Raiding King Louis XV's Wine Cellar

Last Friday, two of my room mates, me and a friend went wine tasting at Ô Chateau. A historic cellar that is walking distance to the Louvre and used to hold Louis XV's private collection for the court.

We did the Tour de la France tasting that included six wines: one champagne, two whites and three reds. All of them from different regions of France and each exquisite.

We also had a young sommiler, someone who knows their stuff about wine, who was in charge of leading us through the world of French wine. He was humorous, honest and knowledgeable.

He started off telling us the three steps of wine tasting.

step one:
- See.
Hold the glass by the stem; it is the best way to measure the clarity of wine . To measure the clarity of the wine hold it up towards the light-- look at it -- is it lighter or darker? If it has a lighter clarity than it is going to have more acidity than sugar... so more dry than sweet. If it has a darker clarity than it is going to be very sweet. Sweeter wine has a golden color to it...plus 250 grams of sugar. Dry wine will always be in a green or brown bottle and sweet wine will always be in a clear bottle.

He said that in France those are the only kinds of colors for bottles of wine you can find, but around the world that is changing...he once found a blue bottle of wine in Oregon.

Now to check the vintage of the wine, you must examine the wine's meniscus. To do that you continue to hold the glass side ways but hold a white piece of paper behind it; this will make it easier to see the two layers of color. The top layer is the meniscus. If the meniscus is paler than it is an older vintage and if the meniscus is darker it is a younger vintage.

Moving on to step two:
- Smell.
First you need to oxidize the wine by swirling it. Then you hold your nose up to the rim of the glass and inhale. Smell the different aromas.

There are five categories of flavors:
- Spice
- Flowers
- Fruity
- Woody/ Oak-y notes
- Animal flavors

Then raise your glass to your neighbor and dit santé (cheers) while looking them in the eye.


Step three:
- Taste.
Oxidize the flavors by taking a little bit of the wine into your mouth and swirling it around on the tip of your tongue. Best way to do that is to shape your mouth as an "o" and breath in while slightly moving your tongue. This will enhance the flavors and you will really sense the alcohol in the back of your throat.

He told us some neat wino facts, such as how to measure the amount of alcohol or sugar in the wine. If there is more sugar than alcohol, you have more legs (streaks that run down the side of your glass) but if the legs run down fast there is more alcohol than sugar.

He also explained how the weather can affect the vintage of wine; like in June or July when the grapes are warmer and dryer the vintage is better. Or in southern France the wine is darker in color because the weather is dryer and warmer year round thus giving it a higher potential to age.

And he touched on a few interesting wine cultural differences between France and other countries. Such as in their marketing for the bottles; it is illegal to name the grapes used in the wine over the name of the region. While in the "New World" (California and Australia) the focus is on the grapes from all over the country or state not on the region the wine is made in.

Another one was the difference between how we pair wine with food; we think of wine more as taste or a dessert. Where they pair the wine with food to enhance their diets between salt, fat and sugar. For example, they'll balance a high in fat meal with an acidic wine, because the acid in the wine will eat some of the fat from the food.

It was a blast and a perfect way to spend part of an afternoon in Paris. We learned about French wine, culture and all while in a historic location.