1/24/08

Men of Manning UMC get a bit of viticulture
By Jerriod Grizzle

JERRIOD GRIZZLE/Manning Times

Nadia King (center) stands with the winners of the smelling contest, Pastor of Manning United Methodist Church, Debra Quilling (left) and her husband Carlisle Smith (right). Quilling and Smith were the only ones in the audience to guess all the scents in the correct order.

“The theme is really the things you didn’t know about wine. I’m hoping that people may be a little more conscious of the wines they purchase,” said Nadia King, enologist and viticulturist.

King, a recent graduate of the University of Gresenheim, in Germany spoke to the men of the Manning United Methodist Church during their meeting last week about wine and how it is made.

King’s presentation, a simple seven page slide show, gave the men a chance to see first hand how wine grapes are harvested, pressed, pumped into bottles, stored and aged.

“There are different aging times for different grapes. Something like a Bordeaux takes longer than others,” she said. “The longer wine ages the more mellow it becomes.”

A question and answer session was held after the presentation, as an excited King could not wait to answer question after question.

Questions such as: “Should red wine be chilled?” and “What is the perfect temperature to store wine?” were some of the questions asked.

Just in case you are wondering, red wine should not be chilled and the best temperature for wine to be stored at is 65 degrees.

Other questions included how to pair wine with foods and suggestions of her favorite wines.
King showed the men how to test wine before they drank it.

The process begins with smelling the wine.

“The first thing you have to do is train your nose,” she said.

King pulled out eight jars from a box underneath a table consisting of different flavorings including orange, grape fruit, gummy bears, green apple, banana, fruit jam, vanilla and lavender.

The jars were passed around letting each of the men smell the substances, guess what the flavoring was and write their answers on a sheet of paper.

After the jars had been passed all the way around the tables and the answers were recorded, King wrote down the correct answers on a white board. Out of 25 people only two people guessed all the correct answers in order.

At the end of the presentation the men gladly thanked King for coming and continued discussing what they had learned well after the meeting was over.

“It was great and an informational experience. I enjoyed smelling the jars and I got a lot out of it,” said Bo Bozard, one of the men at the meeting.