For my Drink This Now lesson blog report, I decided to go with the exercise from chapter two. This lesson focuses on trying out different vessels and seeing how they affect the scents and tastes of the wine. The lesson recommends grabbing a aromatic white wine and an aromatic red wine to start the exercise. For my white wine, I went with Martin Codax Albarino.
For the red wine, I went with Bogle Family Vineyards Zinfandel:
Next, the lesson stated to grab an array of glasses ranging from a shot glass, rocks glass, standard water glass, white wine glass, and then lastly a larger red wine glass. Here are my observations for the albarino:
Starting out with sniffing:
Shot glass-
I noticed the shot glass gave a pretty strong smell right away, but I think that could have just been because of how close I was able to get to the wine. After the initial smell, it seemed like the scent did not change or evolve at all, it did not get stronger, and the scent kind of faded after the initial smell.
Rocks glass-
I was able to get a good smell of the jump, seemed like I was able to unpack a little bit more of the wine with this glass than I could with the shot glass. I noted that I was able to pick up on more scents of the wine because it was a longer lasting, stronger smell. I picked up scents of pear and it was kind of flowery.
Water glass-
Surprisingly enough, I felt that I was able to get a stronger scent from the rocks glass than I was from this water glass. This was definitely stronger and longer lasting than the shot glass, but I felt like it did not have much of a prolonged scent as the rocks glass. As for the specific scents, there was nothing more or less than the rocks glass, I was able to get the fruity and flowery scents.
Smaller Flared Wine Glass-
This was definitely the strongest smell yet, not only did the flavor jump right out at me, but it definitely lingers longer. I feel like the fruity aromas really got unpacked here and I was able to get a stronger sense of pear and almost like sour apple.
Larger Flared Wine Glass-
Maybe the wine glasses I used were not flared, but this was definitely the strongest smell yet. The scents were way more intense than the smaller wine glass, and they lasted way longer. I was not able to pick up on any more scents, but like I said, it was just intensified.
Moving onto the Zinfandel:
Shot glass-
Very similar to the white wine in terms of what you smell initially is about all you are going to get. I was able to get a little bit of blackberry initially. But, like I said once I smelled it, it did not get any better, or only lost scent the longer I smelled it.
Rocks glass-
A stronger smell than the shot glass, I feel like I was able to unpack a little bit more on the fruity side as the blackberry got a little bit stronger and I got some shades of cherry.
Water glass-
This was the biggest difference between the Albarino and the Zinfandel, as the water glass actually gave me a better and stronger smell than the rocks glass. I got all the same fruity smells, with blackberry and cherry, but I was also able to pick up more of a tannic smell, I'm not sure why the water glass elevated that smell.
Small-flared glass-
This was where I really started to notice a bigger difference, as I was able to get some weirder scents from this glass. I picked up what kind of smelled like clove, and some very earthy scents that I could not exactly put a name on. All the same fruity notes that I was smelling in the shot-water glass are still there initially, but like I said I was able to pick up on more earthy notes, specifically clove.
Bigger-flared glass-
This was far and away the most pronounced glass in terms of smell. The fruity flavors jump out at me but the earthy undertones are brought out much quicker than the smaller glass. On top of this, they also seem to hold their intensity for a longer amount of time. The tannic smell is exacerbated with this glass as well.
Now, moving onto the differences I noticed when drinking the various wines:
I picked up the same notes from each of these wines throughout the tasting process, as most of what we taste comes from what we smell. The shot glass tasting for both wines seemed kind of bland, there was fruity flavors to start off with both wines, and then a semi-sweet finish. As for the finish on the Zinfandel, I was able to get the tannin finish. The smaller-flared glass yielded more flavors for both the white wine and the red wine, but I felt like it enhanced the flavors more of the apple-pear in the albarino than it did the blackberry/cherry in the Zinfandel. The Zinfandel still finished with the tannins, but being able to enjoy more of the fruity flavors beforehand helped ease that up. As for the larger-flared wine glass, it was also similar to the smaller wine glass. It was many similar flavors in each, but the biggest difference was in the red wine. For some reason the tannins in the wine seemed to relax a little bit, I'm not sure if this was because the change in the glasses, or if the wine had just been sitting out for long enough to see a change.
And for the last part of this, I took the smaller flared glass and the larger flared glass, poured some more of the zinfandel in both, only I heated up the larger glass by cupping it with my hands and sloshing it around in the glass for a few minutes. I then sniffed the smaller glass and immediately switched to the larger glass that had been warmed and sloshed around. It was crazy the difference, it was almost like the smaller-wine glass seemed duller once I smelled the larger glass. The fruit smells of blackberry and cherry were extremely more pronounced it seemed, and it was honestly surprising because when I smelled the smaller-flared glass before, it smelled normal. I was very surprised how much of a difference the vessel makes, and to take it a step further, the difference it makes when you warm the wine up and move it around.
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