Yay! Register again. I very much doubt there is anything that makes me so obviously a long way out of school as actually find it exciting having a register taken.
There was more wine this week – although there was also spittoons . It turns out the most difficult thing about wine tasting is spitting in public. We all agreed that we had no problem with anyone doing it, but none of us wanted to do so ourselves. The theory section was more interesting this week; it was all about how different flavours interact. It was all (unsurprisingly!) wine-y, so there was a lot about how different flavours react with tannins and acidity. This week was also a lot more practical than last. This meant six wines rather than three.
Having overcome our spitting issues and tasted the six wines (thankfully no not nice wines this week!). We worked our way through the different types of wine from light white to full-bodied red, comparing and contrasting them with examples of salty, sweet, sour, bitter and umami flavours (plus some cheese and a chilli cracker to give examples of how fattiness and spice also play a roles in the matching process). On the whole these worked. Turns out however that I am rather sensitive to bitterness. Umami-ness + an otherwise rather nice Chianti turned into the bitterest thing ever.
It was revolting.
My tasting notes for this were a big sad face. Thankfully there was also a piece of mature cheddar that went really well with the Chianti to rescue me. Outside of that, while there were definitely better combinations – Nothing was revolting. My favourite was probably the cheddar (again) with a Chilean Chardonnay. It made the wine much more creamy and fruity. Me liking cheese. Who knew?
Nom.
So much for going to wine school to get away from nom.
Nerdy Booze 