It’s happened to all of us. You’re standing there, tasting wine and either the tasting notes or somebody is telling you about the apple overtones and you’re tasting and smelling peach. Especially if you’re new to wine, the natural thing is to wonder what’s wrong with your taste buds.
Well, we’re here to tell you that there is nothing wrong with your taste buds. The reality is we all experience taste differently. But the point of tasting notes is to share the experience of taste. When we, here at OddBallGrape, are writing about, say, the Freixenet Cordon Negro Brut, it’s helpful for you to have an idea of what to expect when you buy a bottle. But if we all experience taste differently, then how are tasting notes going to help?
Enter the calibration tasting. We purposely feature a wine that is widely available so that we can compare notes. That way, if we write toast and you tasted vanilla, the next time we write about the flavor of toast in a wine, you’ll know that you’re going to probably taste vanilla when and if you get a hold of that particular wine. Whether you like toast or vanilla in your wine is totally up to you, but at least you have a frame of reference to work with.
And, yes, this tasting does feature Freixenet Cordon Negro Brut. It’s a cava, or sparkling wine from Spain. We think cavas are some of the best buys around, especially for a sparkling wine. Most of them are made in the traditional Methode Champenoise style. They’re nice and dry but not in your face, like some California sparklers, and they are a heck of a lot cheaper to buy than pretty much anything else on the shelves.
Michael, our tasting manager, noted the pale color and lots of tiny bubbles – a good thing for a sparkler. He smelled toast and tasted a slight chalkiness, but not a lot of fruit. The nice thing was the way the bubbles dissolved at the back of the palate. It was definitely dry, with no sugar, and had a very clean finish, with no lingering bad aftertaste.
Now, it’s your turn. Feel free to put what you tasted in the comments below. Or let us know what you’re serving on Valentine’s Day.