Light, soft and fleeting, so delicate it almost isn’t there at all. Faint yellow colour with fine bubbles forming a thin white foam at the top, delicate floral aromas with white fruit, honeydew melon and lemon sorbet, slightly sweet on the palate with gentle acidity and soft bubbles, fleeting with a sweet, silky finish.
Food pairings: this wine’s delicate structure and flavours makes it very pleasant to drink on its own, but will also pair well with fresh cheeses, vegetables or fish. Some examples include: cream cheese and salmon canapés, quiche Lorraine, or baked sea bass with a lemon herb sauce.
The Noanis collection is part of Vini La Delizia, the largest cooperative winery in the region of Friuli Venezia Giulia and part of the Friuli Grave and Prosecco DOCs. The cooperative is made up of over 500 grape growers and over 2,000 hectares of vineyards in the plains of Friuli. This area is renowned for the production of high quality white and sparkling wines.
The Noanis collection also includes Moscato Dolce, Prosecco Brut and Extra Dry, Rosé Extra Dry, and Jader Cuvée Vino Spumante Brut.
This wine was made using the Martinotti/Charmat method . Starting with a base wine of ribolla gialla, selected yeasts and sugar were added and the wine underwent a second fermentation in pressure tanks at a controlled temperature. The wine was then stabilised and filtered before being bottled.
I’ve recently started meditating daily as a way to feel more present, aware and connected to my self. This isn’t the first time I’ve explored meditation, and I now wonder why I ever did stop considering being present is so intriguing to me. In fact, my interest in wine stems largely from my desire to experience being present through the senses.
Wine has the unique quality of being enigmatic yet so full of aromas, flavours and other sensations at the same time. Therefore, it seems that tasting wine is an excellent opportunity to practice being present by focusing on these sensations and interpreting them through perception. Perhaps even “mindful wine tasting ” would not be such a stretch if we could do so while acknowledging what we are sensing without judgement and focus on our inner experience while letting the outer world quiet down for a moment.
Mindfulness and meditation are essentially the act of being present; simple in theory but not always so easy in practice. However, what is so marvellous about being present is that when we can momentarily let go of the past (things we can’t change) and the future (things that haven’t happened yet), we can enjoy what is happening in the moment more fully.
Due to the fleeting quality of this wine in particular, a quality also intrinsic to the present, it became necessary to really focus on what I was sensing in that moment without the clutter of impeding thoughts, or chatter and movement in the room. And the more I did that, the more this wine was revealed to me in all its expression.
That being said, a common misperception about meditation is that you empty your mind of thought. But rather than attempting to think about nothing, meditation practices encourage us to acknowledge the thoughts that pop into your head, without judgment, and then let them pass in order to return again to the present moment. If our naturally occurring breath pattern or the sensations in our body are what help us to return our focus to the present in meditation, than with wine tasting it would be the colour, aromas, flavours and tactile sensations that draw our attention to what we are sensing in front of us.
Thought without judgment may seem somewhat counterintuitive when tasting wine as we often, maybe even exclusively, make qualitative judgements based on whether it’s good or bad or if we like it or not. But, what if we attempted to make quantitative judgments instead that consisted in identifying the sensation and quantifying its intensity? We might then be more objective and be better able to accept the wine as it is , without imposing any of our prejudices or preconceptions on it. This acknowledgment and acceptance could even lead to a sense of gratitude for the sensory journey the wine has offered us.
“Mindfulness meditation asks us to suspend judgment and unleash our natural curiosity about the workings of the mind, approaching our experience with warmth and kindness, to ourselves and others.”
-www.mindful.org
Open curiosity and a desire to identify what we are actually experiencing are things which would undoubtedly enrich our experience of wine tasting, and are skills which can be cultivated through mindfulness meditation. But it doesn’t stop there because a stronger connection and awareness towards oneself leads to a stronger connection and awareness of others. And if this could be extended to wine than a stronger connection and awareness of one wine would lead to a stronger connection and awareness of all wines within the context of what each wine has to offer. It is often said that each wine has a story to tell, and it seems to me that mindfulness can help us become better listeners of these stories.
For more information about mindfulness meditation, I found this site very useful:
Here is a list of the physical, mental and emotional benefits of meditation from www.60secondsofsolitude.com
Vinthropology 