VINIDA – Understanding the mouthfeel of wine: body, tannins, texture

In something of a follow-up to January’s “Understanding structure” we’ll focus on an often overlooked aspect of wine: mouthfeel. This covers a wide range of observable phenomena, and ones that are often glossed over simply because they are some of the hardest to describe. At least we can compare aromas and flavours to fruits and other foods. But when was the last time you were sipping on a glass of oil (oiliness), chewed on some sand (sandy tannins) or licked some velvet (velvety tannins).

Of all parts of systematic wine tasting, mouthfeel is the ultimate exercise in using metaphor to communicate sensory experience. Interestingly, mouthfeel can also be relatively easy to remember and recall. It can also be an exceptionally reliable indicator of certain grape varieties (Cabernet Franc and Picpoul being obvious examples) when tasting blind. Mouthfeel is also a crucial component in modern approaches to food-wine pairing.

We will taste a range of representative wines from around the world, examining some clear differences as well as some more nuanced differences in mouthfeel. In the course of this tasting we will jointly develop a vocabulary to describe mouthfeel, both to better communicate it to others as well as to be better able to compare wines in one’s mind’s eye.

This tasting will be presented in English by Dr Janice Wang DipWSET and Domen Prešern DipWSET. The former, an associate professor of sensory and consumer science, has invested a significant amount of research hours into how people can use metaphors to describe sensory experiences.

This tasting is open for everyone, but as we sometimes will be very detailed, it does give a better experience, if you have some basic knowledge of wines. A good help is to study this “cheat-sheet” kortlink.dk/2pdep and kortlink.dk/2pdfs, to get a basic understanding of wines, their appearance, aromas, flavours and structure.

It is possible to order a meal to be served at 18:10 at IDA - offers: https://app.screencast.com/gNrWkN5iPoKE3 

The presentation will be in English

This event is organised by Poul Tang poul.tang@m.ida.dk – 51 71 52 40.