordered on ridiculous.
My 'wine expert' from basic was very passionate about wine...so much so that he cried over one of the wines we tasted in our class. Ok I am all about the impact and revelation that food and spirits can spur, but come on buddy, it was only a $20 bottle of wine...lets not get carried away here.
Much to my surprise our sommelier for the day was actually a girl from my class last year. That was very exciting because, one, she actually had her sommolier certificate, two, I knew she would be able to 'hold down the waterworks' seeing as she had to sit through last years drowning lecture as well. We had the luxury of tasting bottles of wine from the 9.50 pound level all the way up to the 200.00 pound level. Now if anyone has been looking at the exchange rate lately that would equate to about a $30.00 bottle of sweet wine and a $400.00 bottle of sweet wine, according to a much inflated restaurant wine list.
Now let me give you a little history on sweet wine or vin doux as they say in France. This wine must contain at least 45g per liter of sugar for this spirit to move up in the rankings from wine to a much sought after sweet wine. The 'sweet wines for dummies' version behind this process is essentially removing as much water as you can from the grape, so that all you have left are the sugars from the grape. There are several ways to do this a few of which are: air drying (like raisins), late harvest (essentially letting the grape die on the vine), Noble Rot (the most sought after grapes in the world, this is when the botrytis mould attacks the grapes and quickly removes all the moisture from the grape), ice wine (letting the grapes freeze and then put all the frozen grapes into a grape press and squeezing only the little bits of sugar substance that hasn't frozen yet out...extremely rare and hard to do, there is also a price tag to match), or add alcohol (this usually turns into port or sherry).
Of course we went through the 'checklist of wines': appearance, nose, and palate. Now this is when things got interesting. I am all for smelling the wine and seeing what notes hit your nose first, but some of these descriptions are a little out there to the point where I would smell a wine 10-12 times to try to smell what my apparently much more cultured classmates where smelling. 'Oak...cabbage...eucalyptus and leather....chemical...stewed...green bell pepper...fig and apricot' people would shout at the first inhale of these sought after wines. I am thinking 'seriously! there is no way you smell leather...apricot?, understandable...but leather?!'. It was quite fun to hear what crazy 'note' these citizens of the world could smell in these wines.
Which was my favorite sweet wine?? Well, lets just say I have good taste. The $400.00 sweet wine was my drink of choice. The wine comes in a small bottle (7mL) and is from Hungary...its name is Royal Tokaji Aszu 5 Puttonyos, a 2005 vintage. I was told that they are selling it at a grocery store here in London for about $90.00...I will be heading out to the store to purchase one of these little babies! The wine was the drink of choice for King Louis XIV of France and he called the wine 'the king of wines'. It is aged in a 13th century cavernous cellar and is very rare. Of course we had this wine last, as it is very special, and after just one taste it is almost hard to believe that a sip of wine can be refreshing, warm, calming, clean, exciting, and leaves your mouth with the feeling that you just stepped into and orange orchard for just a moment. Now I sound like my crazy classmates, but that is truly the sensation this wine gives. What to eat with this luxurious wine you might ask? An apricot or citrus tart, creme brulee, or a buttery pastry. Our sommelier had us taste it with bitter chocolate, which of course chocolate and citrus is always a winning combination, but the chocolate can over power the taste of the wine a bit. My second favorite and much more affordable $35.00 sweet wine choice has to be the Seifried Sweet Agnes, vintage 2008, paired with an apple tart, tropical fruit dish, or prosciutto and melon.
...so drink-up my dear friends, because in life the rare special moments with the ones you love should always be cherished and sweetly celebrated.
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