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Wine: The Tasting Experience? Continued...
So this is what it has come to, impressing your friends. Citing ratings of recently reviewed wines, remembering a claim or two about the vintage and appearing a part of the vin-de-garde. We have all experienced it, a friend or colleague will hesitate over a glass of wine, words will crescend like the wand of a maestro before his lips will fall upon the glass for the ultimate orchestration in his mouth. It is a moving experience. And we feel that we are missing something - maybe it's anatomical, and our tongue wasn't born with a fifth bud awarded to those who can appreciate wine. But knowing science will be unable to help us with this endeavor, we are willing to plunk down an extra ten and twenty dollars in hopes that an "expensive" bottle of wine will trigger that Elysian high that will transport us to a place where the sun is always shining, the skies are always blue, the trees always green, the breeze always carries a wisp of a secret scent, and the food and wine always more delicious. Is this an idealistic approach to wine appreciation? Most definitely. Does it have to be this grandiose in every glass? No. So where did this passion for wine come from, and why is every wine store promoting wine-tastings as the social event of the moment? Marketing of a $225 Billion dollar industry is one answer - educate the masses and teach them to appreciate wine so consumption increases and so do the profit percentages. Our polite host in the story above is a perpetrator of this capitalist philosophy. Her commentary about the wine, although educational, was thin of passion. Let's say for a minute, that you were sharing a glass of wine with her father. To him, wine is an element. It is a small part of a larger group - his restaurant. With a wink, he'd say, "Wine is like a woman. Yes she can be beautiful, but we love her for how she interacts with what is around her." His story is not about the unique characteristics of this wine or that wine; it is about wine in general and how it plays a role in the communal experience. Retreat a couple thousand years to ancient Greece and Rome, wine was an integral part of the symposiums we read about in the works of Plato and Socrates. Fast forward a few hundred years and you will find wine as part of Christianity's celebratory consumption of the "body and blood" (bread and wine) of Christ to signify fraternal belief in faith. And today, in most homes, religious or secular, we will start or finish a meal with a nod to the chef, thankful for the food and almost always complementing the wine. So, wine started out as and is part of our daily dining and drinking with family and friends. It was never the whole orchestra but maybe the pianist out front or the percussions that take up the rear. Now, back to our original question - why has wine become so intimidating and why is it talked about by those in the know as if opening each bottle releases a flight of birds and within each glass you are certain to consume a combination of fruit, flowers, forestation, concrete, steel and a finish that hints of fresh brewed cappuccino? Wine has been elevated to heavenly levels of verbal and ritual appreciation because of the complexities involved in producing the alcohol. In each bottle, in every sip, you are tasting a part of the process - the wine's history, farms and farmers, weather and soil, sugars and alcohol, tanks and barrels, winemakers and consultants, and so on. In an attempt in explaining these many factors, let's break down the story and see if we can help our traveler make sense of it all. 1) Your Guide: Wine Spectator. Wine periodicals have a wonderful writing style that turns grapes into gold. The editors must have purchased that Microsoft Word plug-in that touts a Thesaurus for the agriculturally ignorant and sensory bereft. Kidding, but will you "be greeted with damp, temperature controlled aromas so thick that they will stick to your clothes." Yes and no. Yes, wineries are temperature controlled and are a welcomed relief for those visiting on hot summer days. Fermentation is controlled by temperature and helps to properly mature wine, i.e. to age and "germinate" so that the wine continues its natural development process. Therefore, wine needs below room temperature spaces. Lesson #1, keeping your wine on top of your refrigerator or next to the microwave is a bad idea because the heat that these appliances give off will re-ignite the fermentation process and sour the finished product. No, the aromas will not stick to your clothes, but it is a wonderfully articulated phrase that compliments the power of the sense of smell that dominates the wine tasting process. (More on smell below.) ...Rows of French oak barrels will reflect in towering stainless steel fermentation tanks. Aging wine in wood barrels (oak) will infuse flavor that would not have been present in the wine if it was kept