Exactly 10 days before I left for Argentina I was blessed with my 21st birthday. Within a few years the luxury of being able to purchase alcohol in the United States will wear off, but for now it's nice. In honor of being able to purchase alcohol back home, I decided to partake in wine courses here in Argentina. I mean, now that they can finally be applicable to my daily life, I found it to be a necessity.
In my my classes I was able to learn about (1) what foods to pair the different types of wine with, (2) practiced detecting different scents in the wine, (3) examined the color of the wine, (4) detecting different levels of alcohol in wine by sight and (5) the wine making process. We will now transition to a place will I will further elaborate on my new intelligence or lack thereof.
(1) Food pairings
Tinto: red meat, cheese, pasta with a red sauce, red meat and cheese
Blanco: desserts, cheese, white meat, cheese
Pumante: Everything (personal opinion)
During my time in this class we were served various tapas. My favorite was the cheese. Every time you eat the cheese with a different kind of wine, the flavor changes. It is quite amazing and always fun to try and predict what the impending flavor is going to be.
(2) Scents
Tinto: still clueless
Blanco: granny smith apples
Pumante: yuuuuuuuuuuummy
This was by far the hardest thing to decipher. I really could only make up my mind with the white wines about what it reminded me of. They tend to be fruitier and I know the scents of fruits a lot better than spices.
(3) Color
Always examine the wine at a 45 degree angle over a white piece of paper. I always got confused after this part. When you look at the wine the color in the white wine is in the outside and the reflections are in the middle. With red wine the color is in the middle and the reflections are on the outside. I'm pretty sure this is what I always think, but I was told I was wrong several times after learning this for the first time. It could be the opposite, so maybe this section is irrelevant.
(4) Determining the alcohol level
Step One: Swirl the wine.
Step Two: Look at the tear drops falling down the side of the cup after the swirl.
Step Three: If they fall fast, there is less alcohol. If they fall slow, there is more.
(5) Production
This part might only be interesting to me, but that's ok since it is my blog.
Wine making starts from making sure each and every grape is absolutely perfect. Any imperfection and you can taste it in the entire batch of wine. No, the grapes being used are not the same ones you buy at the grocery store. These particular grapes come in many varieties too. Did you know that the 'type' of wine is actually the name of the grape? As in chardonnay is a grape before a kind of wine.
Next they carefully transport the grapes to the winery. To keep from breaking the skin and causing a natural fermentation process to start, they first wash them clean of all natural yeasts and place the grapes in a pneumatic press. This is a giant balloon that expands inside a tank to gently juice the grapes.
The juice is then place inside a tank where yeast is added for fermentation and the temp is carefully monitored to make sure the yeast doesn't die and stop the process. In red wines there is also a pump to keep the color consistent throughout the wine.
After an uncertain amount of time it is ready for one of three things. Bottling, aging, or moving on to becoming champagne. If aging is the choice it must go into an oak barrel. That is where wine gets all of its wonderful additional flavors from aging. The wood.
Now, technically champagne is only available in the Champagne region in France. In all other places it takes on a different name like sparking wine or vino pumante. To evolve into vino pumante, it must go through a second fermentation process. This can either be in a different tank or in an individual bottle (Dom Perignon is of this variety :))
Conclusion:
So, my intelligence is still rather elementary. At least I learned something. I was so obsessed with the idea of wine here I even made a special trip to wine country. It was amazing. I went to an organic winery where they would plant different fruit trees all along the periphery of the grape fields to act as a natural barrier for pests. Cool stuff.
¡Besos!
La porteña Emilia
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