...or, perhaps I should title the post: Barolo, part 2.
A few days ago I tasted a new wine, a nebbiolo, the grape from which the famed Barolo is made. This was a California example, from Martin & Weyrich. Let me set the scene: two fairly inexperienced but not stupid women, tasting alongside one very experienced -- we take his word for it, safely so I am sure -- and also not stupid man. One woman tastes, hesitantly considers, as does the other, while the man tastes and goes into raptures. "Glorious." "Big." "At least comparable to a cabernet sauvignon." "The joke is that there are nebbiolos from the time of Christ that are just drinkable now."
After a pause the first woman says, "I don't understand how this is big," and the second woman says, "It tastes like a weak pinot noir."
"Exactly!" I yell. (May as well forget the incognita.) It tasted like a weak pinot noir. It looked like one. It had that similar light color, although to be fair Italian wines, and this California-grown Italian grape, seem to have a gleaming, cherry-garnet color all their own, and it had that acidity common to pinot noirs. Like the genuine Barolo I tasted some weeks ago, it also offered up a quality that I can only describe as plain, which I would think would be the opposite of "big."
However, my experienced colleague's opinions are not to be sneezed at, so I went home and did some reading. In Wine for Dummies, Ed McCarthy and Mary Ewing-Mulligan describe the nebbiolo grape, and its Italian wines Barolo and Barbaresco, as high in acids, tannins, and alcohol, dry, and therefore "robust." This marks the nub of what I fail to grasp about the wine. To me, the acidity, high tannin, and high alcohol of that Martin and Weyrich nebbiolo created a thin, meek, uninteresting mouthfeel. Any solid California red blend in the store would have tasted richer and had the "sticky-black, turbo-powered" color and potency which Hugh Johnson attributes to Napa Valley reds -- "and Barolos and Barbarescos" (How to Enjoy Your Wine).
But a man, our esteemed colleague, calling this wine "big," and prominent authors collecting harsh, spare characteristics under the rubric Therefore Robust, leads me to think of what renders intangible things either big or small, aggressive or mild, robust or enervated -- do we dare go on to say? -- masculine or feminine. A fountain pen, a pair of shoes, a houseplant: why is a slim, plain black pen manly, and a fat, maroon one with gold flecks feminine? Isn't the maroon one robust and interesting? What plant would you give a man for his new office, a simple, straight-up snake plant, or a lush China doll? (As for the shoes, maybe we'd better leave those alone.)
And so I'm puzzled to know why, in the world of wine, traits that taste like dessication and thinness are (apparently) considered strong and powerful, while lush fruitiness, spice, sweetness, and flavor are judged as both flaccid and small. I can't help but notice that the wine industry is heavily weighted with men at all levels -- my esteemed colleague agrees -- and I can't help but remember the late Margaret Mead, who noticed in her research the universal constant that whatever men do or value becomes the praiseworthy norm, and whatever women do or value tends to remain secondary. A whimsical train of thought, certainly, and I gather anyway that Margaret Mead's work does not command the respect it did when Coming of Age in Samoa was a runaway bestseller. But it can be so odd to be told that a wine is marvelous when the wine in one's mouth is saying just about nothing at all. And I am not quite fresh off the Prohibition train, eagerly clutching my bottle of Ripple. I even begin to doubt my colleague. How do I know? Maybe he's never tasted a really good nebbiolo. Nobody's perfect.
A day or so later, I took the remains of the wine home and have been sampling it since. Its acidity is chokingly high. The aroma -- and I did dutifully concentrate on this, last night having a eureka moment, when I thought "that's it" -- is old leather, like a saddle. There is some fruit to it, it's not a bad wine, entirely, but it's not something I would rush to try again. Maybe it needs the eight or ten years' aging that wine books recommend for the grape. Or the whole exercise may have been pointless, except that it led to the reading of more wine books, which is always fun. For here is the pronouncement of one of them, McCarthy and Ewing-Mulligan again, on our grape of the day: "Outside of scattered sites in northwestern Italy -- mainly the Piedmont region -- Nebbiolo just doesn't make remarkable wine."
Well, well. Cheers to that.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Friday, July 25, 2008
A summer weekend meal
From the book South Wind Through the Kitchen: the Best of Elizabeth David, this is a delectable, simple summer weekend meal. It's called "Giulia's Tomato Sauce and Dry Rice."
