Wine 101 with UW Professor Michael

Wagner
Um, so you guys can hear me Ok with this microphone?

So I’d like to proceed by saying I have no official credentials in wine.

I have no master sommelier, any of that.

But I have been reading about wine for years, been traveling to many of the wine regions in the
world: California and Italy, France

I think I know some, so this is intended for beginners and hopefully you’ll gain something from
my talk

So I do want to say that I’m not an expert but hopefully you will benefit

And over the past years I’ve been having some practice educating my wife about wine.

I remember one of our first dates and I got excited “I’m dating an Italian.”

She was born and bred near Rome and I got a really nice bottle wine, I decanted it and

I served it to her and she’s all “I don’t really like wine.”

But, there’s been a lot of progress since then

So this is going to be a basic wine course.

For example some of you may have gone to a wine store in seen something like this

This might be a little bit intimidating to you. I know many people including my wife have bought
wines based on the painting or the picture on the label

So I want to provide more information to you so you can make more informed decisions

And hopefully get a wine that you enjoy a little bit more.

So that’s the point of this talk

So the first thing I want to point out is that wine can be an experience
It’s not just a beverage, it’s going to be something that involves all five senses.

And when we think about it this way it does shed a little bit a light into how people talk about
wine,

Reading wine descriptions, and maneuvering the wine world a little bit more.

So I’m going to start and go through the five senses.

So first off: taste

We have five taste senses. I’m only going to talk about the four that most of you will know about.

The first one is sweet, so basically a wine can be sweet. And if it’s not sweet,

It’s typically called dry. So whenever someone describes a dry wine that means it’s not sweet.

And by the way, I noticed a couple people taking notes.

Number one this talk is being recorded so there will be a video posted later on and there will
also be PDFs of these slides

So pretty much everything that I’m saying on the slides will be available afterwards,

so no need to go crazy with the notes.

The second so sweet and dry, so dry is not sweet.

The other aspect of taste is acidic. So many wines are described as acidic

And this is like lemon juice, vinegar. And this is something I’m going to be talking about a little
bit later throughout the talk.

The other two tastes, sour and bitter, don’t really come up in too much in wine

But there are some examples that it will but I really want to focus on the first two: the sweet, or
lack of sweetness of a wine, and the acidity of a wine.

But beyond that, the one that’s more important and the one that really gives the flavor to the
wine is the smell.

And if you talk about wine especially more in the

Maybe perhaps a little more pretentious approach to it, they usually call the smell of a wine the
“bouquet” or the “nose” a wine.

So whenever you read the nose of a wine, that means its smell, or the “bouquet” of a wine, that
means its smell but here where gets really interesting.

There’s actually a whole slew of different possible smells you can get from smelling a wine.

Let me give a couple of examples.

So fruit, flowers, yeast, earth leather, wood, chocolate.

All these come about in wine.

So for example, fruit: this could be apples or this could be lemons, oranges, and these are
usually associated with white wines.

And the way you can experience this is, the next time you have a wine,

Smell it but close your eyes.

Close your eyes, smell the wine, and see what comes to mind.

Many times you would swear that you have an apple in front of you or lemon in front of you.

Flowers, roses. These are typically associated with roses and many types of wine like that.

Yeast: you might not think this is a good aspect associated with wine but this is typical of many
sparkling wines and champagnes.

Earth: this is also might be a weird one but this is typical of Pinot Noir and it’s not like you’re
smelling dirt,

but like an earth essence and it actually goes really well with the more mushroom-based dishes
and truffle-based dishes.

And I’ll talk about pairing later on in this talk as well.

You can experience leather in old red wines and basically almost like smelling like nice new
leather and in a glass a wine.

And that’s typical of the good wines that have aged a number of years.

Wood: many times you’re going to smell like cedar an old red wines or oak in a chardonnay,
but again it’s wood and this is what really gets the different flavors, the different profiles of wine

And this is what associated with the descriptions are sometimes written on the back of a wine or
on a review of a wine.

Chocolate as well. This will arrive in or come about in, say red wines and ports as well. So,
smell.

Third is sight, so using your eyes is going to be very important for enjoying wine as well.

And this I’m going to talk about a little more later

but basically I’m going to refer to the color of a wine, red versus white as well the clarity: is it
almost transparent and see-through or is it very opaque and cloudy?

So this is going to be different aspects of the color of wine.

Touch (“mouthfeel”): so touch is associated with wine as well.

