Qianjiang Evening News·Hours News Reporter Zhou Xialin
Start brewing rice wine on the day of the beginning of winter, which is the traditional brewing custom of Shaoxing . From the beginning of winter to the following year, the beginning of spring is the most suitable time for making rice wine, which people in Shaoxing call it "winter brew".
Luyou has a poem saying: "You can make wine in October, and you can make sauce in June." As the beginning of winter passes, the weather gets cooler. Warm a pot of rice wine and a plate of meat . Such a simple meal without losing the sense of ritual.
Every year, Shaoxing will hold the Yellow Wine Festival as usual. Only by carving according to the season and overlapping winter and summer can you finally become a good wine. This is a unique festival among Shaoxing people.
This year's Rice Wine Festival also has a highlight - the 2022 National Rice Wine Tasting Skills Masters Competition was held. This competition can be regarded as a big-name competition in the industry. This year, a total of 48 rice wine tasters participated in the competition, and only 10 were selected as "masters" and became national rice wine judges.
is different from ordinary wine tasters. What special skills do these selected big names have? Are they particularly sensitive to smell and taste? Is the alcohol content very good?
With curiosity, Qianjiang Evening News·Houri News reporters recently found two rice wine tasters and listened to them tell their professional stories.
1】In life, drop of wine will not stick to it, it can also be an excellent wine taster
This tasting circle, women may be even better
Speaking of the profession of wine taster, everyone may have such doubts: Do you need a good amount of alcohol?
The answer is not certain, because there are excellent rice wine tasters who don’t stick to wine in their lives.
Yan Dongxia from Shangyu is such a special rice wine taster. She doesn’t drink alcohol normally, but she tastes it super good.
In 2020, Yan Dongxia participated in the first national rice wine tasting competition and won the championship. She is currently the second-level technical director of Shen Yonghe Winery, Guyue Longshan Shen Yonghe Winery, and was also named Zhejiang Craftsman this year.
In Yan Dongxia's laboratory, there are various rice wines. She picked up the first cup in front of her, looked at the color of the wine in the cup, shook it two or three times, sniffed it carefully, then raised her glass and drank it, letting the small sip of wine flow among the taste buds, and finally wrote an evaluation on the notebook. This is Yan Dongxia's daily work.
is engaged in wine tasters, and most of them are men, especially when tasting rice wine, and even fewer female wine tasters.
However, there is an "unwritten" consensus circulating in the industry, that is, female wine tasters have better perception than male wine tasters. With the same wine, female tasters may be able to taste the taste faster than male tasters.
What is special about female wine tasting? Love beauty is a woman's nature, but for 20 years, Yan Dongxia has always been "bald face to the sky".
"I didn't know how to put on makeup at all. After working in the industry of wine tasting, I just found a reason to not be able to put on makeup." Yan Dongxia said that she is a real "toddler". Sometimes she can't use scented shampoo and shower gel before the tasting competition. In fact, wine tasters should not eat heavy-tasting foods such as fishy and spicy foods, nor should they drink and smoke. As a professional, these daily taboos are also maintenance of the nose and mouth.
Yan Dongxia said bluntly that although she usually has to deal with various rice wine, her alcohol tolerance is not good, and she doesn’t even get drunk in her life.
In this regard, Yan Dongxia explained: "When tasting wine, you don't need to drink a lot of wine, you just need to taste it lightly, so you don't need to be a good amount of alcohol."
2] You must not only use your nose and mouth to taste wine, but also use your brain frequently
The vocabulary about taste will be richer than ordinary people
37-year-old Kong Xiangwei is the champion of this competition. As a native Shaoxing native, he has been in contact with rice wine since he was six or seven years old. Kong Xiangwei majored in food science at University, and after graduation he joined a local rice wine company in Shaoxing.
Kong Xiangwei told the hourly news reporter that wine tasters usually have to be both "quality inspectors" and " analyst " in wineries. This not only depends on the nose and mouth, but also on the brain, use sensory evaluation technology to evaluate the quality of the wine, guide brewing technology, storage and blending, and carry out wine body design and new product development .
For example, when a winery produces new wine varieties, the taster needs to taste and appraise it, and determine whether the quality of the wine is up to standard through indicators such as color, sugar level, taste, and flavor, and whether it can be accepted by consumers.
"A qualified wine taster, if you taste it, you must have a basic judgment in your heart of the year, origin, and flavor of this wine." Kong Xiangwei raised a glass of rice wine to tell reporters, for example, to judge the sweetness of this glass of rice wine, rice wine is divided into four types according to sweetness. If the sugar content is less than 15g/L, it is called dry rice wine, 15-40g/L is called semi-dry type, 40-100g/L is called semi-sweet type, and if it is greater than 100g/L, it is called sweet type. This is the most basic one, and you can also taste it by ordinary rice wine gourmets.
also tastes the aromas in the wine, such as almonds, florals, and fruity fragrances. Some subtle smells are fleeting. What the taster needs to do is to feel this taste carefully and describe it accurately, which is something that machines cannot replace.
"In fact, compared to ordinary people, the nose and mouth of the taster are not particularly sensitive. We also use repeated practice to identify and remember the taste. The 'vocabulary' of taste in our brains is richer than that of ordinary people." Kong Xiangwei said that in daily life, when encountering the fragrance of flowers and food, his olfactory "radar" is turned on. He will pay special attention to what taste is and try to distinguish it.
In addition, as a rice wine taster, he also has to taste rice wine from various origins and remember their taste and characteristics, which is also one of the contents of the competition.
, an associate researcher at Jiangnan University, told the reporter of Hours that the sensory evaluation of rice wine is the simplest and most commonly used method, which can quickly evaluate the quality and characteristics of wine products. Wine tasting skills are also special skills that cannot be replaced by machines and equipment at present. As consumers have higher and higher requirements for the taste of rice wine, the profession of rice wine taster is becoming more and more important.
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