Aside from any other consideration, how many bottles of wine can a typical wine drinker be expected to enjoy in a single session or around a single meal? Is there a point at which the subtleties and differences become toop hard to discern? Can this be affected by the type of wine being served? I can’t tell you how often I’m asked questions like this, so here’s an attempt to answer them.
The truth is that twenty different people could well supply twenty different answers. The French, for instance, have traditionally shunned the notion of large tastings, believing that tasting perhaps twenty or so wines in a day is more than enough for the human palate. Australian wine show judges will regularly taste more than two hundred wines in a day. From a professional perspective – in which the wines are all expectorated (ie spat out) – the answer lies somewhere between.
These days I’m reluctant to taste more than eighty wines in a day. I used to begin with lighter whites, move through heavier whites, before lighter and then fuller-bodied reds, but in South Africa some time back I learned how much better it is to mix up the order of small groups (ie 10-12) wines in almost a random way. It keeps your mind alive and your palate better in tune.
How about people enjoying wines around a meal? Being perfectly honest, there are not that many of the general public who could move into a professional tasting or winemaking position without a lot of training. For that reason, the average person without a lot of wine training should perhaps stick to about twelve to fifteen wines maximum in a tasting environment, and even less around a dinner table – say 4-6 – when the wines are being consumed.
As you drink wine, it’s inevitable that alcohol reduces your ability to taste accurately. It might also make you react more enthusiastically and less objectively about a wine that you might enjoy less in a totally sober condition. Furthermore, as your nervous system becomes conditioned to the presence in your mouth of a broad band of flavours, polyphenols (tannins) and acids, it loses its ability to evaluate them and distinguish between them, in a process known as ‘palate fatigue’. Professional tasters are taught to delay the onset of this, and even to work through it when it occurs. Professionals are actually aware that the first ten or so wines in a tasting are evaluated with a fresher palate than those that are tasted later, and so often re-taste these wines so all the wines in the tasting are evaluated on the same level playing field.
I’m sure that most people would relate to the idea that it’s harder to taste larger numbers of thicker, riper, more tannic and alcoholic wines than those of more delicacy and finesse.
It’s a great fun to have a number of different bottles opened at once. It gives you a chance to compare and contrast wines from different varieties, regions and vintages, or to explore subtle differences between wines that share some of these features in common. It’s also rather intriguing to blend wines together around the table, putting you in a sort of de-facto winemaker role. You’ve bought the wine; so feel free to do with it as you please. You’ll be amazed at how easy it is to compensate for an inadequacy in one wine by adding a portion of another that can compensate for it. Not just fun, it’s a great way to learn.