Chop fresh tomatoes, and put them in a bowl with olive oil, wine vinegar -- I used simply wine -- salt, pepper, and "a scrap of onion." All proportions are entirely up to you. Prepare the mixture two hours in advance, and just before serving stir in a pinch of sugar. You are not going to cook this sauce.
For the riso secco -- dry rice -- put half a small onion in a heavy bottomed pan with oil and butter.
When the onion has cooked and softened to a pale gold color, perhaps in 10 minutes or so, discard it and add long grain or basmati rice to the pan. After stirring the rice and coating it with oil, pour in salted water or broth -- you'll need double the amount of liquid to rice.
Cover the pan and let the rice simmer over low heat for about 20 minutes. When it's done, add a few pats of butter to it and a little grated cheese. Serve it with the chilled fresh tomato sauce.
For dinner, we added my husband's delicious grilled chicken thighs and drumsticks, sprinkled with seasoned salt and thyme.
A green vegetable like fresh peas or zucchini would be very nice, too. And as for the wine? Nothing too "grassy," acidic, or crisp, I would think, since the tomatoes are so very acidic themselves and grilled chicken has some smoky zip, too. Perhaps a chardonnay would be nice, or a riesling, or even ... do we dare say ... a white zinfandel?
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Yes, please -- do chill those reds
I have one and only one book to thank for introducing me to the weird, almost heretical, concept that red wines should be drunk cool. This was the charming Fear of Wine: an Introductory Guide to the Grape, by Leslie Brenner. The author explained succinctly what I relay to customers who blanch at the idea of cool reds, because they, and we, have all heard that "red wines should be served room temperature" -- some people even say "warm" -- "shouldn't they."
No, not exactly. Room temperature, Brenner says, in a French chateau or a modest English parsonage before the era of central heating was distinctly not 72 degrees Fahrenheit. And how long has the era of wine endured, compared to the era of central heating? "Room temperature" is about 58 or 60 degrees F. If you live in a cold climate and have ever enjoyed the exciting experience of losing power during a long snowy weekend, you know that when your thermostat creeps down to 60, you are walking around your house wrapped in a blanket, feeling your nose and exclaiming, Gawd, it's cold in here. Our ancestors who endured even more exciting experiences, who didn't particularly need thermostats because they woke up on winter mornings with ice in their bedroom washstands as a routine thing, would laugh at us for being such wimps. Then there was dear Queen Victoria, who had thermostats but insisted that all of them in all her castle rooms should never read any higher than 60, because she liked cold.
We digress, but Her Majesty must have served perfect red wine. You want to get those reds down from 72 degrees or worse, not only to satisfy historical definitions of room temperature but because the wines taste better that way. Warmth makes the tannins, acids, and alcohol in red wines harsh and overbearing; by the same token, over-chilling, whether of reds or whites, smothers flavor and sweetness (think of biting into a refrigerated fresh peach: how dull).
I performed an experiment not too long ago, to teach myself what a red wine at 60 degrees should feel like in the mouth. I pulled out a bottle from the refrigerator, poured a glass, and kept my instant-read thermometer handy, while I went about the house and kitchen doing other things. It took quite a while for the thermometer to come slowly up to 60 from a reading of refrigerator-cold, which is usually about 42 degrees F or so. When I finally had my red at the proper temperature of a bygone age, I sampled it. It reminded me of the feel of a sip of milk from a glass that I might have left out and forgotten on a warm day, and that was still barely cool enough to drink. It was a sip that warmed instantly to body temperature even before I swallowed. What did the wine taste like? Busy concentrating on it as a liquid, I don't remember exactly. But I do remember, and from subsequent experience briefly chilling and drinking red wines I can testify, that it was not the mouthful of sandpaper and nails that a warm red wine can be.
So please, don't suffer choking down warm, tannic, "room temperature" reds, trusting that this is the way they should be. Especially not in summer, when the conventional wisdom is that whites are more refreshing and even look better in the glass, and poor delicious reds are (it seems to me) unfairly neglected. And especially don't suffer in this age of increasingly dense, high-alcohol, "fruit-bomb," ahem "New World" cabernets and merlots, which need that bit of chateau-chilling to give them a simple dose of Old World grace.