And this is typically called “mouthfeel” when you’re talking about wine and a couple of examples
that come to mind is descriptions that are full verses light-bodied ones

And this is analogous to drinking cream versus nonfat milk.

When you drink cream it fills your mouth, feels heavy because of all the fat. Skim milk feels like
you’re almost drinking water.

It’s a straight parallel to that in terms of wine.

Full body wines feel like a cream. Light-bodied wines feel like non-fat milk.

And finally,

Oh I forgot about this.

Touch tannins: this is another descriptive term that’s pretty important for red wines.

This allows wants to age but it’s an aspect that you either like or you hate

So tannins, you can describe it as it dries out your mouth.

It’s almost as if you put cotton in your mouth, and it feels like the moisture is leaving your mouth.

It’s also associated or described in terms of really strong tea.

Once you swallow the tea, your mouth ends up feeling a little dry.

Those are tannins, and usually these are associated with the bigger red wines like Cabernet
Sauvignon, and some Merlots.

Now let’s talk about how that’s associated with food as well.

So that’s the touch aspect of wine and

Finally, does anyone have any idea how the sound comes in?

Sound is associated with wine too.

Yeah, any ideas?

The clicking of glasses!

So wine uses all these senses.

So another message I want to give you guys, there is no best wine.

Wine is really subjective,

So basically, I’m giving you tools to figure out what you like.

Just because I like a wine doesn’t mean you like a wine.

My wife and I have very different flavors when it comes to wine

So there’s not like an objective evaluation of wine, so keep that in mind and hopefully you can
find out the wines that you like the best after this talk.

Okay? So, I’m going to elaborate upon many of these throughout this talk.

The other aspect that is really important when it comes into wine

Is something called new world versus old world

So basically the wine world is split into new world and old world.

New world is easier.

Basically if you get a bottle wine from a new world producer, a new world country,
It’s going to tell you what the varietal, what the grape is,

That the wine is made from, so varietal means grape.

So the new world is typically the United States, predominantly California, Washington, and
Oregon.

These are the three states that produce probably the most wine in the US but they are also
produced in New York

And I think up to ten other states, so it’s all over the United States.

But these are the big players in the US.

Canada and Mexico also produce wine.

Canada surprisingly produces some really good wine which I’m going to talk about a little bit
later.

Other countries that are classified as new world,

South America, Chile and Argentina make really good wine.

Peru makes decent wine.

But Peru, if you look at it, and I know because my mom is from Peru so I’ve been there many
times,

Their best grapes are used to make Pisco, so Pisco Sour.

So you’re not going to get phenomenal wines from Peru in my opinion.

But you will get phenomenal wines from Chile and Argentina.

Australia and New Zealand also considered new world and South Africa’s consider new world,

So if you get a wine from any of these countries,

It will say what the grape is that goes into making the wine, or the combination of grapes.

So the new world will be a little bit easier to deal with.

In contrast, the old world names its wine after the region in which it’s made
So for example, and I’ll talk about this in a second, Chianti.

Chianti is an Italian red wine and Chianti is a region in Italy.

So if you see a bottle that says Chianti, it’s made in the Chianti region

But unless you know otherwise, you don’t know what grape is going into that wine.

It will never say on the bottle.

There are some exceptions, but primarily it will not say on the bottle.

So when you’re dealing with an old world wine, you have to know what grapes are going into
that region and then you can make your choice based on that.

So all the old world countries are going to be France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Germany,
primarily Europe.

As I said this is the harder portion of the wine world to maneuver

But I’m going to be talking about France and Italy in a little bit of detail.

I don’t have time for the rest, but just to give you an idea of how all this would be maneuvered.

So stereotypically, historically, French wine has been deemed the best,

And when my wife saw this item, she hit me.

So this was actually proved wrong in 1976.

In 1976 there was something called the judgment of Paris,

And this was a blind tasting of both red and white wines from California and from France.

So in particular it was Napa Valley versus Bordeaux and they picked the five best producers in
Napa and the five best producers in Bordeaux

And they had a blind taste test in Paris.

Blind meaning they didn’t know what the labels were.

And what happened was, California won.

The best red wine and the best white wine came from California.
Different wineries, but California was the winner.

And this put the wine world on its head, everyone was so surprised.

One judge was shamed - she was trying her best to get her judgment back.

She literally tried to invalidate her own votes.

But the winners and there are wines that are still produced - you can go buy them.

