Drink this Now Blog #1

For our first Drink This Now lesson experience, my group chose to follow lesson 1. This lesson had us choose a fairly big and bold red wine to see how it changes between opening and sitting for a couple of hours. We also tried the wine with cheese and meat (separately) to see how food can affect the wine, and vice versa.

Arbos Sangiovese
(2019)

Step 1: Drink this now! This step was fairly straightforward: open the wine and drink it, then jot down some notes. One of my tasting groupmates chose the wine and pairings for this lesson, and he chose well! He got an Arbos Sangiovese (2019) from Tuscany, Italy. At about $14/bottle, it turned out to be a solid choice for the lesson (as I will explain over the next few steps). Upon pouring a glass, I did a standard "sniff and swirl" and got notes of raspberry or cherry with oak, suggesting the wine was aged in a barrel. On initial tasting, I noted high tannins and a very bold and oaky flavor.

Step 2: Let it sit, then try it again. More specifically, let it sit for two hours and try it again. We actually did this step last since our group could only schedule about two hours to try this lesson, so my observations may be slightly skewed, but I found that the wine was sweeter with a mild burst of new flavors due to some of the tannins falling away. I could not put a label on any of the flavors, but I really enjoyed the wine after letting it sit.

Sangiovese with Parmesan
and salami

Step 3: Try it with a hard Italian cheese. My groupmate chose to pair the wine with Parmesan, so we sliced up a wedge of it and each took turns trying it with the Sangiovese. I found that the high fat in the cheese offset the acids in the wine, bringing out more of the fruitiness despite not allowing the wine to sit for long.

Step 4: Try it with meat. My groupmate got a pack of various salamis to try with the wine, and I'm not sure which salami I picked up, but I really liked how the slight spice brought out some of the wine's sweetness.

Step 5: Let it sit for several more hours, then try it again. Unfortunately, we did not have time to see this step through to completion. As stated earlier, we only had about two hours to work through the lesson, so we could only do the first four steps.

This lesson certainly highlighted how pairing food and wine can change the feel and taste of both, especially for a bolder red wine. It also demonstrated why bolder red wines should be allowed to sit for a few hours.

Group picture! (Taken a few days later)