No, not exactly. Room temperature, Brenner says, in a French chateau or a modest English parsonage before the era of central heating was distinctly not 72 degrees Fahrenheit. And how long has the era of wine endured, compared to the era of central heating? "Room temperature" is about 58 or 60 degrees F. If you live in a cold climate and have ever enjoyed the exciting experience of losing power during a long snowy weekend, you know that when your thermostat creeps down to 60, you are walking around your house wrapped in a blanket, feeling your nose and exclaiming, Gawd, it's cold in here. Our ancestors who endured even more exciting experiences, who didn't particularly need thermostats because they woke up on winter mornings with ice in their bedroom washstands as a routine thing, would laugh at us for being such wimps. Then there was dear Queen Victoria, who had thermostats but insisted that all of them in all her castle rooms should never read any higher than 60, because she liked cold.
We digress, but Her Majesty must have served perfect red wine. You want to get those reds down from 72 degrees or worse, not only to satisfy historical definitions of room temperature but because the wines taste better that way. Warmth makes the tannins, acids, and alcohol in red wines harsh and overbearing; by the same token, over-chilling, whether of reds or whites, smothers flavor and sweetness (think of biting into a refrigerated fresh peach: how dull).
I performed an experiment not too long ago, to teach myself what a red wine at 60 degrees should feel like in the mouth. I pulled out a bottle from the refrigerator, poured a glass, and kept my instant-read thermometer handy, while I went about the house and kitchen doing other things. It took quite a while for the thermometer to come slowly up to 60 from a reading of refrigerator-cold, which is usually about 42 degrees F or so. When I finally had my red at the proper temperature of a bygone age, I sampled it. It reminded me of the feel of a sip of milk from a glass that I might have left out and forgotten on a warm day, and that was still barely cool enough to drink. It was a sip that warmed instantly to body temperature even before I swallowed. What did the wine taste like? Busy concentrating on it as a liquid, I don't remember exactly. But I do remember, and from subsequent experience briefly chilling and drinking red wines I can testify, that it was not the mouthful of sandpaper and nails that a warm red wine can be.
So please, don't suffer choking down warm, tannic, "room temperature" reds, trusting that this is the way they should be. Especially not in summer, when the conventional wisdom is that whites are more refreshing and even look better in the glass, and poor delicious reds are (it seems to me) unfairly neglected. And especially don't suffer in this age of increasingly dense, high-alcohol, "fruit-bomb," ahem "New World" cabernets and merlots, which need that bit of chateau-chilling to give them a simple dose of Old World grace.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Vive la France!
To know wine, you must know French wine. That imperative begins a chapter in one of the books in my slowly growing wine library. But why is it so vital to know French wine? Must one know every vineyard, soil analysis, vintage, and "cru"? -- for it seems it doesn't take long before the chapters on French wine, in any book, delve into highly detailed topographical maps with keys to limestone and shale, and tiny hashmarks explaining elevation. Turn a few more pages and a thumbnail sketch of the 1855 Bordeaux classification will be, well, de rigueur.
It seems that one must know at least the basics about French wine for a few very good reasons. All the noble grapes, with the exception of Riesling, are native to France. How anyone can be sure of this is a mystery to me, since the cultivation of vitis vinifera goes back so many thousands of years. How do we know some colonist from Phoenicia did not bring Pinot Noir with him from Tyre one fine day in spring, in the year 643 BC or whenever? Perhaps it would be a little more accurate to say that, once they all arrived and/or were recognized and cultivated deliberately, all the noble grapes (except Riesling) have long been brought to vinous and potable perfection in France. The country's soils and climates happen to be just right for specific grapes, whether in Bordeaux, in Burgundy, in the Loire or Rhone valleys, in Provence, or in Champagne.
Incidentally, ten years ago the French Canadian journalist Louis-Bernard Robitaille, in a book distinctly not about wine -- And God Created the French -- explained, in a joke, France's exquisite physical situation. The land is both Mediterranean and northern, blessed with olives and wine, sunny sea and misty forest, butter and beer. Its rich countryside is laced with rivers perfectly positioned to encourage the growth of busy and sophisticated cities. Its fertility, climate, and ease of access laid its Celtic and Gaulish inhabitants open (shall we say) to millenia of cultural influence from many people: ancient Greek merchants, Roman legions, Britons from the west, Dark Age tribes of Frank and Burgundian from the east, Vikings from the north. All this has led to an incomparably subtle and rich civilization. The only fly in all the ointment somptueux, so goes the punchline, is that of course the place is filled with the French.