The best red wine was the Cabernet from Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars.

They’re still doing really well, the wine is excellent if you’re willing to pay

They’re not cheap, maybe 40-50 bucks, it’s phenomenal.

On the white side was a chardonnay from Chateau Montelena and that’s on the northern part of
Napa Valley near Calistoga

But they’re there, they’re going strong - excellent wines as well.

But basically, there is no best wine. You know, when you have the wine experts that always say
French are the best, that was violated.

So that’s the difference between new and old world and for the remainder of the talk

I’m going to be talking about new world first, talking about the varietals

So you can maneuver new world more easily

Then I’ll talk about the old world.

And before I do that I want to talk about labels a little bit.

So on the left is a label from the new world, on the right is a label from the old world.

So in the new world, this is a label from Napa Valley and Luna is the producer.

On the old world this is from Chianti, so Ruffino is going to be the producer.

So the label will always tell you what the producer is.

The new world will also tell you the grape.

So this Luna is making a wine from the red wine grape Sangiovese.

Chianti Classico is labeled here because that’s where the wine is made

And you just have to know that it's also made from Sangiovese.

So these two wines are made from the same grape

Yet you’ll never see the word Sangiovese on this label.

Another piece of information from a wine label is going to be the vintage, the year the wine was
made.

So this one was 1994, this one was 2003.

I’ll talk about vintages at the end of the talk.

The other thing that’s relevant

Kind of hard to see, but basically alcohol percent by volume and I think this one was 15.6.

This is a strong red wine.

Here it’s about 12 percent so it’s a less alcoholic wine from the same grape.

But this is relevant if you want to get drunk or you don’t

Alcohol strength varies. It’ll go from like nine percent up to 16 percent.

So it can vary a lot, so does pay to look at that and to make sure you know what you’re getting.

So I think that’s the most I wanted to say about the labels right now.

That’s the most important information.

And again, the difference is, in the New World you know the grape,

And in the old world, you don’t know what the grape is.

So now let’s get into color clarity and then

I’ll be talking about the varietals. I’m going to do white and then red.

These are all white wines, so asking for a white is a very vague statement.
So we can see that we can have wines that are almost transparent, almost clear like water to
almost brown.

These are all white wines from different varietals, from different grapes.

And I will give you a little information to show you why the different colors come about and what
the different flavors are.

So in two slides or three slides, I will show you what grape goes into each of these wines.

But the point is, not all white is created equal.

So, I want to talk about white wine varietals of which there are hundreds.

I’m going to give you three or four.

So I’m going to give you some of the more popular ones, gives short little descriptions

And then hopefully you can go off on your own and learn more about different types of white
wines.

Because I don’t want to do information. I’ll give little examples and then you can go off on your
own.

White wine is typically made from green grapes.

So this is like a grape that’s the color green.

And the way the white wine more precisely is made is they’ll press the grape

And they’ll make the wine from the juice itself.

They basically add yeast which can convert the sugar in the grape juice to alcohol,

Sugar disappears and then that becomes a wine.

There’s also an exception.

So white wines are usually made from green grapes but not always.

I’ll show you an exception of this, I’ll give you two examples of exceptions.

So basically it’s possible to make white wine from red grapes, but typically it’s from green
grapes.
First example: Riesling

So this might not be the most popular varietal out there,

But the reason I mention it is that it’s typically sweet, it’s typically easy to drink

And it’s a good starter wine.

So if there are any of you in here who have never really had wine before

I strongly suggest to start with the riesling

It’s like slightly punched fruit juice.

And it’s great with spicy food.

So spicy food I’ll mention toward the end is actually hard to pair with wines

But if you add sweetness to it, it becomes much easier to pair with.

So riesling actually goes really well with Indian food, Thai, Mexican food.

Whereas I pretty much would not match any other wine with it.

So sweet wines go with spicy foods.

Sauvignon Blanc is another type of white wine, another varietal.

This is one that is typically acidic

So it has more acidity than other types of wines

And that’s good because it usually goes well with food on as long as it’s not spicy it typically
goes pretty well.

And the acidity acts like lemon juice that you put on seafood.

The acidity brings out the flavor

So the acidity from the white wine helps you taste the food a little bit better.

So that’s a good default if you’re trying to match with food.

And there’s Chardonnay.

I’m sure you guys have heard of, is probably one the most versatile white wines.

So it’s hard to even describe what it is because it can be many different things.

