Drink This Now Lesson 4 Activity

 

I took a trip down to the wine lab on Saturday the 18th after I heard that there was a flight for this activity from the Drink This Now text. My girlfriend and I both got the flight that was meant to help us compare oaked and unoaked chardonnays. We sat down at our table and ordered the flight consisting of the Alondra Chardonnay 18' from Mendocino, California, the Thelema Chardonnay 19' from Stellenbosch, South Africa, and the Harken Chardonnay 20' from California. We also ordered a charcuterie board but waited to eat any of it since the instructions for this activity wanted us to keep our palates as clear as possible. We found some steps posted in the class Discord server that was more tailored for the experience of tasting the flight in the Wine Lab so we followed those steps. 

We started by sampl
ing the wines from the flight chilled and let them warm up as we were doing our tasting, effectively reversing the order of the activity, but I think the effect is a very similar experience. We sampled the wines in the order I listed above. My tasting notes for each step will be broken down below. 

1. First try each glass of chilled wine. Describe the color, smell, flavors, etc. 

    Before I even sampled the wines, I started by looking at the colors of each wine. I noticed that the second wine in our lineup (the Thelema) seemed to be the lightest of the three and the third wine (the Harken) seemed to be the darkest. After taking stock of the colors of each wine I began sampling them in the order above. 

    Starting with the Alondra, on the nose, I was met with the instant smell of crisp green apples that morphed into notes of very ripe tropical fruits then finishing with some very slight savory elements I couldn't pick out by name. Upon tasting the wine chilled, I was surprised at how much more savory and slightly buttery the taste was when compared to the nose. There was a hint of acid and tannin towards the back of the palate and the wine finished with a somewhat thin mouthfeel. 

    After the Alondra, I moved on to the Thelema. On the nose, this wine was much more aggressive with the savory elements while still retaining the crisp apple up front. I was able to pick out hints of what I thought were sage and some unripe blackberries. Upon tasting, I was again met with a savory, almost salty taste with hints of acid. I thought I could pick out hints of vanilla on the back of the palate and the wine had a much thicker mouthfeel than the first. 

    The third wine I sampled was the Harken. On the nose, I again got crisp apples and ripe tropical fruits like the first wine, but there was another element I remember thinking smelled like thyme. I was able to pick out more savory elements in this wine than in the first and there were some hints of vanilla on the nose. When I tasted this wine, I was hit with a wave of buttery flavor and more of the savory thyme notes I had picked out on the nose. 

2. Let each wine sit for a few minutes and warm up. Sample them again warm. 

    Upon sampling the Alondra warm, the nose full of fresh tropical fruits and apples I smelled earlier had subsided slightly to reveal some of the more savory notes of the wine. When I tasted this wine warm, the fruit fell away to the savory elements and the mouthfeel felt slightly thinner than the first time I sampled it. I can't say that I found anything characteristic of oak flavors for sure. 

    When I sampled the Thelema warm, the nose seemed to open up more to some hints of lime or lime zest while also becoming slightly breadier with some more yeast notes. When I tasted this wine warm, there was a definite hint of vanilla that I was able to recognize, along with some slightly malty characteristics. By this time I was sure that this was one of the oaked wines.

    When sampling the Harken warm, my suspicions that this was another of the oaked wines seemed to be confirmed. The nose gave way to some more citrus notes, but more along the lines of oranges or grapefruits than lemons or limes. The taste morphed to be even more savory than before with some more tannins and acid more noticeably present. I was sure at this point that this wine was also oaked.

The final step in this exercise was to guess what wines were oaked and what type of oak they were aged in. I felt that the Alondra was unoaked, the Thelema was aged in American oak from the more in-your-face flavors, and the Harken was aged in the french oak because of the more subtle influence on the wine. This is, however coming from my limited experience with oaked wines.