Discovering Wine: A Refreshingly Unfussy Beginner's Guide to Finding, Tasting, Judging, Storing, Serving, Cellaring, and, Most of All, Discovering Wine

First Chapter

Chapter 1 Why and how to taste

Unless you have aspirations to become a wine taster by trade, you will know that you wouldn't want to be seen dead going through that extraordinary contortionist tasting ritual of sipping (or slurping), sucking in air (far from soundlessly), chewing as f battling with a piece of tough steak, then spitting.

And you wouldn't want to get into that habit of writing reports of every wine (usually littered with references to fruit and vegetables) and grandly calling them your tasting notes, would you? It all seems so pretentious, doesn't it?

In fact, it is pretentious to do all that outside the environs of a wine tasting. It is not only that you don't spit out wine when you are drinking it for pleasure, it is also that you don't need to make a noisy spectacle of yourself to get a lot more pleasure out of every sip than you would if you simply knocked it back without thinking. And that's the point. You can treat wine simply as the unobtrusive stage set for the important action -- whether food, conversation, or a good book -- or you can let the wine play the title role. Give it your attention, concentrate on it -- and you will be duly rewarded.

The middle route -- between drinking without taking any interest and the painstaking (and painful-looking) ritual of the professional in the tasting room -- is simply the one which delivers most pleasure. (The aim of the professional, after all, is not personal enjoyment, but assessment of whether wines will give enjoyment at the right time and right price to those who are destined to drink them.)

To get more out of every sip, glass and bottle, you simply need to consider the wine in three stages: look, smell, then taste. Then, if you want a record for the future, you write down what you sensed in the same order, giving an overall impression at the end. (It is, I'm afraid, a mistake to rely on memory alone, especially if you are tasting or drinking more than one wine.) Lavishly bound cellar books look the part -- provided you fill them in -- but I've never managed more than a few entries in one of these before I've returned to my infinitely less glamorous, but always accessible, everyday notebooks. I start each entry by writing the date, the place (if it's not home), details on the wine label (of which more in a moment), where I bought it, the price, and size of bottle. On the whole labels are getting easier to understand (German and expensive Italian designer labels are the main exceptions), but it can still be difficult to work out which are the pertinent details. Label reading is explained in the last section of the book, but, as a guide, look for the name of the wine and of the property and producer, the name of a region or appellation, a vintage, and a grape variety and/or style (for example blanc de blancs or moelleux). You are now ready for the fun.

Look

Begin by looking at the wine, preferably in a reasonably good, but not fluorescent, light, and against a plain, pale background (a sheet of white paper is ideal if you're at home). If you are doing the pouring, don't fill the glass too full: it makes the tasting process far easier if you don't. Hold the glass by the base or the stem and tip it away from you at an angle of about 45 degrees (if the glass is too full, there will now be wine everywhere). Look down on it and you should be able to see how clear the wine is -- whether it has any minute bubbles or foreign bodies, how deep the color is, what sort of hue it is, and how much the color graduates from the center to the rim. (With white wines it isn't actually so necessary to tilt the wine -- you can hold the glass up and look at it at eye level -- but it is a good habit to get into.)

Wine should always be clear and bright, never cloudy or hazy. At best the latter is caused by sediment that has been shaken up. At worst it suggests some kind of contamination. Sediment is less common in white wine than red, but if it is present, apart from indicating that the wine is quite mature (probably seven or more years), it shows that it has not been over filtered -- which is a point in its favor. Of course, as with red wine (where a deposit may begin to appear within a couple of years), the sediment should remain in the bottle and not be tipped carelessly into the glass, because it muddies both the taste (it is often bitter) and texture, as well as the appearance. Small, colorless crystals at the bottom of a glass or bottle of white wine are harmless tartrate deposits and are a sign that the wine has not been overtreated.

Bubbles in still wines can be a danger sign, indicating an unwanted refermentation, but a few tiny bubbles in a white wine -- especially a pale, young, light one for drinking young -- may be deliberate: wines such as Portugal's Vinho Verde are bottled with a little carbon dioxide to give a bit more zip to the palate (which you experience as a slight, refreshing prickle on the tongue). Bad -- secondary fermentation -- bubbles, on the other hand, give a vinegary sharpness to both smell and flavor.