in a neutral, stainless steel tank. Wine aged in massive stainless steel tanks will let the fruit do the talking, i.e. not interrupt the original flavors that the grapes could provide. As for the oak having a French family lineage, it is accepted in the wine world that the climate in France produces the appropriate, savory slat of wood. Can other wood be used? Yes, for example, Sicily has an abundance of chestnut trees, and for years Sicilian winemakers used the wood from these trees to store wine. However, the chestnut wood added an extra astringent, known as tannins (more on tannins below), and produced a wine that created an ancillary market for over-the-counter heart burn medication. Advantage, oak. 2) The History of the Place. ...When my parents met in a restaurant on the other side of town, it was the eve of Italy's involvement in the Second World War. Wine periodicals and savvy marketers will do a wonderful job of tapping our desire for nostalgia. The romance of history will inevitably add depth to your drinking experience and should elevate your appreciation of the wine making process. Wouldn't you want to drink the wine made by a man who survived WW2 and proposed to a woman he met just one time before the war started? There is love in that glass. Go for it. 3) Winemakers in shabby cellar clothes and consultants. Winemaking is a collaboration of effort and clothing is optional. The farmer who manages the vineyard spends his time growing the grapes, getting dirt under his fingernails and painting his shoes with the color of the soil. Farming typically peaks in the sweltering summer months. So, farmers don't wear suits. Farms are dusty and the sun is sweaty and the farmer doesn't like to pay the extra dry cleaning bills. Collaborators. The farmer isn't necessarily the winemaker. Consider the winemaker as the nanny. If the farmer gives birth to the grapes, the winemaker rears the grape through its childhood development. And babies throw up and children spill things. Suits optional here as well. ...Our limited wisdom finally gave way to hiring a consulting enologist that took us to the next level. Consultants, on the other hand, will wear suits because they are the teachers who will help you understand what to expect from the world outside of your sand box. They offer the global market education that will provide you with the ingredients to a good report card. If your vintage receives "95 points +" you will be more desirable and command a higher price for your wine. For once, teaching is sexy, worldly and financially worthwhile. 4) The Fourth Collaborator: Nature. OK, we just talked about dirt. Let's dig our feet into what the wine world calls dirt (and weather), "terroir." ...It's bone dry, a reflection of the terroir - a stony, clay and fossil ridden limestone soil that provides the body. When you visit a vineyard, the first thing you notice is the plush green leaves lined up in a row. Under the umbrella of foliage, clusters of purple and green bunches of grapes look good enough to eat. You are prevented from plucking a grape and popping it in your mouth because with every step you feel the caked soil sink under your shoes and sharp rocks penetrating your soles. This is the vineyard's wooden spoon slapping the back of your hand for attempting to steal a cookie from the cookie jar. Your eyes leave the floor and you follow the elderly, flaky bark of the vines. These trees look dead; you would definitely think they were if you found them in this condition in your garden. This is the amazing paradox of grape growing. These suckers strive on starving. With bucket loads of sun and a drought amount of water the ground looks good enough for an archeological dig. The soils are dry and aerated because of the abundance of rocks around. And this is a good thing because this type of loose soil will allow the grape roots to spread below the surface level and suck up all the water and minerals it can find. They are fighting for survival to provide enough natural resources for the foliage to release energy to its offspring through the photosynthesis process. No one has ever been able to accuse grapes for being thin skinned. Grapes are tough and when you delve into them, you realize they are formidably constructed because of their fight for survival with limited resources. ...Perfect weather in 2002. We are in a valley with south-facing slopes. It is drier down here and the microclimate is optimal for producing bigger, deeper, richer wines. The weather will add to the struggle. Hot summer days and warm winds will increase the pressures of survival. If it rained all summer long, the grapes would be fat with water and become "thin skinned" and good enough to eat. The bigger, deeper, richer wines are produced where the warm weather produces high concentrations of sugar. Ain't that sweet. Let's taste.
Continued...
Wine Post (2 of 3) - August'05 Back to home...
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