“Would you like to test out our ‘wine and chocolate’ tasting evening?” What a ridiculous question to ask a greedy freeloader like myself. I bravely put on some stretchy trousers, undid some buttons and prepared myself for an evening of indulgence. It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it.
This connoisseur course is to educate the educated in choosing the correct wine to accompany their dessert. I’m not really that fussy on what booze accompanies my pudding, but wanting to become more of a young lady, I was eager to learn. We were given 8 different tipples, ranging from Pinot Noir to port. We had to taste each and note its appearance, nose and palate.
I was then dismayed to realise that I didn’t seem to have a sense of taste. Being a heavy smoker and suffering from the office lurgi is a lethal combination. No one around me seemed to be having the same problem, and the yells of ‘mmm I’m sensing mangos, peppers and grass’ made me feel even more inadequate. Our wise, elegant and rather scary teacher then turned for my opinion. I’m ashamed to say that my answer went like this, “It is nice, and it tastes of wine”.
My faux pas was corrected by a more detailed instruction on how to taste the wine properly. I needed to let it breathe and swish it around a bit like mouthwash. It wasn’t long before I was echoing the shouts of ‘lavender’, ‘raspberry’ and ‘butter’. Once I had sampled the Shiraz, Sauvignon and the rest of the fine wine, it was onto the choccies, and we had the gruesome task of scoffing six different types in order to figure which went best with which drink.
All safely sampled, I wrote down which went with which and settled back feeling full and pleased with myself. Turned out, according to the experts, I got them all wrong. My main problem was that I thought all the desserts went with all the wines, my conclusion is thus: I like alcohol and chocolate far too much. Tell me something I don’t know! Anyway, I’ve heard whispers about a cheese tasting course tomorrow tonight – the stretchy trousers will be coming out of the wardrobe again.
By Deborah James
For Delia's food and wine workshops, click here
For a chocolate-making workshop, click here
your article does nothing to help sell the choc or wine tasting evening
Posted by: | 01/04/2007 at 12:38 PM
I agree with the recent comment - how do I get on such an evening? you give no details of who hosts it. The two links provided don't seem to be relevant.
Posted by: baz | 12/04/2007 at 07:32 PM