But seriously. Half a dozen near perfect grape-growing situations, and possession of all the noble grapes, combined with thousands of years of experience in wine-making, leads on to the second major reason why we "must know French wine." Because the French have learned so much and made so much of the best wine for so many years, practically all the wine you would care to buy in any store or sample at any winery is going to be an imitation, or at least an homage, to what countless anonymous vignerons (simply, grape-growers) have always done. We like chardonnay? That's white Burgundy. We prefer pinot noir? That's red Burgundy. Oh, look, a cabernet sauvignon-merlot blend from Australia, how interesting -- that's red Bordeaux. A sauvignon blanc-semillon blend? White Bordeaux. A chenin blanc from South Africa -- it's the white grape of Vouvray, transplanted. We love a vigorous syrah, a sumptuous viognier, or a rough and quaffable grenache blend? With those, we travel down the Rhone river, drinking something like what troubadours and returning Crusaders might have drunk. Shall we celebrate some fine occasion with a sparkling wine? The French learned how to make them first -- the famed Dom Perignon, for one, was trying to find a way to age his piercingly acidic chardonnay-blend wines without a second fermentation happening in the bottles as Champagne's cellars warmed up in the spring. (The bubbles in the wine were originally considered a flaw.)
In fact, it takes some thinking to come up with a wine that is in no way native to or much influenced by the great thirsty nation of France. Riesling, strangely, is one. Oz Clarke in his New Encyclopedia of French Wines suggests that France's "long standing historical mistrust of Germany" may account for this German grape's -- the noblest of the noble -- being "proscribed, banned, beneath contempt" west of the border. Perhaps the punchline to that joke should be, not that over-blessed France has her scales of blessings balanced out by the burden of the French on one side, but that she has them balanced out by this one missing item. As if the Creator said, you will have all these things and lead the world to the joys of wine too, but you won't have ... riesling. That divine punchline might not be as funny as the human one, however.
It seems that one must know at least the basics about French wine for a few very good reasons. All the noble grapes, with the exception of Riesling, are native to France. How anyone can be sure of this is a mystery to me, since the cultivation of vitis vinifera goes back so many thousands of years. How do we know some colonist from Phoenicia did not bring Pinot Noir with him from Tyre one fine day in spring, in the year 643 BC or whenever? Perhaps it would be a little more accurate to say that, once they all arrived and/or were recognized and cultivated deliberately, all the noble grapes (except Riesling) have long been brought to vinous and potable perfection in France. The country's soils and climates happen to be just right for specific grapes, whether in Bordeaux, in Burgundy, in the Loire or Rhone valleys, in Provence, or in Champagne.
Incidentally, ten years ago the French Canadian journalist Louis-Bernard Robitaille, in a book distinctly not about wine -- And God Created the French -- explained, in a joke, France's exquisite physical situation. The land is both Mediterranean and northern, blessed with olives and wine, sunny sea and misty forest, butter and beer. Its rich countryside is laced with rivers perfectly positioned to encourage the growth of busy and sophisticated cities. Its fertility, climate, and ease of access laid its Celtic and Gaulish inhabitants open (shall we say) to millenia of cultural influence from many people: ancient Greek merchants, Roman legions, Britons from the west, Dark Age tribes of Frank and Burgundian from the east, Vikings from the north. All this has led to an incomparably subtle and rich civilization. The only fly in all the ointment somptueux, so goes the punchline, is that of course the place is filled with the French.
But seriously. Half a dozen near perfect grape-growing situations, and possession of all the noble grapes, combined with thousands of years of experience in wine-making, leads on to the second major reason why we "must know French wine." Because the French have learned so much and made so much of the best wine for so many years, practically all the wine you would care to buy in any store or sample at any winery is going to be an imitation, or at least an homage, to what countless anonymous vignerons (simply, grape-growers) have always done. We like chardonnay? That's white Burgundy. We prefer pinot noir? That's red Burgundy. Oh, look, a cabernet sauvignon-merlot blend from Australia, how interesting -- that's red Bordeaux. A sauvignon blanc-semillon blend? White Bordeaux. A chenin blanc from South Africa -- it's the white grape of Vouvray, transplanted. We love a vigorous syrah, a sumptuous viognier, or a rough and quaffable grenache blend? With those, we travel down the Rhone river, drinking something like what troubadours and returning Crusaders might have drunk. Shall we celebrate some fine occasion with a sparkling wine? The French learned how to make them first -- the famed Dom Perignon, for one, was trying to find a way to age his piercingly acidic chardonnay-blend wines without a second fermentation happening in the bottles as Champagne's cellars warmed up in the spring. (The bubbles in the wine were originally considered a flaw.)