Although color is less indicative for white wine than red, it still varies from almost colorless, with perhaps a hint of green in a Mosel or a Chablis, to deep yellow. Once you see brownish tinges, however, it means that things are not looking good: white wines go darker with age (the reverse of reds) and by the browning stage they are usually heavily oxidized, or maderized, which gives them an increasingly sherrylike, or 'rancio', off-taste. Broadly speaking, paler wines come from cooler climates and deeper yellow ones come from warmer, especially southern hemisphere, regions, but sweet botrytis-affected wines (see page 92), including northern German ones, and oak-aged whites have more color too.

The color in red wine gives more away -- in terms of age, quality and provenance. Red wines gradually shed their color (eventually as sediment), which means they become paler with age, changing from a deep purple-red, through ruby, to brick-red and finally to an over-the-hill tawny. The place to look to get a feel for a wine's age is the rim: the paler and browner it is (and the greater the graduation of color from the center of the glass), the more mature the wine. And generally speaking, a red wine of some quality that is intended to be aged, rather than drunk within two or three years, needs to have considerable color to start with -- because color is closely linked to tannin content, and tannin is a major life-giver in red wines.

Inevitably, though, some grape varieties and climates produce more color than others. As with white wines, warmer regions produce deeper colors, but Cabernet Sauvignon grapes, for example, should produce a good, strong-colored wine everywhere. The same, only more so, goes for Syrah (or Shiraz) and Nebbiolo; although Syrah is basically only grown in reasonably warm climates anyway and Nebbiolo is pretty well a one-region (Piedmont) wine. Nebbiolo, though dark, also turns browner more quickly than most wines, as does Grenache. Pinot Noir, on the other hand, is naturally paler than wines such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah.

The way red wine is aged also affects color. Wines matured in wood lose more color than those matured predominantly in the bottle: wood-aged tawny port versus bottle-aged vintage port is the archetypal example. Rioja is another: although Tempranillo grapes produce well-colored wines, top-quality Gran Reservas and Reservas can be relatively pale because of their long oak maturation.

Swirl

Now for the first swirl. Either put the glass on the table, or continue to hold it by the stem or base (the base is more difficult), then twirl it round to get the wine moving -- and do practice at home with water first, rather than drench your neighboring taster. The main point of doing this is to aerate the wine so that it releases its volatile compounds -- that is to say its smells, or aromas -- but, before you plunge your nose into the glass, take a look.

The way the wine clings to the glass and then trickles down may tell you something. A wine that trickles back only slowly and in distinct streams, or 'legs', is fairly viscous, which means that it is high in alcohol, sugar, or both. A wine with an edge that breaks quickly and raggedly may be old, very light and dry, or you may have a not very well-rinsed glass! (Detergent and cloth residues interfere with the surface tension of the wine.)

Nose

Put your nose down to the glass and sniff. Then give your glass its second twirl, put your nose farther into it and sniff more deeply. Most people find one deep sniff more rewarding than several short sharp ones, but the important thing is to do what is most effective for you.

The first thing you learn is that wine, with the exception of wine made from the Muscat grape, doesn't smell of grapes. In fact it smells of wine. And wine smells of...if you weren't afraid of sounding like one of those wine writers with what you had always assumed was chronic Purple Prose Syndrome, you would say it reminded you of blackcurrants, gooseberries, grass, vanilla, gasoline, linoleum, sweat -- and you would be right. You would be right because your brain's interpretation of any aroma is what counts. It is useless to pretend that a wine smells of pineapple, butter and vanilla, because that is what you think it is supposed to smell of, when it actually reminds you of nothing so much as stale stair carpet, cardboard and cabbage. You won't fool yourself or anyone else.

The other reason for trusting your own senses is that, however outlandish your identification of a smell seems, you might well have hit the scientific bull's-eye. Wines smell of strawberries, bananas, blackcurrants, peaches, green peppers and an extraordinary number of other familiar non-wine substances, precisely because they share the same volatile chemical compounds. Some 500 aromatic compounds have been identified in wine to date (see next page for further details), variously derived from the grapes themselves, the fermentation process, and the maturation process (although some wines are drunk before they have had a chance to develop any real aromas at this third stage, either because they are so delicious or because they are simple wines with no development potential).

