Students Experience Authentic Wine Tasting
Oaky or stony? Aged or young? Tannic or steel?
Umbra students learned the meaning of these terms during the summer’s first wine tasting Thursday evening at Énonè, a popular Perugian enoteca.
After describing the process of making wine, sommelier Silvia Bartolini guided students in visual, olfactory, and taste analyses of three Italian wines.
“Let’s see: it looks like wine, smells like wine, and tastes like wine,” one student laughed before sampling her first glass. “I’m not exactly a wine expert.”
By the end of the wine tasting, she could swirl, sniff, and sip like the best of them.
After each wine’s initial critique, Bartolini encouraged students to sample an array of appetizers and determine which best complement the wine. Students paired pâté on toast with a firm red wine, a crisp white wine with frittata, and sweet wine with a variety of cheeses.
Bartolini then showed students the appropriate glass for the appropriate drink, from wine to water to whiskey. At the end of the evening, the group walked back up the winding steps of San’Ercolano, ready to impress all future dinner party guests.