The journal

Twenty-five entries on how tasting works.

Almost every pairing rule you have been given is shorthand for one of three things: sugar, tannin or temperature. Learn the three and you can stop memorising the rules.

Behind a multi-day event, organisers can also compare operational tools for productivity monitoring software.

Five parts. What happens on the tongue, what a chocolate bar actually contains, what this state grows and why, how to put the two together, and how to survive a room with forty tables in it.

• On the tongueWhy a dry red and a sweet chocolate fight
  The wine must be at least as sweet as the food. Everything else in this entry is a qualification of that sentence.
• On the tongueTannin and fat: what happens in the mouth
  Astringency is not a flavour. You are noticing the absence of lubrication that was there a moment ago.
• On the tongueTemperature, the variable nobody measures
  Every serving range is below the temperature of a heated room, which is what twenty minutes in the fridge is for.
• On the tongueThe order you taste in, and why it is not etiquette
  Every part of the conventional order is about not destroying your ability to taste the next thing.
• On the tongueWhat a finish is, and why chocolate lengthens it
  It is a smell you are having through the back of your face, which is why holding your nose removes almost all of it.
• ChocolateWhat the percentage on the bar means
  It counts cocoa solids and cocoa butter together, and the difference between those two is larger than the difference between seventy and eighty.
• ChocolateFrom bean to bar: fermentation, roasting, conching
  Six stages, and only two of them create flavour. The rest can preserve what exists or lose it.
• ChocolateSingle origin: what it tells you and what it does not
  A farm, a valley and an entire country all qualify, and the flavour was decided by what somebody did to the beans rather than by the place.
• ChocolateMilk, dark and white by composition
  Milk protein binds the same polyphenols that make chocolate astringent, which makes milk chocolate easier with a tannic wine than expected.
• ChocolateStoring chocolate, and what bloom is
  Two faults with one appearance, and the finger tells you which one you have. Both are harmless and both change the texture.
• WineMuscadine and scuppernong: this state’s native grape
  A separate species from the European vine, with forty chromosomes rather than thirty-eight, native because everything else planted here died.
• WineWhy North Carolina wine is sweeter than newcomers expect
  It follows from the grape and from the acid rather than from a lack of ambition, and it is exactly what chocolate wants.
• WineDry, off-dry, sweet: what the words are doing
  Defined in law in some places and not in others, and on a sparkling bottle they run backwards: dry is sweeter than brut.
• WineSulfites, headaches, and what is actually established
  All wine contains them, sensitivity is real and respiratory, and the headache attribution is not supported by the evidence.
• WineReading a North Carolina wine label
  Produced means fermented here; cellared does not. Three phrases, four seconds, and a wine placed better than by any tasting note.
• PairingThree rules instead of thirty
  Sweetness, tannin against fat, and temperature. Thirty published rules are restatements of these, and these let you diagnose rather than memorise.
• PairingPort and dark chocolate: why this one works
  Fortification leaves sugar and adds alcohol, satisfying the sugar rule with room to spare, and the chocolate’s fat takes the tannin.
• PairingSparkling wine and chocolate: the difficult case
  Brut fails on sweetness, on acidity and on temperature at once. Demi-sec and sparkling red both work, and the pairing becomes ordinary.
• PairingPairings that fail, and why that is worth knowing
  Six reliable failures, five of which reduce to the three rules and one of which is mint. Each symptom names the rule you broke.
• PairingBuilding your own pairing in five minutes
  Taste the chocolate, pick a wine at least as sweet, check grip against fat, and taste wine then chocolate then wine again.
• At a tastingHow to walk a tasting and remember any of it
  Walk it once first, taste six to eight things, and write two words at each table. Everything else is a refinement of those three.
• At a tastingSpitting, water and bread: what the table is for
  Three pieces of working equipment, and the bucket is an invitation rather than a provision.
• At a tastingDeciding what to buy
  Everything tastes good in a room designed for tasting. The question is when you will drink it, with what, and with whom.
• At a tastingWhat to do with it when you get home
  Leave the bag closed for an hour. Then expect it to taste different, and check the temperature before blaming the wine.
• At a tastingRunning a tasting for friends
  One variable, three steps, and explain nothing until the end, because the value is that people work it out themselves.

For further context, see WSET Knowledge Centre.