Can you taste a shape?
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So here's the thing. Wine doesn’t have its own inherent vocabulary. We borrow words from things we know like flowers (“this wine is rich in honeysuckle”),fruits (“this wine has hints of blackberries”) and even more abstract things like choreography (”this Viognier is waltzing across my tongue..") or sometimes even shapes!
Wait? What???
Well…NO WONDER WINE CAN SEEM CONFUSING, Right? Let me break it down.
One concept I find really helpful and easy to understand is the idea of a wine being “ROUND” in the mouth. Obviously round is not a flavor. You can’t TASTE a shape, right? (please tell me if you can...) Round is referring how the wine FEELS or LANDS in the mouth when you take a sip.
Stay with me on this.
Remember dittos? Those bleedy-inky purple kinda worksheets from school?(I may be showing my age here…)
Imagine I gave you a DITTO worksheet of your mouth and a crayon- and I asked you to take a proper sip of your favorite wine (proper meaning extended, slow, swish-around-the-mouth kind of sip like my girl Courtney) and then after it was down the hatch, I asked you to shade on your mouth worksheet with the crayon where you felt that wine landed and stuck. Would your markings be all around the outside of the mouth, below the tongue and in sort of circular patten? Then we can say that wine is “Round in the mouth”. For those of you who have tasted Pride Merlot, that wine is a perfect example of this. It’s why I always refer to it as a warm hug (or maybe that’s just my Disney showing...).
The opposite of that would be a wine that is very LINEAR. It lands front to back on your tongue, like a line. Maybe it lands on the top of your mouth too- but the sides are left out of the party. Other words used to describe that kind of wine are “focused” or “precise”. Some Cabernet Sauvignons can be like that- which is why sometimes in winemaking, we blend a little of another grape like Merlot (a softer, ROUNDER perceived grape) into the Cabernet to…wait for it…Round it Out. 🤯
It’s a pretty new concept for most wine drinkers and once you get it- it’s an awesome tool to have because most staff members in wine shops or somms in a restaurant are familiar with this kind of terminology and if you know what you’re looking for you can ask for it by shape!
If you found this quick lesson helpful, feel free to reply and let me know! I'd love to hear from you. And it you have someone in your life who might benefit from this, feel free to forward this email to them and they can sign up for future newsletters and updates on our wine project! Newbies can click here to sign up.
Sip Well,
Nikki