Vino Expertise

The first step to Italian cooking is to pour yourself a glass of wine. White wines should accompany white foods such as chicken or fish, while red wines should accompany brown foods such as beef. Since the only thing I knew about wine was how to uncork it, I went on a little wine tasting set up by one of the professors at AUR. I will now attempt to make you all Italian wine experts as I have now become one (actually if I'm a wine expert than some sort of miracle has occurred, I could barely keep up with all the French words that were being thrown around). So try to keep up with my genius. First of all I've learned that the so called types of wine are actually just the types of grapes i.e. Merlot, Sauvignon, Chardonnay. Did you know that every region in Italy (about 20) produces wine, and they produce and consume more wine than any other country in the world? Well it's true.

There are 4 different kinds of stamps each Italian wine bottle label has to have:

• D.O.C.G. means the wine is extremely good (only 50 types get this stamp)
• D.O.C. means the wine is good (only 500 types get this stamp)
• I.G.T. means it only comes from a specific region
• Vino da tavola means its a local wine

The label may also include words such as these:

• Reserva, means its been fermented in oak for at least a year
• Classico, means geographically and historically significant
  
• Contiene Solfiti, means it has allergens in it (yum!)

Drinking the wine is a cultural experience (or so the sommelier told us) which involves all five of the senses (at this point I'm going to add another bullet list, watch out!):

• Hearing- uncork the bottle, pour the wine
• Sight- color and density
• Smell- aroma, bouquet (swish your glass around if you're having trouble with this)
• Taste- (obviously) savour in your mouth for 3 seconds before swallowing
• Touch- temperature (always hold the glass by the stem)

Here I demonstrate how to smell and touch the wine:

The first wine we tasted was from a white wine from Lazio (Southern Italy, very near Rome) It was called "Est! Est!! Est!!!" because as the story goes a priest was traveling to Rome and his bishop was to follow him. The bishop told the priest that if he came across an establishment with good wine, he was to write "Est" on the doorway, meaning "Here it is" in Latin. When the priest got to this particular establishment he wrote the 3 Est's with the exclamation, and the Bishop never got to Rome he stayed in Lazio as to be closer to the wine. It smelled acidic to me, but everyone else smelled apples.

The second wine was another white, this time from Friuli Venezia Giulia (Northern Italy). It was called "La Buse dal Lof" which means "the den of the wolf". There was no exciting back story for this one, although anything involving a wolf in Italy is sure to be a good story, so naturally I was disappointed. It smelled like, and I kid you not, tomato leaf and cat urine (the sommelier even admitted it) apparently that is typical of the grape it comes from which is the Sauvignon Blanc.

The third wine was a deep red from Sicily and the grapes are grown on the side the Etna Volcano (Have the Italians learned nothing since 79AD?) You could smell the ash in it, and I also smelled olives. I didn't write down what it was called, but the grape is a Nero Avola.

So now you are just as much a wine expert as I am, which is to say, not a wine expert at all.