The most obvious and fruity aromas (the so-called primary aromas) come from the grapes -- especially from the skin and flesh just beneath. The fermentation process yields more complex aromas, which at their most easily identifiable include yeast, butter, freshly sawn oak and other oak-derived aromas such as vanilla, spice, and toast. The complicated and still partly mysterious chemical and physical changes that take place as wine matures produce the so-called tertiary aromas -- the most subtle and difficult to describe and identify, but ultimately perhaps the most rewarding. In white wines, both sweet and dry, the most obvious is usually honey, with toast or brioche in champagne (but not, incidentally, derived from oak) and gasoline in Riesling. Red wine maturation aromas are even harder to pinpoint, except that the fruit character becomes mellower and the good wines simply become richer (sometimes it is a gamy richness) and more profound. Together, the secondary and tertiary aromas are called the 'bouquet', although the word tends to be loosely used -- often for the smell as a whole. The less euphonious but succinct 'nose' is also used for the overall smell.

So, that is the science, but how does it shape up in practice? Assuming that the wine is in prime condition (without specific faults and not getting too old), it should always smell clean and fresh rather than stale or baked -- although, with a wine of some age, it isn't the invigorating freshness of youth. It should also smell in some way fruity, although not all grape varieties have the strong, fruity identity of, say, Cabernet Sauvignon (blackcurrants) or Gewürztraminer (lychees), and in older wines the vivid, youthful fruit is replaced by mellower, more complex, less clearly defined fruit aromas -- sometimes with more of the character of dried fruit and autumnal fruit compotes.

On the whole you should feel that the aromas are attractive, but there are some honorable exceptions, especially among old wines. Mature burgundy, for example, can smack of barnyards and well-patronized stables, while other old reds, especially claret, can be oddly mushroomy. Red wines from the Syrah (Shiraz) grape can be quite leathery, or tarry, and in the Hunter Valley in Australia, Shiraz commonly used to have a pungent odor of sweaty saddles; nowadays, though, this is considered to come from a fault occurring in the winemaking process. Among white wines, the strong gasoline or kerosene smell acquired by the Riesling grape can come as a shock to the uninitiated, and both young Sauvignon Blanc and Müller-Thurgau are sometimes enthusiastically described as having a smell of cat's pee.

If you do encounter an off-putting smell, but one which is not positively bad, and if you sense that there is more to the wine than this one particular odor, think of it as a kindred spirit to one of those awe-inspiringly smelly, but wonderfully tasty cheeses.

In so far as positively bad smells are concerned, all you will really need to know about are the few easily recognized ones. A musty, dank, moldy smell indicates a 'corked' wine, one irredeemably tainted by infected cork (frustratingly this is an increasing problem -- affecting perhaps one in twenty bottles worldwide). The corked smell always gets worse rather than better when the wine is in the glass and exposed to air, but occasionally you find a slightly similar stale smell that disappears quickly when the wine is poured. This is called 'bottle stink' and is harmless stale air that was caught in the bottle between wine and cork.

A wine that smells of vinegar is almost certain to be beyond hope. The same goes for a wine smelling of cheap, tired sherry; but oxidation or maderization -- the problem in this case -- takes a while to reach such a stage. On its way it may give a flat, stale, cardboardy smell to white wines, or a stewed, sharp, tomato puree aroma to reds, but it is not always the most obvious of off-smells. A whiff of bad eggs, struck matches, blocked drains, old overcooked cabbage or burnt rubber is. These are all caused by sulfur-related problems. Sometimes they rather unexpectedly recover with a spot of rough handling -- pouring the wine into a jug and swirling it around for example -- but this is only potentially a solution at home. In a restaurant, the rule is reject it.

There is one final scenario: you put your nose down, inhale deeply, and get more or less nothing from the glass. It could be because your nose is begging for a few moments' rest after a period of concentrated sniffing. If you think that is the case, then do oblige. But if you are sure your faculties are in full working order, you may have a wine in your glass that is going through a 'dumb' phase. This is as mysterious as it sounds. The scientists don't know why, but many good wines that need maturing suddenly seem to batten down the hatches after their first flush of exuberant youth. The fruit goes into retreat and not much else seems to be there. (On the palate they are equally withdrawn: red wines display rather pugnacious tannins, whites show acidity, both hide behind oak.) This moody adolescent phase often starts after about two to four years and goes on for as long as a piece of string: maybe two years, maybe five. If the wine is yours, you just have to sit it out patiently and bravely.

Taste

Take a sip -- a generous sip, but not a mouth so full that the reflex is to swallow immediately. Savor the flavors, rolling the wine gently around your mouth so that it reaches every tastebud. Then, if you are on your own, or feeling brave in sympathetic company, open your lips and draw in some air. (Yes, the slurping sound is you.) This aerates the wine, just as the earlier twirl of the glass did, and helps send the volatile compounds up from the back of your mouth to your olfactory bulb, the all-important organ at the top and back of your nose. Swallow (or spit) only when you have really got a sense of the flavors and feel of the wine. Then pay attention to the taste that is left -- known as the finish or aftertaste. It should be pleasant and it should linger (try counting the seconds).