In fact, it takes some thinking to come up with a wine that is in no way native to or much influenced by the great thirsty nation of France. Riesling, strangely, is one. Oz Clarke in his New Encyclopedia of French Wines suggests that France's "long standing historical mistrust of Germany" may account for this German grape's -- the noblest of the noble -- being "proscribed, banned, beneath contempt" west of the border. Perhaps the punchline to that joke should be, not that over-blessed France has her scales of blessings balanced out by the burden of the French on one side, but that she has them balanced out by this one missing item. As if the Creator said, you will have all these things and lead the world to the joys of wine too, but you won't have ... riesling. That divine punchline might not be as funny as the human one, however.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Wine Blogging Wednesday #47 -- "Brought to you by the letter S"
The host for this month's Wine Blogging Wednesday is Grape Juice and the theme is a nod to Sesame Street: "Brought to you by the letter S." Also a nod, perhaps, to the age demographic that is increasingly drinking and blogging about wine: note that the theme happens to have nothing to do with, say, some previous cultural phenomenon like Howdy Doody or Woodstock.
Which brings me to the hope that it isn't considered cheating to "try" a wine that I know and like. This Sandholdt cabernet and I go back at least to this past January, when I tried it for the first time at a wine tasting at the store. My first notes on it were: oaky -- spicy -- plain.
Then we got to know each other better. Through subsequent tastings and a purchase or two, I learned that this cabernet took on delicious licorice/taffy flavors, especially a day or two after opening. When I recommend it to customers, some love it, some are turned off by the taffy-caramel taste. I find it's the only red wine that I can simply sip as a cocktail, without food. Moderately thick (medium bodied, I should say), purple with fruit, not shrieking with tannins and not blazing with alcohol -- 13.5%, high enough but it could be higher -- I don't see why it could not be an occasional summer patio wine, chilled, along with the army of crisp whites we are all supposed to prefer at this time of year.
This past weekend, in the store, a couple came in whose accent and conversation told me that they were from Italy. The Sandholdt happened to be out for tasting again (not my doing this time, honest). The gentleman tasted it beside another red which I consider friendly and good, but lacking Sandholdt's opulence. And he, with his natural Italian exposure to a lifetime of wines, preferred the friendly red. He shrugged politely at my pet tipple. "There are better cabernets," he said, "but this other, this is quite good."
The dregs of that particular bottle of Sandholdt were in the fridge at the store even yesterday, and I took them home last night. It was hot and humid inside the house. Outside blew a cool if humid breeze, and there was a crescent moon in a hazy puddle of cloud to admire. I sipped my cabernet -- I would have listened to the crickets, but it's too early for crickets yet -- and I thought, well. Okay. It is a bit like drinking a fruit-caramel candy. But a drinkable candy! Isn't that wonderful?
A few professional details, from the apparently close-lipped company that owns? sells? markets? all three and more? Sandholdt:
This wine is a blend of 80% cabernet sauvignon, 15% petite sirah and 5% cabernet franc; I am surprised, since I thought legally no wine could be called by a varietal name unless it is absolutely at least 85% that varietal. It spent 18 months in both new and aged French oak, which no doubt accounts for the caramel and taffy flavors. Its pH is 3.57. This would be gibberish to me, except that my daughters both took high school chemistry so they can tell me that the number puts the wine at an acidity roughly comparable to something between soda pop and tomato juice. The company produced 5,000 cases of this 2005 vintage.
I don't know -- is that a lot?
For this month's virtual tasting, all are asked to sip and to comment on a wine beginning with S. No further rules. Great fun.
I pretended, even internally, to consider what bright and interesting paths I might follow with this one. Think of all the possibilities! Just an S .... But in truth there was no question what I planned to try. S is for Sandholdt, and for Cabernet Sauvignon.
Which brings me to the hope that it isn't considered cheating to "try" a wine that I know and like. This Sandholdt cabernet and I go back at least to this past January, when I tried it for the first time at a wine tasting at the store. My first notes on it were: oaky -- spicy -- plain.
