Toasting & Tasting

While the images of glasses swooshing and corks popping may be enough to draw some UA students into one of the area’s wine-tasting events, there are a few tricks that can make the experience more memorable for both regular and first-time goers.

“Ask questions to the person serving the wine — that’s the number one thing,” said Jonathan Harder, manager of Carpe Vino, a downtown Tuscaloosa wine store and bar.

“More then likely they’ll know a little something about it and can guide you through it.”

Jennifer Bologna, who owns Spirits Wine Cellar with her husband, encouraged patrons to come to tastings with a notebook in-hand to write down details of the different wines they sample.

“If you’re a novice and are just trying to get into wine the best thing that you can do is to come to a wine tasting, whether it’s at Spirits or any other store or restaurant and try different wines, but taste with an application,” she said. “Taste the wine and then maybe write a note like, ‘I tried a pinot grigio and it was light and fruity, and it would go well with pasta.’”

Another tip is to write down the specific brand and year of the wine so purchasing the specific bottle in the future is easier. Harder has found that patrons often try to keep track of the wines they liked by memory instead of writing them down, often forgetting what they liked by the time they come back to purchase them. By taking good notes, patrons will be able to tell retailers exactly what they are looking for.

Another way to make the most of a wine tasting is to slowly sip the wine and take in the different aromas and flavors.

“Take your time when you’re sipping the wine, don’t just swallow it as soon as you have it in your mouth. Take some time to get to know the wine and really kind of think about it,” Harder said. “When you are at a wine tasting, it’s not like you are drinking a glass of wine at home and you are just kind of passively drinking it, it should be an intellectual thing, you should be engaging your mind in it.”

A good way to really get to know the wine before sipping it is to swish the wine in the glass in a circular motion, which aerates the wine.

“That’s the thing with wine, everyone’s like, ‘It’s the taste, it’s the taste.’ But it’s not; it’s really the aroma of the wine. You can only taste five flavors with your tongue, but you can smell over 10,000 different components so the most important part about a wine is the aroma. By swishing it around, it really makes the wine what we call ‘open up,’ which releases those aromas so you can really get a sense of what it smells like.”

After swishing and sniffing each wine, patrons should specifically taste for the different flavors and the varying textures unique to each wine. They should also pause after sipping to see if there is any residual taste that lingers in their mouths, a quality known as the finish. Some wines can have finishes exceeding a minute.

Between glasses, event-goers should sip water or eat some of the freshly sliced bread to clean the palette and prepare it for the next wine.

Since wine tastings are social in nature, Harder warns against letting other people’s opinions about certain wines influence your own decisions.

“Don’t necessarily let other people influence you, trust your own palette,” he said. “The power of suggestion at a wine tasting can sometimes be a dangerous thing because people will say, ‘Well I think I taste fig berries in this.’ And then all the sudden everyone else is like, ‘Well I do too, I do too.’ So trusting ones own palette is a very important thing as well.”

Uncorking types of wine

Wine tastings usually feature around six different wines ranging from white to red, light-bodied to full-bodied and dry to sweet, respectively.

“You want to put a sweet wine at the end because if you put it in the middle of a bunch of dry wines, the wine you taste right after the sweet wine won’t taste as good as it should,” Harder said.

Tastings may also have themes, which can be regional like Tuscany wines or Italian wines. They may often have themes for different events or holidays, like Carpe Vino’s rose-colored wine tasting event to commemorate breast cancer awareness month.

Both Spirits and Carpe Vino try to feature wines that are accessible to the general public in price, usually ranging from about $10 to around $30, sometimes exceeding $30 on certain occasions.

Harder and Bologna both said wine tastings are great opportunities for students to get familiar with wine and figure out what they do and do not like.

“This is a great way to learn about wine and to get into something that is both healthy and culture-filled without having to pony up a bunch of cash for it,” Harder said. “You are getting to try over $100 worth of wine for only five bucks, and that’s a great deal and a great way to learn about something new and something that’s really enjoyable.”

“I think wine tastings help students to learn about some wines that they’ve never had before,” Bologna said. “The more wine you taste, the better palette you’ll eventually develop. While starting now as a student and tasting wine at a shop like Spirits, you may not learn a lot about wine, but you’ll maybe learn what you do and don’t like so it will give you a base of knowledge for your adult life.”


Additional Spirits offerings:

Aside from offering weekly wine tastings and a broad selection of wines, Spirits also holds special in-store events. About six times a year, Spirits features a mini wine tasting that is a bit more expensive, but features higher-priced wines from various wineries. The store also brings in people knowledgeable about the wines or people from those wineries to tell about the wine. Spirits also teaches an introduction to wine UA Discovery Class once a week during the fall and spring semesters. While students cannot get credit for the five-week course, they have the opportunity to learn about the different types of grapes, food and wine pairings and how to order wine at a restaurant.

Additional Carpe Vino offerings:

While Carpe Vino also offers wine tastings and a broad selection of wines, it also features a wine bar. Patrons are encouraged to come in, purchase a glass of wine and then relax on one of the bar’s comfortable couches. At any given time, the bar offers eight or nine bottles available for purchase by the glass, ranging from $5 to $7 per glass. Carpe Vino recently became a wine bar hoping to become a destination place, rather than just a retail shop. Harder said the wine bar is a good alternative to the bar scene because there is plenty of room, it isn’t smoky and it’s easy to carry on a conversation.


What to know before you go:

While wine is categorized as either white or red, it can also be arranged by thickness, ranging from light to full-bodied. Jonathan Harder, manager of Carpe Vino, said light-bodied wine is akin to the feeling of skim milk in your mouth, while full-bodied wine is more like the thickness of whole milk. Light-bodied wines include pinot grigio among the whites and pinot noir of the reds. Full-bodied wines include chardonnay of the whites and California cabernet of the reds. The classical wine regions include Italy, France, Spain, Austria and Germany. The new world wine regions include countries that have not been growing grapes for as long as Europe such as The United States, South America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.


If You Go: Carpe Vino
What: Wine Tasting
When: Thursday and Friday nights
Where: 2322 Fourth Street, Tuscaloosa (Temerson Square)
What Time: 6 to 8:30 p.m.
How Much: $5, which goes toward the purchase of a bottle of wine


If You Go: Spirits Wine Cellar
What: Wine Tasting
When: Thursday nights
Where: 4581 Rice Mine Road, Northport
What Time: 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
How Much: $5, which goes toward the purchase of anything in the store
Theme: Wines from California’s Toad Hollow Vineyard both red and white wines. Will also have chocolates from Peterbrooke Chocolatier