The first thing you usually learn is that your nose was right. You smelt blackcurrants, cedar wood, and tobacco, or melon, vanilla, and honey, and those are the flavors you taste. The mouth, by sending these volatile compounds up to the olfactory bulb, largely confirms what bulb and brain have already told you about the aromas. But the emphasis may be different: you may find their relative intensity has changed now you are experiencing them with other flavors and sensations. And taste reveals other facets of a wine's makeup, quality and constitution.

Although tastebuds on their own only pick up a few basic, nonvolatile flavors, they play a crucial role in that they 'feel' the wine, with certain groups of tastebuds having particular strengths. Those at the tip of the tongue are especially sensitive to sugar. Those at the sides are more alert to acid sharpness, and those at the back are often acutely aware of bitterness (a feature of tannin, the dry, mouth-coating substance of cold tea fame). The tastebuds also register astringency (from tannin or acid), roughness or harshness (from tannin), smoothness (glycerol), and three other very important aspects of any wine: its 'weight', its balance of flavors, and its length or aftertaste.

Weight (light-, medium-, or full-bodied) is perceived through alcohol, glycerol, tannin, sugar, and all the other non-water elements that together are called 'extract'. It is basically a matter of style. The question of balance (harmony of sugar, acid, tannin and alcohol levels) and the length of time the flavors last (which is usually allied to their concentration) are aspects more related to quality. The greater the wine, the more harmonious all the elements appear to be, and the longer and more intensely the taste lingers.

But balance can be difficult to assess, particularly in young wines that need cellaring for some years before they are drinkably mature. Red wines for laying down will have a certain amount of acidity and rather more tannin. Tannin is the inherent red wine preservative that gradually softens as the wine matures, but it is not in itself very pleasant, either in flavor or feel. What the expert looks for in a young red wine is sufficient (ie, a balance of) ripe fruit flavor behind the tannin -- see page 90 for more details on how winemakers manipulate tannins. Then, by the time the wine is fully mature, the tannin should be mellow and seemlessly blended with the other flavors and textures.

It is much less prominent in white wines (although certainly not absent), but it is the acid levels in whites intended to age that need to be high -- sometimes raspingly so. The effect of age is to soften acidity to the taste (although it doesn't actually reduce it). Again, the key is to have sufficient fruit at the outset, so that it does not 'dry out', or fade, before the acidity has softened. The acid balance is also very important, and particularly precarious, in sweet wines. If lacking, as it tends to be in cheaper wines, they simply become cloying.

The taste of new oak offers another area of potential imbalance. It gives dimension and complexity of texture to a wine, as well as contributing its own seductive flavors, but it shouldn't be intrusive -- and certainly it should not be so assertive that you feel you might as well be chewing toothpicks. You will have no trouble spotting an old wine with too much oak: it will be dry, sawdusty and fruitless. But in a young wine you may have to delve behind the oaky exterior to a fruity core: the fruit must be there if the wine is to develop well.

Finally, when you have swallowed or spat out the wine, you should be left with a taste that is undeniably clean and pleasant. It shouldn't, for example, be predominantly tart or bitter. And this pleasant 'aftertaste' should linger. If it disappears in an instant, you have a very ordinary, simple wine (so I should go on to the next), but if it lasts more than about 30 seconds, you probably have something rather good. So take another sip.

All this may have read as if tasting a wine takes an inordinately long time. It really doesn't -- a minute or two -- and I can assure you they will be minutes well and pleasurably spent.

PS Spitting

The other thing you need to get to grips with, if you are going to taste a lot of wines in earnest, is spitting. I know it goes against the grain to spit out good wine and against what you always thought was good manners, but spitting is the done thing. Fortunately it isn't difficult and you don't have to be aim-perfect from a great distance, but, if you take the time to have a few private practice runs, you are less likely to spatter fellow tasters and less likely to be embarassed by your spitting image. Take a little time to practice when you are cleaning your teeth, spit in the bath, or practice with water and a bucket in the kitchen. And so that you don't learn the hard way, can I point out that, as you spit, the following need to be held, pinned or tucked out of the way: ties, long hair (I learnt the hard way years ago), strings of beads, pendants and dangling scarves. You would also be well advised to eschew pale colors and hard-to-clean silks, cashmeres, kid shoes, and so on. And please note that, even if you can't see a sign, you shouldn't smoke. You may argue that you are so used to tobacco fumes they don't interfere with your tasting, but other people are unlikely to have developed a similar inbuilt filtration system.

