SIXTH FORM

The first meeting of the year of the Sixth Form Wine Tasting Society featured a tasting of Champagnes and sparkling wines.

Each girl was armed with a pencil, a tasting notes sheet , a wine glass, water glass, a sprig of basil and a grape. The challenge was to tell the difference between a champagne made with Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay and a Cava made with grapes unpronounceable to the linguistically challenged amongst us. Amy Baker and Gigi Hensher produced a delicious supper for everyone and chose Moorish snacks which went particularly well with sparkling wines.

The basil leaf and the grape? No, not a useful tool in the fight against vampires but a way of realising how little of the basil you can taste when your nose is pinched and how dry and bitter the skin of a grape is, yet it provides the backbone to wines in the form of tannins.

We went on to choose our favourites and distinguish between the colour, fruitiness and dryness of the wines. Although we can't claim to compete with the more purple passage talents of some wine critics, by the end of the evening a wide and imaginative vocabulary was being deployed! The staff on balance unsurprisingly favoured the Bollinger and all were interested to discover how the grape variety influences the flavour of the wines.