oh my god kill me
wine
from the way it tastes like musty grape juice to the
culture around it i have never understood wine
but i'm an adult now and
wine consumption kind of feels like it comes with the territory
except
the last time i was in a wine store i was trying to find a bottle of
wine for a harry potter themed drink
because i was attending a my
immortal reading party and i took so long to find a bottle
that security started following me around
the problem was is that i was trying to
read reviews as i was walking around and uh they were in another language
basically like like listen to this one on the nose it exudes soft subtle aromas
of freshly sliced apricot ripe raspberry and struck steel how am i
supposed to know what that tastes like the aroma's flavors and texture
coax you back much the same way a great fragrance
draws you in again and again like a quiet secret
why can't you just tell me it tastes good it feels like they're saying
nothing mouth feel body dryness like i know that
dryness doesn't mean dry because it can't but
also why would you use the word dry to ever
describe a liquid so what does any of this mean how am i
supposed to read a wine review as somebody who is perpetually curious
i i needed to know the answer so i tried to google it if i thought wine reviews
were bad man i got overwhelmed and that happens
sometimes but when it does it's a really good sign that you need to ask for help
so i am asking the only person i know who actually enjoys reading about this
stuff
hi again i'm melissa i like food a lot i mean
who doesn't oftentimes what goes along with food is wine
which i'm still trying to figure out finding a good wine can be
a lot more difficult than it should be
and it's real confusing okay
it's real confusing
i think that we just want to enjoy wine but it's kind of hard
to do when you don't know what to expect when
opening a bottle so
i tried to figure out how wine tastes
without tasting it
let's do this shall we
hi we're back it's been a while i spent about 10 weeks trying to figure out all
of this stuff from sweetness to acidity and tannins and
balance and body and flavors and styles
i think i've got
a good base or foundation for wine
let's start off simple there's expensive wine
there's cheap wine and then there's good wine
now even wine experts disagree on what
makes mine good but i learned that it's really just
personal preference and what makes a wine good to you
is how you like the balance between these three main qualities
acidity
tannins and sweetness
acidity gives wine a bright tart quality that
makes your mouth water and lips pucker it's a similar sensation to eating a
really sour candy or biting into a lemon slice
now tannins
have you ever drank something that leaves you feeling
more thirsty after you've had a sip that's what tannins do
now sweetness
sweetness and wine refers to the amount of grams of sugar per
liter you'll see a little g l in some descriptions now
all wines actually have sugar but you just taste it more in some wines
wines that have around 18 grams of sugar or less
that's the one that we would call dry dry wines are the opposite
of sweet and in these wines they'll taste more acidity and tannins because
there's less sugar to mask it
so when trying to find a wine that you
like finding your preferred balance of sweetness acidity and tannins is just
the beginning next we have the actual flavors in wine
it's where winemakers can kind of play around
and make a bottle of their own so if the balance of these three things
is the base flavors are like the spices
okay so here are some of the primary
flavors in wine first we have fruit flavors now
something to note is that wines are described by almost
every fruit other than grapes you've got tree fruits
tropical fruits
stone fruits
red fruits
and black fruits
then there's earthiness
if you've ever eaten a beet or licked a clean rock
that's what i mean it's a savory almost mushroom-like
quality in wine
and then we have spice think cinnamon or
black pepper it's a warm kick not a painful one think
of it like a hug from the inside out now there's obviously a lot more to
describing wine there's things like texture and depth and oakiness like i
learned that wine can be buttery and even
taste chocolatey
so the next thing that you need to know is that there's
nine major styles of wine
if we tried to map out the world of wines these would
be our continents and countries so we have reds whites roses
and sparkling and for some of those styles we break it down further by body
body refers to how much you feel the wine in your mouth
it's sort of like viscosity a light bodied wine will feel
thinner like drinking a glass of water while full bodied wine
will feel thicker like melted butter so that all in all our map of wine has
light bodied white full bodied white aromatic white or
sweet white rose light bodied red medium bodied red
full-bodied bread sparkling and finally others and dessert so remember what
we've learned about acidity tannins sweetness and flavors we can
actually find them in the different styles
now regardless of style wines can vary in their level of sweetness
and take on many different flavor notes but there are some pretty distinguishing
features between white and red wines white wines lean on the acidic side and
have very low tannins the flavors we'll tend to find are
brighter flavors like citrus and tropical fruits
