TASTING COURSE IV - BODEGAS SANTALBA

 

We continue with our tasting course and we will try to be a professional sommelier.

In this point we will go step by step, sense by sense analyzing the wine

Depends on the experience each one can choose the best order and follow its own routines:

Sight eye, Smell, Taste, Touch and Hearing Senses

Sight eye

It is the first sense, and we look 3 important characteristics: Colour, Intensity and cleanliness.

The wine should be looked in the glass, first settle and through the light trying to appreciate the cleanliness, colour and brightness…

Later round the glass and look the wine, a fluid wine is like water and a dense one like syrup.

After shake it, we will see “tears” on the glass’s wall and this will be more or less alcoholic % and glycerine content, very relevant in this part of the tasting.

The Colour should be analyzed tilting the glass 45º and above a white background to see better the colours. The colour is very close to the age of the wine. If lighter and brown it is older than blues and violet.

Have a look to the different colours depends on the age:

The cleanliness depends on the transparency of a wine and the decants, clarified and filtered.

We will continue soon with another sense and different points to be a professional sommelier and to do a taste with friends!

Cheers!

TASTING COURSE - BODEGAS SANTALBA

The more representative picture about our winery is The Taster so we will post a guide about the Wine Tasting Process and we will try to teach how to do a professional tasting with family, friends …

First, we must learn to perceive the difference between taste or drink..

Everybody has ability to taste, however, nobody is born knowing and it is an activity that will be improved when you train, keep the senses and learn the techniques.

The

taster has to be relaxed, calm and focused. The best time to taste is in the morning, one or two hours before lunch. It is better to taste a little hungry and alone, and try to eat  neutral food like bread, crackers, breadsticks etc., Some people with a little bit of water may be enough.

Depends on the knowledge of the taster, tasting should not be in longer than an hour and to taste no more that 6 or 8 wine samples.

The tasting room should be a quiet place with a temperature of 20 ° and a relative humidity between 60 and 70% where the taster can be concentrated without noise if possible. Lighting should be ok too (halogen lamps or candles). It should not be used fluorescent lamps. It should have a white background where you can see different wine shades and brightness.In the beginning, we have to take all the material that we will need, wines, drinks, glasses…

The temperature of the wine must have her around:
White and Rose: 8/10 degrees
White and rose with aging: 10/12 degrees
Young red wines: 14/16 degrees
Aged wines, 16/18 degrees.

The glass is the most important instrument for the taster. Glass should be fine, colorless, transparent and smooth. The glass must be caught by the bottom to avoid getting fingerprints on the glass clouding vision and to warm the wine.

To start is enough, we will teach you more about the taste and the process that you should follow to taste as a professional.

Cheers!!

THE SOIL: ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTORS TO GET HIGH QUALITY WINES

When we talk about "terroir" we are referring to a group of terms involved in the winegrowing. One of them is the weather. Obviously rainfall conditions, daily hours of sunshine or average temperature in a particular area, are characteristics that set the future qualities of the grapes harvested. Another factor is, of course, the vines. If an area has lighting or thermal conditions, some varieties of vines are suitables than others to offer the best  quality wines. We can talk about other factors, on the other hand very important, as the human activity, called viticulture, but it´s not part of the "terroir". Viticulture is the group of actions that human do in the vineyard to improve the final results we´ll obtain naturally. Into the concept of "terroir", we briefly discuss one of the most forgotten, but on the other hand, one of the most important factor that set the most important parameters of the wine. This is the soil. Soil characteristics, give the wine the  aging potential. In our area of ​​winemaking (Gimileo - Rioja Alta), we have one of the most popular and sought soils worldwide to get high quality wines: the calcareous clay soil.