Then we got to know each other better. Through subsequent tastings and a purchase or two, I learned that this cabernet took on delicious licorice/taffy flavors, especially a day or two after opening. When I recommend it to customers, some love it, some are turned off by the taffy-caramel taste. I find it's the only red wine that I can simply sip as a cocktail, without food. Moderately thick (medium bodied, I should say), purple with fruit, not shrieking with tannins and not blazing with alcohol -- 13.5%, high enough but it could be higher -- I don't see why it could not be an occasional summer patio wine, chilled, along with the army of crisp whites we are all supposed to prefer at this time of year.
This past weekend, in the store, a couple came in whose accent and conversation told me that they were from Italy. The Sandholdt happened to be out for tasting again (not my doing this time, honest). The gentleman tasted it beside another red which I consider friendly and good, but lacking Sandholdt's opulence. And he, with his natural Italian exposure to a lifetime of wines, preferred the friendly red. He shrugged politely at my pet tipple. "There are better cabernets," he said, "but this other, this is quite good."
The dregs of that particular bottle of Sandholdt were in the fridge at the store even yesterday, and I took them home last night. It was hot and humid inside the house. Outside blew a cool if humid breeze, and there was a crescent moon in a hazy puddle of cloud to admire. I sipped my cabernet -- I would have listened to the crickets, but it's too early for crickets yet -- and I thought, well. Okay. It is a bit like drinking a fruit-caramel candy. But a drinkable candy! Isn't that wonderful?
A few professional details, from the apparently close-lipped company that owns? sells? markets? all three and more? Sandholdt:
This wine is a blend of 80% cabernet sauvignon, 15% petite sirah and 5% cabernet franc; I am surprised, since I thought legally no wine could be called by a varietal name unless it is absolutely at least 85% that varietal. It spent 18 months in both new and aged French oak, which no doubt accounts for the caramel and taffy flavors. Its pH is 3.57. This would be gibberish to me, except that my daughters both took high school chemistry so they can tell me that the number puts the wine at an acidity roughly comparable to something between soda pop and tomato juice. The company produced 5,000 cases of this 2005 vintage.
I don't know -- is that a lot?
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
GAAAA! Too much flavor!
Now this is wonderfully counter-intuitive, as the smart people say. A few weeks ago I tasted a Barolo, famed, seductive &c., which seemed to me thin and uninteresting compared to a California merlot from the evening before. And then it happened, as I surfed about the Internet educating myself about wine, that I came across not one but two articles by respected and knowledgeable oenophiles announcing that, indeed, the current market-driven (alarm bells here) explosion of "big," rich flavors in wines is something to be deplored. No less a person than Eric Asimov of The Pour said as much in reference to pinot noir in particular; another favorite blogger, Arthur Przebinda of redwinebuzz and now Sooth, said the same of all California wine.
I was puzzled, and said so frankly in a comment to Sooth which I felt was rather pithy. Why should flavorful (mostly American) wines be considered poorer than thin, sourish (European) ones? Could it possibly be that ordinary consumers like flavor, and true oenophiles are horrified at the plebs' imposing their tastes on the market? I suggested that perhaps centuries from now, historians will simply note that vitis vinifera made very good wines in the Old World, but excellent wines in the New.
Arthur replied that "big" wines heavy in fruit, and alcohol, lack finesse and delicacy, and that since the human tongue can only taste four flavors -- sweet, salt, sour, and bitter -- any increase in "flavor" is bound to be just an increase in sweetness, which is not the same thing as flavor. I'm still a bit puzzled by this. If we can taste sweetness as a flavor, then why isn't sweetness flavor? By the same token, if "sour" is a flavor, then why aren't all those elegant, thin European pinot noirs, full of promising, age-worthy acidity, also dismissed as too flavorful?
I turned from the blogosphere to people I know, whose opinions seem to me worth cultivating. One colleague simply shrugged and said yes, California wines have their own style. He also said there are a lot of amateurs out there who think reading Wine Spectator for two or three years qualifies them to judge the grape. Two others, however, agreed instantly with the idea that modern wines are overdone. One happened to be pouring out a California cabernet which he said reminded him of the "cabs of the early '80s -- it's not such a fruit bomb." I tried it and thought it seemed a little thin. And another simply glanced over the Sooth article that I had printed out and said, "Oh yeah, I agree. It's happening all over." Later in the week, a third wholesaler came in, agreed briefly with "what they've done to pinots -- it's disgusting" and then poured out for us a new California pinot noir which he said was "awesome." I tried it. Oh dear -- it was delicious. Full of flavor.
