Monday 7 July 2008

New wine-makers


The assemblageday was a perfect day.

The cave was well-prepared to help us feel like wine maker. It looked wonderful. Hans & Christa spent several hours arranging all the materials.
To learn the art of tasting, we started the day with some theory about the zones on the tongue. To distinguish sweet, bitter, salty and sour, Hans prepared special "taste-liquids". We were a bit cautious at the beginning, how could we discribe what we were tasting? But some of us did very well with this, discerning the different samples.
Then 3 glasses of wine were presented, 2 of them were the same. The third was manipulated by Hans with a special taste. Which one was different? And what was the special taste?

We were in such a good "tasting mood", we did not even stop for a coffee break. "Not good for the palette", we decided, very professional.

The lunch was super. Tasting gives you an appetite. After an apero in the garden we had a 4 course meal. Thank you Christa for the wonderful "Coq au vin".

In the afternoon in was back to work. Now we really had decisions to make.
We tasted 4 different wines, which gave us the base we had to work with, to make an assemblage. We were given a calculator and a lot of tools to measure even the tiniest amount of wine.

What kind of wine did we want to create? What should we choose? How much of which wine to add, to find a balance, to make it round. How to mix different wines which do not compete with each other but rather become a unified new taste?
We were really concentrating, mixing the first small bottle and tasting......is it alright??? How can I change the bitter taste?? Hans please have a try, what should we do???
Add a bit of Tempranillo, go less on the Cabernet, make another little bottle. And another. Is this better? Do I have the courage to make more changes? This is fun!!! This is exciting!!!

By 5 p.m. we had all created our first wine. We were so proud!!
We made a litre of our final choice, put it in a bottle, corked it ourselves, capsule on the top and were even given a label printed with our own name to stick on the bottle.

This was the best souvenir of a perfect day. Our very own wine, labelled with our name!
Will we ever open this bottle???

1 comment:

Jan Kuijk said...

Assemblage à Bourdic, 10 août 2008

Twee kleine vlekjes
Op mijn T-shirt.
Wijnspatten,
Bijna onzichtbaar.

Een beginneling kan
Wel zonder spatten
Drinken van de wijn,
Maar voor uitspuwen
Moet je kenner zijn.

De tong is een rijk orgaan:
"Salty-sweet-bitter-sour"
Links, rechts, achter, voor.
"Laissez le nez aujourdui".

Eén fles unieke wijn,
Tastbaar souvenir.
De wijn gaat er wél,
De vlekjes er níet uit.

Souvenir aan Hans & Christa
En mijn grote zusje Henny.

Jan Kuijk