Transatlantic Zeppelin: We don't spit; we swallow

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February 15, 2005

We don't spit; we swallow

At a recent business school Wine Society event, an officer told a wine company exec, "At CBS Wine Society, we don't spit." And nobody did. Tonight, with 12 pourings, almost everyone had to spit.

I've learned some things in business school, most of them not in the classroom. This isn't because I have bad professors (although there are issues here for which I volunteered to take a fair bit of stress), but rather because I only spend 15 hours a week in the classroom and perhaps 40-50 hours a week in social events.

Perhaps the most useful skill has been the ability to actually taste a *bit* of stuff they talk about in wine reviews--tannins, oak, pepper, bouquet, body, acidity, sweetness, chocolate, etc. If one never was taught what is a square, circle, and trapezoid, it's reasonable to think they're all just shapes and they're different. Wine Society has recently organized two events where participants take flights of various wines along with a sales exec from the winemaker. Carefully selected, two to four wines can be paired in a flight to draw out substantial differences in everything from oak vs. steel barrels, filtered vs. unfiltered, big body vs. nuanced bouquet, and even pipi d'chat taste.

Tonight we even got lucky and tasted good bottles vs. two corked bottles, bottles where the cork was loose and let in chlorine to produce 2,4,6-Trichloroanisole. (I googled to find that term.) It was rancid wine, but it was also a familiar taste, as it is present in up to 10% of wines. It was barely swallowable, but I swallowed it just to see how bad the bouquet was.

Posted by adrianjo at February 15, 2005 09:59 PM