Wine Tasting Event after Classes at Instituto Hemingway

Every day at Instituto Hemingway, we organise cultural activities for the Spanish students. They are available free of charge, and are a good way of learning about Spanish culture, improving your Spanish and getting to know Bilbao and its surroundings.

Tuesday, 10th March 2009, we had a wine-tasting session, which was organised by one of our Spanish teachers.

Wine is more than just an appealing drink. There are many things to learn about it, for example, where does the wine come from? How is it made? How should we taste it? How should it be served?

During the session, we discovered two different red wines:

BRONTE (a Castilian wine)
SOLAGUËN RF CRIANZA 2006 (a wine from La Rioja)

We also learnt about how wine develops its flavour:
October is the month when the grapes are harvested and when the unfermented juice, known as , is extracted. Red wine undergoes two fermentation processes, one which is undertaken immediately and one later, and the alcoholic and malolactic fermentation which transform the juice into wine.

After this short lesson, we tasted the wine in three stages:

Studying its colour and texture
Studying the smell of the wine and analysing the different flavours (flowers, fruit)
Studying the taste of the wine (its acidity, its strength, its sweetness, its texture)

It was an interesting experience, and although the majority of the students were more taken with the
Solaguën, we also learnt how to taste a seasonal variety with the Bronte.

Tin Champa
Work placement student from Jehan de Chelles Secondary School.