Tasting terms

The following terms are in common usage and are mostly fairly self-explanatory: Aggressive (said of young wine or older wine that hasn't mellowed as it should have done)
Aromatic (plenty of aromas and flavors -- often the spicy or flowery grape varieties)
Astringent (mouth-puckering tannin)
Austere (rather tough and ungiving -- maybe because the wine is too young)
Baked (as if the wine or grapes have been baked in the sun -- so there is a lack of freshness)
Beefy (full-bodied, strapping, flavorsome -- usually red wine)
Coarse (rough-and-ready -- so should be cheap)
Creamy (wines of quality, especially champagne, can develop a creamy richness, which is half flavor and half texture)
Crisp (fresh and positively refreshing -- especially whites)
Dense (solid color and/or densely packed with flavor -- usually positive)
Dried-out (a wine that is over-the-hill because the fruit flavors have faded away)
Earthy (an earthy, gravelly, minerally smell that seems to come straight from the soil, eg in fine Graves, as well as some more rustic wines)
Elegant (self-explanatory -- and much used)
Fat (full-bodied with high glycerol -- maybe sweet)
Finesse (high quality -- self-explanatory)
Firm (good tannin and/or acid)
Flabby (lacking acidity)
Flat (lacking freshness and acid)
Fleshy (generously flavored, round with no edges)
Forward (more mature than you would expect)
Fragrant (attractive, usually flowery)
Green (young and raw -- may develop or the grapes may simply have been unripe)
Grip (a young wine with grip has the tannin and/or acid potential to develop)
Hard (too much tannin or acid -- but can be a question of youth and time)
Heavy (full-bodied and alcoholic -- usually used to indicate imperfect balance, although not in the case of fortified wines)
Herbaceous or herby (reminiscent of grass, herbs, and leaves)
Hollow (wine that has an initial taste and an end-taste, but a disappointing lack of flavors in between)
Hot (high, out-of-balance alcohol -- usually in wines from warm climates)
Jammy (jam rather than fresh fruit flavors -- from hot climates)
Lean (lacking breadth of flavors)
Long (wine the taste of which lasts -- a very positive feature)
Meaty (richly flavored, full-bodied wine -- sometimes literally savoury meat flavors)
Mouth-filling (wine with a satisfying richness of texture and flavors that fill the whole mouth)
Neutral (short on aroma and flavor -- very common among inexpensive dry whites)
Oily (some grapes have an oily character in the mouth -- Gewürztraminer is one, Viognier another, Sauternes can also have a rich, slightly oily texture, but otherwise not usually a quality sign)
Penetrating (intense aromas and flavors)
Perfumed (fragrant, scented, often flowery)
Rich (having depth and breadth of flavor)
Robust (full-bodied, sturdy wine, usually red)
Rough (coarse, basic wine)
Round (no hard edges -- ready to drink)
Scented (fragrant, perfumed, often floral)
Sharp (a sharp, acid flavor that may simply need time to soften -- mostly whites)
Short (no aftertaste -- cannot be a high quality wine)
Silky (smooth texture -- high quality)
Simple (sound, drinkable wine of no great distinction)
Smooth (applies to texture -- no tannin or acid getting in the way)
Soft (sometimes interchangeable with smooth, but often refers to soft, mellow flavors rather than texture)
Solid (plenty of substance, usually full-bodied)
Sour (irredeemably acidic or vinegary)
Spritz (prickle on the tongue of carbon dioxide in young, light-bodied whites)
Stalky (bitter aroma and taste of stalks and stems)
Steely (hard to describe: firm, sinewy character, usually allied to quite high acid, found in Chablis and some other good quality young French whites)
Stewed (coarse, cooked flavors from overripe grapes and/or over-hot fermentation)
Stringy (thin, mean wine)
Structure (as in good, firm structure or poor, weak structure -- the balance and strength of the basic components, ie acid, tannin, fruit, alcohol, and maybe sugar)
Supple (round and smooth)
Tangy (a lively aftertaste, in white wines, sherry and madeira)
Thin (lacking flavor and body)
Tough (too much tannin)
Vegetal (brassica, rather than leafy and herbaceous -- often in mature burgundy, red and white)
Velvety (similar to silky, but richer)
Watery (feeble, thin, weak)
Woody (smell of old, dirty casks instead of clean, young ones)
Zesty (fresh, crisp and lively -- usually young white wine)