and on the other hand we have red wines in red wines tannins are much more
pronounced and the flavors you'll find are usually red or blackberry fruits
and sometimes some spice now i'd love to go into more detail about roses and
sparklings and all those different kinds but
for the sake of time we're going to stick with red and whites now i wish
that we were done and i wish that was all that you needed to know
about wine but if you've ever been to a wine store or
read a wine list they rarely tell you how many tannins are on the bottle
sometimes they'll tell you the sugar but i don't know sometimes wine bottles can
just be really confusing and you don't really know
what the information is unless you know what to look for alright so here's how
to read a wine label they are typically labeled in one of
three ways by name by grape variety or by region and
if they're labeled by just some random name then it's made up and it basically
tells you nothing about what it is or what it
tastes like so you'll need to find and read a review
but if it's labeled by variety then it's referring to the main grape that that
wine is made of like pinot grigio or merlot
there are a ton of grape varieties way too many to list
and believe me i tried i got to 130 grapes before i you know gave up and
just realized that all the information that i
needed to research was just on winefordummies.com yep
should have been my first choice shoulda went there first so
anyways let's go back into the wine bottle let's go back to reading a label
finally there are other wines that are super specialized to a region like
bordeaux or champagne and unsurprisingly they're
labeled by the region they're from and region is pretty important to how a
wine tastes because the main ingredient is the grape so where how and who treats
that grape really affects how it tastes because of things like climate and
processing some regions can produce really particular qualities in one that
just can't be replicated outside that region
so from warm climates expect wines that are more fruit forward and sweet
that's because these regions have more consistent temperatures throughout the
year so the grapes get harvested when they're at their peak ripeness
on the other hand from cool climates expect things that are more acidic and
tart that's because even though these regions
can get as hot as the warm climates the temperatures can fluctuate more causing
the grapes to ripen more slowly notably it doesn't take living in
antarctica to make a region cool just having a big enough temperature
drop from day to night is enough here are some of the big wine regions
around the world there are also subregions that
may have microclimates that differ from their parent regions
but we're going to keep things general warm climates include the places you'd
expect southern california southern italy
argentina and more while cool climates include
places like northern france washington state and
germany so even if you don't know exactly where
that vineyard is in the world knowing if it's from a cool or warm region will get
you started in the right direction and that kind of about sums it up and am
i missing stuff here absolutely there's a lot of stuff that i
don't i still don't know about wine before
quarantine happened plan was to have a little wine tasting segment
with Sabrina so we obviously can't do that so instead
what are we gonna do i don't know we're gonna do something else instead
regardless sabrina i'm gonna get you some wine you're gonna try it
and you're gonna tell me what you think
Okay I'm gonna give this a little more thought
I hope I don't goof it
i hope i don't mess this up
I think I get it now
I understand why wine reviews sound the way that they do
and it's because wine isn't this
monolithic homogenous drink there are a million and one ways a wine can vary and
when it does it can do it by a lot wine can go from
tasting like a skittle to tasting like a rock
a clean rock and after seeing and hearing and receiving
texts from melissa at like 1am as she descended into madness trying to map
every single grape in the world wine reviews started to sound less
pretentious and more obsessive and i can understand
obsession i can understand falling in love with
the subject so deeply and thoroughly that you just
sound like a weird alien to everyone else around you
and while i might not ever be a connoisseur or a sommelier
i am glad that those people exist
because even though it might come off as
snobby and pretentious when they talk about tannins and body it's just because
they appreciate the amount of work that goes
into every bottle
it's passion it's love
and whether you drink not don't you
think the world could use a little bit more of that
let us know down below
but either way
have a lovely day
hi i'm just doing the
final edit of this video right now
please enjoy Sabrina just being Sabrina
for 10 seconds
is this even a knife
Fernandes it started recording yeah
okay wait i'm gonna fold in the knife again because i don't want to stab
myself did i do it okay
hold up hold up
yeah tell me about chardonnays what do you know about chardonnay
okay we probably can't include this in the final cut
but i didn't want to pick
chardonnay because it's like the most stereotypical
suburban mom wine
i think we should include that
any movie the moms are drinking chardonnay
what am i but a suburban mom
include this in the cut