Oenological dilettantism

So it will probably not come as a surprise to most of you that the ENS apparently has the oldest university wine tasting club in France. Naturally. And of course they're extremely proud of that fact.

I have wanted to go to one of their club meetings all year, but for one reason or another it hasn't worked out. Until yesterday. The theme of last night's "dégustation" was portos. Not French, I know, but whatever. My main problem with tastings, of course, is that I don't particularly know what I'm doing, haha. When Ben and I were discussing the fact that we were going to the tasting, my comment was, "all I know about portos is that I like them!" haha.

Anyway, I arrived at the tasting (in the dining hall) to find long tables with white tablecloths, two glasses per person (water and wine), and everything all set. Yes! A guest expert was there to guide us through our tasting, and the main thing I learned was that portos are actually a derivative of a Burgundy pinot. Some dude way back when took pinot grapes down to Portugal to try his hand down there and ended up with porto. And I'm glad he did, as we ended up with some delicious wine last night!

Here's the funniest part: all the 20-year-olds with their developed palettes. I was clearly the heretic of the room, while they were talking about the "robe" and how they tasted red fruits, cinnamon, you name it, I sitting there like, "yum, this one is good!" And seriously, how many 20-year-old American guys do you know who would attend a wine tasting and have such sophisticated commentary AND use the spit bucket thingies? Well, correction, how many 20-year-old American guys who are not members of a Princeton eating club do you know who would do such a thing? haha. In further proof that the ENS is in fact Princeton in disguise, the student in charge of pouring our samples was wearing a shirt with cuff links! Yes! Young Republicans of the world unite!

Of course, you can also imagine my consternation at the end, when we had to go around the room and say which wine we liked the best and why. Like a good mediocre student I took the safe route and parroted back what the presenter said about the one I liked the best, haha. So I discussed why I liked the "cognac overtones, like an armagnac" of the one I liked. I can sling the bullshit with the best of them :-)

Oh, and each wine was paired with some chocolate, so we sampled chocolate from: Indonesia, Ghana, Equador, Venezuela, and the Caribbean. Again, others were commenting on the flavor variations while I was basically sitting there like, "mmmmm, chocolate!"

After the tasting, there was a buffet meal. I struck out on the first round, which was all sorts of fancy cheeses. But whatever, the bread was delicious, so that's good enough for me! The next round was a set of macaroons from Pierre Hermé, which were DIVINE. I sort of ran afoul of the dairy in them (French macaroons are nothing like the American incarnation, they're little merengue cookies with cream in the middle) but kind of didn't care, that's how good they were, haha. I then fell off the bandwagon completely, however, and sampled the cherry tart and the raspberry tart. Both with cream sauces, of course. I am an idiot. But man were they good!