Aromas and flavors crib

Almond -- usually Italian, especially Soave and Valpolicella
Apple -- many dry white wines, sweet Loires, and, when particularly aromatic, maybe German Riesling
Apricot -- Condrieu, and good sweet Loires, eg Coteaux du Layon and Vouvray
Asparagus -- Sauvignon Blanc, eg Sancerre, New Zealand Sauvignon, California Fume Blanc
Banana -- young, inexpensive whites, and Beaujolais
Biscuit -- champagne
Blackcurrant -- Cabernet Sauvignon, including claret, and less pronounced in Merlot and Cabernet Franc
Bread (fresh baked, yeasty) -- champagne
Brioche -- champagne
Bubblegum -- Beaujolais Nouveau
Butter -- Chardonnay, including white burgundy
Cabbage -- mature burgundy, both red and white
Cat's pee -- Sauvignon Blanc from France and Müller-Thurgau
Cedar or cigar box -- claret and other Cabernet Sauvignons
Cherry -- burgundy, Beaujolais and a lot of Italian reds
Chocolate -- many medium- and full-bodied reds (New World and Old), claret, and burgundy
Clove -- young Cabernet Sauvignon
Coffee (fresh ground) -- reds: usually top quality and fairly young
Currant leaf -- Sauvignon Blanc
Eucalyptus -- New World Cabernet, some claret, some Shiraz
Flint and wet stones -- Pouilly-Fumé, Chablis
Floral -- German Riesling
Game -- northern Rhone (Hermitage), Shiraz, mature red burgundy
Gasoline or kerosene -- a good sign in mature Riesling, especially German and some Australian
Gooseberry -- Sauvignon Blanc, especially Loire and New Zealand
Grape -- Muscat
Grapefruit -- Scheurebe grape (English and German wines)
Grass -- Sauvignon Blanc
Green pepper -- Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, eg Chinon and Bourgueil
Honey -- lots of sweet wines, especially botrytis-affected ones also mature dry whites including burgundy
Lanolin -- Sauternes
Leather -- Syrah/Shiraz
Lemon -- many young whites
Lime -- Australian Riesling
Liquorice -- many reds, especially young, tannic, full-bodied ones
Lychee -- Gewürztraminer
Marzipan -- sweet white Loires, eg Coteaux du Layon, Quarts de Chaume, Bonnezeaux
Melon -- New World Chardonnay
Mint -- Cabernet Sauvignon, especially New World, and Coonawarra Shiraz
Nivea or Pond's Cold Cream -- Gewürztraminer
Nut (hazelnut or walnut) -- white burgundy, champagne, and other Chardonnays
Oak -- any wine, red or white, that has been fermented and/or aged in oak (or has been aged with oak chips)
Olive -- Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc
Orange -- many sweet whites, including fortified
Peach -- many whites, including New World Chardonnay and sweet' whites
Pear/pear-drop -- many young whites, especially inexpensive ones for drinking young, also Beaujolais Nouveau
Pepper (fresh ground) -- red southern Rhônes, eg Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Côtes du Rhône, and also Austrian Grâner Veltliner
Plum -- a less pronounced fruit smell in many red wines
Potato peelings -- Cabernet Franc in Chinon, Bourgueil, and Saumur-Champigny
Raisins -- sweet fortified wines
Raspberry -- red Rhônes, red burgundy, and New World Pinot Noir, Beaujolais, and red Loires in good vintages
Rose -- dry Alsace Muscat, Gewürztraminer and some red burgundy
Salt -- manzanilla sherry
Smoke -- full-bodied reds, especially Syrah; Pouilly-Fumé and Alsace Tokay-Pinot Gris
Spice -- many reds, especially Rhônes; Alsace whites and any wine that has been oak aged, especially in American oak
Strawberry -- Beaujolais, red burgundy and Rioja
Tar -- Barolo especially, but also northern Rhônes
Toast -- any wine that has been in new oak barrels, but especially Chardonnay; also mature, unoaked champagne (especially blanc de blancs) and Australian Semillon
Tobacco -- many reds, but especially claret
Vanilla -- wine that's been in new French or American oak barrels, eg Rioja
Wool (wet) -- white burgundy

Copyright © 1994 by Mitchell Beazley Publishers