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Taste.
I don't want to bore you with a bit of the boring side. I don't consider it boring, very educational as a matter of fact, but for you to hear the same stories and about the errands I run, when I can fit them in, that would be boring. But indulge me for a line or two. I saw an eye Doctor for the first time in over two years. It is good to have medical coverage again. I have an appointment in three weeks time, to review some lab work on my blood. But the Doctor told me that I had the lungs of a teenage track star, so I ash on the keyboard, as I type this. But I need to schedule with the Dentist soonest. I fear that the acid in wine and the teeth staining tannins, not to mention the coffee, cigarettes and chocolate covered espresso beans haven't been the best friends to the enamel on my canines and bicuspids. The mundane, the boring. Not worth blogging about. But I will say this, my new life in wine has really made my sense of smell and taste hyper sensitive. I can smell something in a glass of wine freshly poured, almost six feet away. This is not to say that it happens all the time and I don't truly know the reason for this, but sometimes, when the wine splashes in the glass and the wind wrangles it from porous crystal and releases it to publicly traded air, I can smell it from here. Sometimes. But not every time. And not every time I can discern what needs to be discerned. Well, that is a funny statement worth clarifying because we all should know that wine is many things to many people and the aromas and tastes are discernable by those who train hard for them to be present in a glass of grape juice; and, by those who don't necessarily care that they can detect a hint of lychee or mushroom underbelly in a bottle of Bacchus' finest. But the latter can discern them anyway. Like those schoolmates we loathe because they can walk in and slam dunk a standardized test while we fret and sweat over whether the graphite is filling the correct circle and we worry that the answer is not always, "D" (All of the Above). I felt this way this recently. A little annoyed and a lot intimidated because after work, once a month, I meet with a group of skilled swirlers and sniffers in a blind tasting of some serious sauce. The last occasion, some rust colored Pinot Noir from the late '70s and early '80s. This information to me, and to all of us, was not given in advance and the wine bottles were wrapped in brown paper bags. Blinded we were to the grape, the place of origin, the producer of the alcoholic juice and the year it was produced. We knew nothing but what the wine would tell us, two ounces at a time in six glasses in front of us. When I swirled and sniffed, head down and nose pinched from sucking so hard, I believed that I must have been releasing the valuable information through my eyelids. It was at this point I realized that I must stop thinkng about Susan Sarandon, in thigh-highs, telling Tim Robbins to breathe through his eylids to throw strikes like Fernando Venezuela. I had nothing resoundingly brilliant to say about these wines. My initial reaction was that they all set out, like the 50-year reunion of a troop of Boy Scouts into the forest. All dressed alike, in tight fitting sand colored khaki and leaf green sweaters, all walking the same line and all seeing the same trees, brush, berries and the occasional doe staring them straight in the eye. There were six and to me, they were all the same. My nose wasn't working. I immediately blamed my glassware - it must be the glass not working for me. Maybe the crystal pores were being selfish and not releasing the wine's poetry. Something was wrong. Seriously wrong. I was faking myself into believing I should be in this room with such advanced alchemists. I was a punch-and-judy hitter in Single A ball. How could I stand elbow-to-elbow sniffing and sipping and saying something seriously mind-fucking and palate pleasing, if I can't smell or taste a thing. I had nothing. No notes written. No ideas worth noting. I tried to remember the fundamentals, it was red, yes; I got that. It was aged; sure, the melted ruby of a young wine which had lost its luster; no problem. That was my sense of sight following Rule #1 of wine appreciation - look and let the wine's color tell you something. Something significant. But Rule #2, the scents. My nose was offering me nothing. I thought maybe I should - what the best of the best do - lie. I have a cold. Snot stuffed into the deep recesses of my brain. No. That wouldn't work, I would have been looked down upon for showing up, wasting my money and stealing wine from the group's glasses. So, after twenty odd minutes laboring over 12 ounces of wine, things started to turn. I was relieved that the masters of the "Sonoma County Highbrow Wine Appreciation Group" (SCHWAG) were sort of stumped like I was. It wasn't until we were able to work the wines, to dig into them and turn the soil over, as a good nurseryman would say, that the wines started to present themselves and words started to be shared and the wine convalesced and let us into their intoxicating, aged Bacchanal. And so it was. Starting with a whimper, ending with a bang. In the joyous end, I couldn't contain myself and I sentenced myself to be the ringleader in the next merry-go-round of wine swirling SCHWAG'ers. It is now up to me to stump and educate the experts sometime at the end of April. I have no idea where to begin this task. Although, I hope that a stroke of brilliance falls on my head like a series of drips from the beginning of a Jackson Pollack painting. To select some wines that will start somewhere with chaotic twists and racy turns to finish with an indescribable beauty. I will keep you posted and share my glee while I am getting it prepared. Next time, tasting notes from the Calera Pinots and the mystery wines.
Post - March'07 Back to home...
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