So for example if you get a Chardonnay from California typically they’re described as buttery
and oaky.

If you smell it, you smell wood because they’re typically stored and aged in oak barrels

So the oak barrel imparts its flavor into the wine.

In contrast, the Chablis region from France makes Chardonnays

But they don’t really store it in oak, they stole it in stainless steel so it doesn’t have any of the
butteriness, doesn’t have any of the oakness and it tastes completely different.

So there's a huge variety.

And there’s one last grape I want to mention: Pinot Grigio.

So I want to talk about Pinot Grigio versus Pinot Blanc.

So Pinot Blanc looks like this.

It’s a green grape, it makes a white wine.

But Pinot Grigio is also known as Pinot Gris

So Grigio is Italian for grey, and gris is French for grey.

It’s like the grey pinot.

It looks like this, it’s kinda like a red grape.

They will make white wine from this red grape.

Basically press out all the grape juice, throw away the skins, and they make a white wine from
that.

So even though you might be a familiar with Pinot Grigio

It’s a pretty popular white wine from Italy,

It’s actually made from a red grape.

So those are samples of white wine varietals

There’s a lot more, but just to get you started

So let’s go back here

Let’s see how those varietals fit into this scale of colors.

So Pinot Grigio is typically pretty transparent.

Pretty low amount of color.

Sometimes, and I’ve seen them before, some Pinot Grigios look almost like water

And have mistaken it for water before so be careful with that.

When you go toward the right, the next one is going to be a Sauvignon Blanc.

Still pretty clear but you can tell that is has some yellowness of color to it.

Moving on, Viognier.

I didn’t mention this, but this is going to be another grape that’s very common in France and
they’re starting to make it in California as well.

A little bit more color, a little bit more full-bodied.

So as you move from left to right,

They become more full bodied, more toward the cream aspect than to the non-fat milk.

The next one is Chardonnay.

Chardonnay typically has the most color because most of them are aged in oak, so the wood is
going to impart some color into it.

The next one, I’m actually not going to give you a varietal.

But I’m simply going to call it an aged white wine.

So some wines are going to be capable of aging

And the ones that do, when they’re white, typically become browner with age.

So typically white wines gain color as they become older.

That doesn’t mean you should go grab a ten dollar bottle of Pinot and then save it for ten years.

Not all wines should be aged and I’ll talk about that at the end.

And the last one is special type of white wine

Which I will define and talk about later, but Sherry.

Sherry is going to be a much darker colored white wine

It’s almost like brown.

So with white wines, different colors come from different varietals, different player profiles and

There’s so much there so the one point of advice I can give you right now is explore.

Try different kinds, see what you like, and go from there.

I’m still trying new varietals so

I like to find really random ones and taste it and see what it’s like

And sometimes I like it and I go with it, and I’ll give examples of that towards the end as well.

Red wine

Red wine: I couldn’t find a good graphic but the point is the same.

So especially with this projector

It looks almost the same right?

It looks better on my screen but if you do this on your own and you pour them in glasses, you’ll
see that the colors are going to vary and in a couple slides I’ll tell you a little bit about what
colors are associated with which varietals.

But before I do, I want to talk about the red wine varietals the grapes that go into making red
wine.
So this is going to be a red wine grape and as you can see it’s almost like blue but the way you
make a red one is you’re going to crush it just like you did for the white grapes but you can keep
the skin. That’s the main difference.

So the skin, the color of the skin, is going to give the color to the wine.

If you look inside one of these grapes, it’s actually like clear colored meat.

If you take away the skin you’ll get a white wine

So it’s the skin that gives the color to the red wine, and the different flavors, and the tannins.

A couple of examples: Merlot.

Merlot is probably the one that most of you know.

And this is going to be my recommendation for a starter wine on the red side.

It’s typically fruity. If you smell a Merlot it might smell like berries, sometimes strawberries,
raspberries, more wood type of berries and typically they have unless you really invest

They don’t have too many tannins so you’re not going to get that dry feel in your mouth and it’s
a good starter wine in my opinion on the red side.

Another example: Zinfandel. And there’s a big difference between Zinfandel and white
Zinfandel.

So it’s the same grape. Zinfandel grapes look like this. And you can make a red wine from it
that’s phenomenal

White Zinfandel is actually a rose

I didn’t say that so

Rose white comes from limited contact with the skin.

