I have never watched The Josh Kornbluth Show but I had a good excuse in the appearance of Check, Please! Bay Area‘s very own Leslie Sbrocco as one of Josh’s featured guests.
In this particular episode, Leslie undertakes to explain some basics of wine drinking to oeno-novice Josh and also pairs a few rather interesting foods with certain wines. First, Leslie explained her four basic “S”es of wine tasting: See, Swirl, Smell, Sip, and Spit/Swallow. I only presume there’s a possibility of swallow even if she didn’t expressly say so. I mean, I’ve definitely seen Leslie swallow — well, all you viewers have seen her swallow — her wine.
Starting off with the swirl, Josh hysterically assumed that we swirl our wine “in order to make the wine lose its confidence and disorient it.” Not quite, Josh. Leslie redirected his thoughts and said that we swirl our wine to make the aromas pop and become fully realized within our glass.
I’m a fairly regular wine drinker and passed my wine course in culinary school with flying spittoons, so all of Leslie’s directions about how to identify, swirl, and taste wines was fine and dandy for the beginners in the viewing audience but what I found really fascinating was the food and wine pairings.