So I have had to think about all this and try to understand in what sense too much tastiness could be bad. Wine writers, after all, seem to be so often concerned with lost traditions, forgotten grapes, legendary vintages, local peculiarities in this village or that, which have been superb for so long, but are on the point of toppling off a historical cliff into oblivion right now if they are not deliberately maintained, and competing ideas or habits fended off. I wonder if our ancestors said the same thing about the glories of wine carried in goatskins, or mixed with warm sea water?
The only comparison I can think of, to help me recognize that the experts may be correct in misliking flavorful wines, lies in the field of art. I love the paintings of Titian, but I would not want Titian's to be the only art there is. We must have Van Dyck's portraits, and Matisse, and the whole world of Chinese porcelain as well. The same is true of literature and music -- we don't want a whole world full of only romance novels and rock and roll, either. And then I think of the nice people who come into our store. Very often, they buy sweet red dessert wines, the sweeter the better. Even my jaw drops when, occasionally, they wince at these and say "that's kind of tart for me." Yes, these people are driving our little corner of the market to satisfy their own tastes. We stock more and more dessert wines each month. Alarm bells ring. I would not want the whole world to be full only of the wines they like.
Oh dear. The road to wine snobbery is not even a road. It's the deck of an aircraft carrier, and you're launched almost before you know it.
I was puzzled, and said so frankly in a comment to Sooth which I felt was rather pithy. Why should flavorful (mostly American) wines be considered poorer than thin, sourish (European) ones? Could it possibly be that ordinary consumers like flavor, and true oenophiles are horrified at the plebs' imposing their tastes on the market? I suggested that perhaps centuries from now, historians will simply note that vitis vinifera made very good wines in the Old World, but excellent wines in the New.
Arthur replied that "big" wines heavy in fruit, and alcohol, lack finesse and delicacy, and that since the human tongue can only taste four flavors -- sweet, salt, sour, and bitter -- any increase in "flavor" is bound to be just an increase in sweetness, which is not the same thing as flavor. I'm still a bit puzzled by this. If we can taste sweetness as a flavor, then why isn't sweetness flavor? By the same token, if "sour" is a flavor, then why aren't all those elegant, thin European pinot noirs, full of promising, age-worthy acidity, also dismissed as too flavorful?
I turned from the blogosphere to people I know, whose opinions seem to me worth cultivating. One colleague simply shrugged and said yes, California wines have their own style. He also said there are a lot of amateurs out there who think reading Wine Spectator for two or three years qualifies them to judge the grape. Two others, however, agreed instantly with the idea that modern wines are overdone. One happened to be pouring out a California cabernet which he said reminded him of the "cabs of the early '80s -- it's not such a fruit bomb." I tried it and thought it seemed a little thin. And another simply glanced over the Sooth article that I had printed out and said, "Oh yeah, I agree. It's happening all over." Later in the week, a third wholesaler came in, agreed briefly with "what they've done to pinots -- it's disgusting" and then poured out for us a new California pinot noir which he said was "awesome." I tried it. Oh dear -- it was delicious. Full of flavor.
So I have had to think about all this and try to understand in what sense too much tastiness could be bad. Wine writers, after all, seem to be so often concerned with lost traditions, forgotten grapes, legendary vintages, local peculiarities in this village or that, which have been superb for so long, but are on the point of toppling off a historical cliff into oblivion right now if they are not deliberately maintained, and competing ideas or habits fended off. I wonder if our ancestors said the same thing about the glories of wine carried in goatskins, or mixed with warm sea water?
The only comparison I can think of, to help me recognize that the experts may be correct in misliking flavorful wines, lies in the field of art. I love the paintings of Titian, but I would not want Titian's to be the only art there is. We must have Van Dyck's portraits, and Matisse, and the whole world of Chinese porcelain as well. The same is true of literature and music -- we don't want a whole world full of only romance novels and rock and roll, either. And then I think of the nice people who come into our store. Very often, they buy sweet red dessert wines, the sweeter the better. Even my jaw drops when, occasionally, they wince at these and say "that's kind of tart for me." Yes, these people are driving our little corner of the market to satisfy their own tastes. We stock more and more dessert wines each month. Alarm bells ring. I would not want the whole world to be full only of the wines they like.
Oh dear. The road to wine snobbery is not even a road. It's the deck of an aircraft carrier, and you're launched almost before you know it.
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