“Goodness, no. Maybe someday, though. Is everyone ready to try the Cab Franc?”
Syrah man smirks. “It’ll have to be exceptional to impress me.”
“It is.” I smile. “And I should know. After all, I’m almost a doctor of wine.”
He smiles, then, and I know I’ve won him over. He’ll like the wine. I hand him a glass and then distribute the Cab Franc to the others.
“Swirl it around in the glass,” I say again. “This time, notice the color as well as the aroma. Red wines vary a lot in color. What do you notice about this one?”
“What should we be looking for?” a quiet-until-now taster asks.
“Good question. Let’s start with intensity.”
“If by intensity you mean darkness,” Syrah man says, “this is lighter than a Syrah.”
“Yes, it definitely is.” I pick up a glass and swirl the wine in it. “Notice the color doesn’t cling too much to the glass. The color is less intense than a darker wine, such as a Syrah or Zinfandel.”
“You mean white Zinfandel?” Blondie says.
God, please help me. “No. Zinfandel is a black grape. I’m talking about the red wine made from that grape.”
“What’s white Zinfandel then?” she asks.
Dale’s jaw tenses up again. If I had x-ray vision, I’m sure I’d see his teeth clenching.
“White Zinfandel is a blush wine made from the Zinfandel grape. It’s made in a sweeter style than red Zinfandel.”
“I love white Zin,” she says. “It’s almost as good as this apple wine.”
Oh, God. Dale’s whole body is rigid now. He may very well explode on the spot.
“Is a blush wine anything like a rosé?” another taster asks.
I look toward Dale. He nods his head slightly. I take that as my cue to explain a little bit about pink wine.
“All right. Let me go off the subject for a few minutes so I can answer this question. We’ll get back to the Franc in a minute. Does anybody know why some wines are white and others are red?”
Syrah man jumps in. “Of course. White wine is made from white grapes, and red wine is made from red grapes, or black grapes as they’re sometimes called.”
“You’re generally correct,” I say. “But you can make white wine from red grapes.”
“How would you do that?” he asks.
“You simply remove the skins before making the wine. The flesh of all grapes is white. This is common in sparkling wine. You often see a sparkling wine labeled blanc de noirs. That’s French for white of black. In other words, a white wine made from black grapes.”
“Interesting. So that’s what those French words mean. I’ve seen them.”
“Then you must be a fan of sparkling wine.”
“Oh, yeah. Love the stuff.”
“Then of course,” I continued, “we have pink wine, which is called rosé. This is where blush wines come in. The term blush originated a couple decades ago and was used to describe very light-pink wines that only had”—air quotes—“a blush of color. Later the term came to mean rosé wines that were sweeter in nature, like white zinfandel. Rosés are normally dry. Anyway, rosé wines are made with dark grapes that are crushed, and then the skins are only allowed to stay in contact with the juice for a little while. They can be refreshing and delicious, and because the skins are only in contact for a short time, they usually lack tannin.”
“What’s tannin?” someone asks.
I smile. “I’m glad you asked that, because it segues nicely back to the Cab Franc. We’ll touch on tannin when we taste the wine. Let’s get back to our discussion of color. After intensity, the next thing to look for is opacity. How opaque is this wine? Can you see through it at all?”
Glasses swirl.
“It doesn’t seem to be completely opaque,” one woman says.
“Good,” I reply. “Cabernet Franc is traditionally lighter than a Cabernet Sauvignon or a Syrah. Take a look at the bottom of your glass. See anything there?”
Murmurs of “no” flood the room.
“That’s because this one is filtered. In unfiltered wines, you’ll see some sediment at the bottom. This is common in Italian wines and some French wines. Most wines made here in the US are filtered. Now, take a look at the actual color of the wine.”
“It’s red!” Someone laughs.
I join in the laughter. “There’s one in every crowd, folks. Look closer, though. It’s actually not red. It’s more of a maroon or burgundy. When you think of red, you think of a candy apple or a fire engine, right?”
More laughter along with agreement.
“Look at the color around the inside