All in one
Continuing on a theme from last week, how you might approach a wine tasting

AT A FORMAL tasting you will usually be given your own tasting glass and be expected to make do with a fairly small tasting sample, up to 2.5cm deep of each wine, emptying any remains into a large ‘dregs’ jug or bottle with a funnel before starting on the next wine. Sometimes, if wine or glasses are in very short supply, there will be a single glass of each wine placed in front of its bottle for everyone to taste from. A disease would have to be very rabid to transmit itself from one taster to another via a glass rinsed in wine – alcohol being a strong disinfectant. If you are tasting as cosily as this, though, it really does make a bit of a stink if you leave the smell of a cigarette smoke or perfume on the glass.

You will probably find that the number of different wines you can study seriously in one session will increase steadily and then reach a maximum - quite literally, saturation point. I would suggest that you start by comparing only two wines at a time. The first exercise in specific wine tasting, contrasting two Chardonnays from different places, is a good starting point. Quite soon you will find you are able to look in detail at three wines, still getting enjoyment out of them without feeling overwhelmed.

The bigger the group in which you taste, the more wines you can collectively afford to tackle. You may find, though, that 12 at a time is the absolute maximum. Many professionals try to taste more at a time – sometimes as many as a 100 or even more. I think my own personal limit is about 24 a day, although this varies according to the mood and circumstance, and it helps if they are wines of varied styles.

Try chewing a dry biscuit or plain bread between mouthfuls of wine and notice how little the food seems to affect the palate. When planning which wines to serve with a meal (if it’s the sort of occasion that warrants more than one wine), bear in mind the conventional sequence of wines.

You don’t have to be a millionaire to indulge in one of these ‘directional’ tastings. Bordeaux’s rather formal structure of ranked chateaux lends itself particularly well to the technique but the wines don’t have to be premiers crus. Any collection of wines from a single vintage, no matter how humble the provenance, can give you a horizontal tasting, and will teach you something about that vintage. You can attempt a vertical tasting of any wine with a vintage date on the label – though it might take quite a bit of scouting about to gather together much of a collection of different vintages. In Cyprus most wine retailers sell one and rarely two recent vintages of a given wine and only a handful a good range of maturing vintages. Tasting vertically is best exercised in wineries where the winemaker keeps still several of his vintages. Wine merchants usually parade recent vintages and varied wines of the same producer.

Wine of the Week

2003 OPAP Santorini Sigalas Assyrtiko Alcohol Volume 13%
Domaine Sigalas was founded in 1991 by Paris Sigalas, Christos Markozane and Yiannis Toundas. Since 1998, the winery has been located in the northern part of Santorini at Oia. This wine is 100 per cent Assyrtiko, probably Greece’s finest multipurpose white grape. More about Santorini, though, in the near future. Back to the wine, this light yellow colour OPAP wine with green highlights is bone dry and strong, but gentle on the palate. It has citrus flavours and lemon intensity, particular of the grape variety. Excellent structure with good acidity which brings out the flavours, pleasant on the finish. Drank at 10º to 11ºC, this wine is an excellent partner of baked fish with light sauces as well as white meat particularly roast poultry with light tomato based sauces.