Soil sequence in Viña Hermosa vineyard at Bodegas SANTALBA

The profile of this soil type is very simple and consists of an initial layer of gravel with abundant clay matrix. No more than one or two meters deep, appear the weathered rock. Weathering is the effect of rock disintegration by the effect of erosion phenomena, in this case is water and which also generates a draining effect, very interesting to avoid waterlogging into the vineyard. Under this rock appears the bedrock, or intact rock. This layer, with hundreds of meters in depth, is the real key for this soil quality, because the roots of the vines do not stop here, they look for cracks in the rock and they advance drilling through the rock. As result we have slow-growing vines, with hard conditions that offer high quality grapes. We have always said that this soil type is very simple, but more complicated is to find it in union with adequate rainfall conditions, sufficient sunshine and an appropriate thermal gradient. But this is very interesting and we´ll talk about in following chapters.

ART IN THE AGEING ROOM

Today we will show you the Aging Room.

The barrels are French and American oak. This room is underground so that keeps the best temperature for the wine.

They are piled up in the traditional way with wood wedges and as a curiosity, you can see a small hole in the front part of the barrel.

That is to decant (change the wine from one barrel to another) the wine in the traditional way as well. Each 6 months we do this process in Bodegas Santalba and in another post we will explain you these kinds of peculiar methods that we practice in our winery. That is the difference in Bodegas Santalba, the quality is very important for us, so we care all the details that make the wine better.

Also you can show this glass in the aging room,

It has a special meaning, the development that the wine is having during its life.

Firstly you can see a grape, that is the beginning … The Tempranillo grape, the most typical grape variety in our region, D.O.Ca. Rioja.

From that grape we obtain the young wines with its typical colour, violet, purple…

After that, when the time goes by, the wines in the ageing process have a different colour, red and ruby.

Finally, the wines with a long ageing process have a russet colour and you can show it in the outer part.



ABOUT RESVERATROL

Talking about resveratrol, there are  magazines, television programs and  Internet articles that in our opinion, lead to confusion in some cases. For example, some scientist in Harvard University claim that resveratrol is the Holy Grail against aging. Other institutions such as Johns Hopkins University, the Salk Institute and the University of California, say that resveratrol is almost an elixir for youth. Is it to much?. In our humble and relying exclusively on what our parents have always said, before our grandfathers and our great-grandparents even before, we believe that natural food is always good. If this is red wine, is a source of health.And if wine is taken in moderation, is a source of life.

         

But let's go with something more of science: David Sinclair, professor in Harvard University and world-renowned specialist in aging battle, has worked for some years searching for substances that someday effectively delay the human aging. His studies have proved that resveratrol activates certain genetic pathways or "regulatory genes" that exist in all forms of life, protecting the organisms in a way that makes them more healthy and probably will prolong their life.

The key, in our opinion and also given by Sinclair when he says "It´s not important living longer. The really important is feeling as 60 years old when you are 90". Can you imagine it?. Great!

Resveratrol is a natural substance in the  polyphenols group, which is generated in vegetables. It is found in peanuts, blueberries and cranberries, as well as spruce, eucalyptus and other plants (not all edible), but mostly found in the skin of red grapes. Thus, red wine is rich in resveratrol, but white wine also has a certain amount. Many articles have said that resveratrol in the wine protect against heart disease, talking about the famous "French paradox". That paradox tells about French, who have lots of cheese, foie gras and other foods high in fats in their diet, but still they have lower cholesterol levels and suffer fewer heart attacks than average. Presumably  this is because in their diet they also enjoy more red quality wine than the rest of the world.

Some scientists have demonstrated that resveratrol has neuroprotective, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant  properties, helps to protect against cardiovascular diseases and even some scientists have theorized about the possible use of resveratrol to treat some cancers.

Should we give our grandchildren resveratrol capsule every morning in order to get 100 years old without seeing a doctor? Should we buy a bottle of pills and take resveratrol just now?

For the first question, nobody knows the answer. But about the latter, the response according to many scientists and  our logic thoughts is clear that NO. For the moment, we prefer to enjoy a glass of high quality red wine (SANTALBA wine if it´s possible), because we do not know if we will live longer, but sure we´ll live better. Of course, always in moderation.

More information in http://www.santalba.com