• Tasting
• Sauvignon Blanc
• Chardonnay
• Pinot Noir
• Zinfandel
• Merlot
• Syrah
• Dolcetto
• Cab. Sauvignon

Introduction

Paul Moser’s fascination with wine dates back to three years spent in France as a student in the early seventies.  He has been making wine in California’s Napa Valley since 1982.  His work has appeared under several different labels including Ehlers Grove, Stratford, and Cartlidge & Browne, all of which are the results of his longtime partnership with Tony Cartlidge.

Several years ago Paul was tasting and discussing a red wine with colleague and fellow winemaker Don Spirlock.  As they swirled, sniffed and spat, Don paused, looking up as he searched for the right words.  “Do you remember that old armchair in your flat in San Francisco and the smell when you first sat down in it?  This wine has a touch of that.”  Paul smiled, nodded and the term “old armchair” entered the descriptor dictionary.

This story emphasizes one of the key things to remember about tasting wine – develop your own personal language.  The average wine drinker may never develop the subtleties of sensory categorization and memory that the experts possess, but all you really need is curiosity about wine and time taken to explore it.  This small book is just a place to begin…

 

Cartlidge & Browne Wines: Tasting Wine

Texture:

 The descriptors below can apply to any wine, white or red, since they refer only to how the wine feels on the palate, not how it tastes.  They are extremely relative, so in using them you will need to establish your own benchmarks, i.e., developing your “taste memory” (or should we say “texture memory”?) to remember wines whose textures most closely correspond to a given descriptor.  You can spend your whole life doing this, by the way.  Then you can spend another lifetime or two trying to figure out exactly what other people mean when they use the same words.  Time’s a-wasting!

Character:

This is very definitely an unscientific category, one which overlaps somewhat with texture, but goes far beyond, into the “personality” of the wine.  It invites metaphor and imagination, and is virtually endless.  We’ll get you started.

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