Drink This Now Lesson #5

I recently completed Drink This Now! Lesson #5, Dry vs. Sweet: A Sugar Showdown. My roommate and I decided to this lesson together, so we went to the store to look for the wines that we needed. We landed on two wines from Chateua Ste Michelle from Columbia Valley in Washington. We got one dry Riesling and one sweet Riesling that were representative of the wines that were listed in the book. We figured it would be interesting to have two wines from the same vineyard and same vintage year, especially since the main focus of the activity was focusing on the residual sugar.

The wine that we used: Chateua Ste Michelle Harvest Select Sweet Reisling and Chateau Ste Michelle Dry Reisling. They were $9.99 each.

The first thing we did was to get 4 wine glasses for each of us and label them so we knew which was which. We poured the room temperature sample of the dry and the sweet, which then sat on the table while we chilled the wines in the fridge for an hour. In the meantime, I set up my chart for the tasting and we sliced some bread to use as a palette cleanser.

 My dog Maya was a HUGE help in this whole process, including checking out the labels for the glasses and helping my roommate slice bread for us to eat between samples.

Once the wines were sufficiently chilled, we took them out of the fridge and poured a sample into the labelled glasses. It was finally time to start tasting! We started with the chilled, dry Riesling then moved onto the sweet dry Riesling. After cleansing our palettes with bread, we compared the warm wine to their appropriate chilled counterpart.

        Our final table set up before tasting     Cheers to drinking and working with friends!

Below is the chart I filled out with all my impressions while smelling and tasting.

Some overall observations:

• Chilling the wines had a significant impact on the aroma of the wine. Smelling the warm wines compared to the chilled wines, the room temperature ones were much more aromatic and easier to smell. I think the most aromatic wine was the dry Riesling, but the main smell I got was petroleum jelly.
• The biggest overall smells were honeysuckle, tropical fruit, and petroleum. It was easier to smell the dry wines, but the chilled wines smelled more pleasant. The biggest overall tastes were tartness, citrus, tropical fruit, and stonefruit. The chilled wines were less expressive of the bad smells and tastes and more expressive of the fruitiness.
• There wasn’t a difference in the body between the warm and chilled wines, but there was a noticeable difference between the dry and the sweet. The dry Riesling was very light and easy to drink. The sweet Riesling was also easy to drink, but it had a much heavier mouth feel because of the residual sugar.
• For the sweet wines, I was surprised at how much of a difference chilling the wine had on my perception of the sweetness. When tasting the chilled one, the very first thing you tasted was the sugar. For the warm one, the sweetness wasn’t as forward and it wasn’t as aggressive. The warm one also tasted less acidic than the chilled wine.
• I found it easier to pick out the specific things I was smelling and tasting in the dry Riesling as compared to the sweet one. I typically don’t drink sweet wines, so for me, the sweetness overpowered everything else and made it hard to pick up other specific flavors.
• Overall, my favorite wine was the chilled dry Riesling. It was easy to drink, floral and fruity, and in my opinion, the most expressive of the wines we tasted. However, my least favorite was the warm dry Riesling. I thought this one was the most expressive of the bad flavors and smelled and tasted more alcoholic and more plasticky.

          All 4 of the wines that I sampled            Using the wine wheel to detect smells

After I recorded all observations, I did the one thing the instructions said not to do: comparing the warm ones to each other. I actually lined all four of the wines up and without cleansing my palette in between drank one right after the other. I now understand why the book said not to do this. It was not good at all I had was left with a gross, plastic taste in my mouth. It reminded me of the Strawberry Shortcake doll, but her lemon scented friend. NOT GOOD.

Overall, I really enjoyed this activity. I had never tried sweet and dry wines side-by-side like this, so it helped me gain a better understanding of how residual sugar in a wine can make a difference on the flavors. It also showed me why some wines are better chilled and how it effects more things other than just the sweetness of a wine. It also gave me a better appreciation of why it’s probably a good idea to follow the serving instructions that’s provided by the label on the bottle. Having done this activity, I have a better understanding of how to compare two styles of wine and I think it will help me be able to pick out specific things and compare wines going forward.