09.13.2007 = JAYPLAY
feature
"It's something that you can it and enjoy and try to pick up in the different flavors," she says.
When she couldn't find words to describe what she tastes in her favorite wine, Ben Davis, a fellow waiter and Leawood junior, helped her out.
**Above:** Professor George McCleary (left) and emeritus professor Dwight Burnham carefully pour grape juice from a wine kit into a mixing tub (below). It will be a year before the wine is good enough to taste.
"You can just taste things in wine that you wouldn't ever think you'd taste in a beverage," he says.
PHOTO BY SARAH LEONARD
VINE HISTORY
VINE HISTORY "Bold, yet supple with a big, smoky earthy nose of cherry and currant fruit" is how manufacturers of a wine kit (a box of yeast, crushed crapes and other do-it-yourself wine essentials) being used in Lindley Hall describe their product's taste.
The class, GEOG 571, Topics in cultural Geography: Wine, is full of wine-curious students and taught by professor and self-described wino George McCleary, he says that there are few fruits hat are more sensitive to their environment than grapes.
However, it's been Kansas' political, rather than physical, environment that's contributed to the state's rather puny grape and wine market. Prohibition, hat scourge of fermented nerriment, resigned bottles to more often shattered than wallowed.
According to a Kansas state Research and Extension
publication on the history of grape growing in Kansas, Kansas became the first state to outlaw the manufacture and sale of alcohol in 1880. National prohibition in 1919 made matters worse and Kansas' wineries and thousands of acres of grapes were wiped out. Though national prohibition ended in 1933, Kansas wins like McCleary had to wait until 1985 for Kansas to allow wineries to operate again.
Since then there's been a flowering of Kansas grape growers and winemakers.
"There's a lot more happening here than there was 10 years ago," McCleary says.
STORY CONTINUED ON PAGE 12
PHOTO BY JON GOERING
PHOTO BY SARAH LEONARD
WINE WORDS
Whether robust and refined or hot and dirty, every wine has its own taste, smell and feel. Here's a sampling of terms that can help you tell what's going on inside your mouth.
AFTERTASTE: The impression that stays with you after you have swallowed the wine.
APPROACHABLE: Drinkable,
easy to enjoy.
**AROMA:**The smell of a wine. Also
"Bouquet."
BIG: Used to describe wines that are of full flavor and possessing high levels of tannins, alcohol, and grape extracts.
BRILLIANT: Very clear or transparent wines with no visible particles or suspensions.
CHARMING: A comment applied to wines that don't quite fulfill first expectations.
CLOUDY: When particles are
fond suspended in the wine.
CORKED: Wine has unpleasant
CHEWY: Refers to a high total tannic component of a wine. Figuratively, one cannot swallow this wine without chewing first.
"wet cardboard" taste/smell, perhaps due to improper corking.
DEPTH: A term that describes wines having complex, deep flavors.
DIRTY: Describes any of the undesirable odors that can be present in a wine that was poorly vinified (the conversion of fruit into wine.)
EARTHY: Covers situations where a "mother-earth" component is present.
ELEGANT: What to say when there is great balance and grace in the wine, but you can't quite find apt words of description.
FINISH: The aftertaste or impression a wine leaves in the nose and mouth as it is swallowed.
**HOT:** Defines a wine high in alcohol and giving a prickly or burning sensation on the palate.
REFINED: Term for well-balanced wines.
ROBUST: Strong wines having high levels of alcohol.
source: www.wines.com, www.
vino.com
PHOTO BY SARAH LEONARD
**Above:** Burnham, a longtime winemaker, shows University of Kansas students that winemaking is a science. **Below:** Spigots used to force wine into bottles at Kugler's Vineyard.
PHOTO BY JON GOERING
CASE 10.2
BEGIN
define function with three parameters
def func(a, b, c):
    return a + b + c
END