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Wine Advisor Express:
Wine Vocabulary - Caudalie

Following up on yesterday's announcement of our new Wine Tasting 101 feature (http://www.wineloverspage.com/forum/wt101.shtml), I thought it would be fun to spend the next few days exploring some of the more obscure nooks and crannies of wine-tasting lore.

Today's topic is a characteristic the French call "Caudalie," a term used to measure the persistent flavors that remain in your mouth after you swallow (or spit out) the wine. An approximate English translation might be "aftertaste" or "finish," but the French take it one step further: Caudalie measures the actual duration of the wine's finish in seconds! So a wine rated as "15 Caudalie" lingers on the palate, in the taster's estimation, for 15 seconds.

Personally, I find this a little more precise than I need in wine tasting, and you won't see me adding Caudalie to my wine reports. But the underlying lesson it teaches is a good one: When you're tasting wine for education as well as enjoyment, it never hurts to focus closely on the details.

Wine Lovers' Page features Caudalie, among other terms, in our Wine Lovers' Lexicon, http://www.wineloverspage.com/lexicon/. If you would like to give your French a workout, there's a thorough, all-French glossary on the excellent and content-rich French Website WineCampus.com, at http://www.winecampus.fr/database/pagephp/phpTravail/mainTravail.php3?rub=3&lng=33. (To make this long link work, take care that your software hasn't split it into more than one line. When you reach this page, click "Glossaire" at the bottom to find the Glossary.)

Express Notes:
About yesterday's E-mail subject

A couple of weeks ago, in response to many requests, I began including a hint of each daily bulletin's topic in the subject line. Naturally it only took about 14 days for me to mess it up.

In other words, many of you received yesterday's bulletin under Friday's subject, making it appear to be a duplicate of "Wine in Pills" rather than the new subject "Wine Tasting 101."

I apologize for the confusion, and don't expect that I'll make the same mistake in the same form again. If by chance you discarded the edition unread, thinking that it was a duplicate, you can find an archived copy online at http://www.wineloverspage.com/wineadvisor/tswa010611.shtml.

Express Notes:
Administrivia

This is Wine Advisor Express, daily edition of The 30 Second Wine Advisor, distributed Tuesdays through Fridays. To change your E-mail address, switch from daily to the weekly (Mondays only) distribution, or for any other administrative matters, E-mail wine@wineloverspage.com. Please be sure to include the exact E-mail address that you used when you subscribed, so we can find your record.

Tuesday, June 12, 2001
Copyright 2001 by Robin Garr. All rights reserved.

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