So you leave the skin in for the entire fermentation process you get a red wine

If you leave it in for a day you get a rose wine. So if you do that

With the Zinfandel grape if you have limited contact with the skin you get white Zinfandel which
is a rose which is pretty simple very easy drinking but there’s not much complexity to it, there’s
not much to it
This is the best-selling wine in the US but it’s very simple, I actually would not recommend if you
actually want to explore wine

If you leave the skins in you get red Zinfandel which is excellent, its is really really good, it’s also
the most alcoholic.

They really are, they can get up to 16 or 17 percent.

This is the one you really have to be careful with

And they’re typically described as jammy.

So if you have like apple jam boysenberry jam

It has that essence when you smell it in the glass.

Very good with barbecue

Another example. Pinot Noir. so this is going to be the grape that was featured in the sideways
movie

If you haven’t seen that, it’s the wine that the guy was obsessed with

This is more of an acquired taste

The first time you try Pinot Noir you might not like it

But practice. The more you practice I think the more you will learn to appreciate Pinot Noir

Until you get to the point where it’s actually really good

It does have earthy flavors and this is why it’s a little put-offing to many people

When you smell it sometimes it’s like almost like smile a little bit of ground or the earth,

But that means is really good with mushroom dishes,

Truffle dishes, also pretty typical, typically good with salmon

So that violates the conventional wisdom: white wine with fish, read wine with meat

It doesn’t always have to be that way

Salmon is a pretty full flavored fish

And with a light Pinot Noir it’s actually really good.

By the way given this, my wife and I just experimented truffle salt with salmon, very good

So try it,

And the Pinot Gris or Pinot Grigio and the Pinot Blanc that I mention on the previous slide a
couple slides ago that make white wine

These are actually natural mutations of Pinot Noir grape

So this dark blue grape has had natural mutations in the past to go into that reddish great and
also to the green grape

But they all are from the same family so that’s kind of interesting

Ok finally Cabernet Sauvignon

This is probably the biggest red wine

This is the wine that I love and the wine that my wife hates

Because it has a lot of tannins a lot of the moisture is being sucked out of your mouth

Depends on your taste but I love it with steak, very good with steak

Okay so going back to this you can’t really see the colors but basically cabs

And merlots are pretty dark but as the cabs age they lose their color so it’s kind of hard to see
but they become less red and more brown in that sense

And here’s an example of Merlot, Zinfandel in my opinion are the darkest

Sometimes you can pour a Zinfandel and it looks almost black in the glass

But you taste and it’s wonderful it’s like a party in your mouth

I think Zinfandels are one of my favorites. And Pinot Noir

It’s hard to tell but Pinot Noirs are usually the lightest the clearest of the red wines

And as they get older they’ll also get browner but also

It’s a lighter brown. So the message here

Red wine loses color with age

So those are varietals, examples of varietals, we did some of the white side and some on the
red side

Now let me talk about the old world so the old world you’re going to know the location

But you’re going to have to learn the grapes and then you can use your knowledge that

You learn from the varietals from the early part talk. So I’m going to first talk about France

These are all the wine regions of France

One country the old world and it has like 15 different wine regions

I’m not going to go through all of them of course

But I’m going to give a couple of samples

Bordeaux

One of the best in the world and you just have to know that a Bordeaux red wine is going to be a
blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec

Those are the wines that go into Bordeaux by law.

So in the old world, the blends are going to be specified by law.

So if they don’t do that they can’t call it a Bordeaux

Here’s an example of a label from Bordeaux

And if you look carefully you can’t even see Bordeaux anywhere on there

So you’ll find it in the Bordeaux section to the store but actually doesn’t say Bordeaux on it

This is a pretty well-known Bordeaux called Petrus

And I point it out because I want to show you that Bordeauxs can be expensive. I looked up the
price for the 2010

Petrus … 3700 dollars

Pricey
So careful

Bordeaux actually also makes white wines, dry white wines

And they’re going to be made with the Semillon and the Sauvignon Blanc grape

So thought that’s the ones you have to know when you’re buying a white Bordeaux is made with
those grapes

There’s not too many of them but you might encounter them and they’re good

But I mention this because it is a special type of white wine from Bordeaux

That’s a sweet white wine called Sauternes so what is done to these grapes

Is something called botrytis which is also known as noble rot

They will wait until the grapes rot on the vines

They break open a lot of the water evaporates and what’s left is has less water and the same
amount of sugar

And they make the wine from that and that makes a phenomenal white wine called Sauternes