A Mouthful of Wine

Aroma Junkies Get Center of Olfactory Art

I don't do much re-reporting, but this bears a look: New York's Museum of Arts & Design is dedicating a department to aroma arts, that is, perfume, curated by Chandler Burr. Read more about it here. Who knows--perhaps the aromatic art of wine will get a nod.

The Tasting Note Goes Mainstream

Have you always felt that the tasting notes provided for wine—in food or wine magazines, at the wine shop, or on restaurant menus—had nothing to do with you? Many people are uncomfortable with the idea of “a nose of acacia flower, ripe Bosc pear, fresh tangerine, and toasted hazelnut” in wine, and don’t get how they’re supposed to smell this. They may even feel it’s pretentious.

At the same time, many food and scent corporations seem to be hoping consumers are beginning to feel more comfortable with their senses. Starbucks regularly uses “tasting notes” on its coffee bags and signage. I spotted a tasting note on my Haagen Dazs container that mixes the languages of the fragrance and wine industries (top notes, finish) to engage the reader’s senses.

And a Lindt chocolate advertisement in a magazine encourages readers to use all five senses (four shown) in enjoying their chocolate. Lindt’s web site even shows how to set up your own chocolate tasting.

Surely we’re not being encouraged to engage in esoteric chatter about everything we consume. But perhaps we might pause every so often and unself-consciously notice the texture, aroma, or taste of the foods and wines we particularly enjoy.

 

The $646 Bottle of Wine

Yesterday I had the opportunity to try Harlan Estate’s Proprietary Red, a legendary all-Cabernet wine from Napa whose 2006 vintage averages $646 a bottle on Wine-Searcher. (Estimating a dozen sips per glass, my two sips each would have cost $10.77 if I had bought the wine at retail or auction.)

This wine has been described by Jancis Robinson as one of the ten best wines of the twentieth century. And the wine was wonderful, but its flavor is almost beside the point. Quality doesn’t cost hundreds of dollars to produce. Supply (about 1,600 cases each year) and demand (given scores in the high 90s, and even 100 in some years) are the key to the price. Wine lovers who resent such expensive bottles need to remember that these bottles are made for collectors and investors who will not necessarily pull the cork. (Your late-model Ferrari may depreciate by 50% in the first three years, but it won’t disappear the first time you use it!)

Still irritated? Think of your three best friends. The four of you are eating outside on a beautiful day, or snug in your home for a gourmet dinner. You’re sharing a nice bottle of wine that costs $25 or $35 or even $50.

Now image the wine costs more than $600. Are you enjoying yourselves more?

DIY Wine Blends

In the middle of a geeky phase of wine study, I once visited a generous friend with a well stocked cellar who brought out three Bordeaux from different appellations so I could guess which was which when presented with unidentified glasses of wine. I was very pleased with myself. Then someone else handed me a glass to see if I could duplicate my results. And I was stumped! Why had the wine changed so much? I reasoned, I talked it through, I made a guess. Then the friend confessed he had mixed two of the wines. Touché.

Most wines are blends in one way or another. Either wines made from different grapes have been blended (as in a traditional blend such as Côtes du Rhône), or same wines that have been given different treatments are combined to create a final blend (an example would be a single-vineyard Chardonnay, some of which has been aged in oak and some in stainless steel, to achieve a final Chardonnay with a subtler oak presence). But these wines are blended in the cellar by a winemaker.

I’m talking about self-mixology. You might think this is sacrilege, but who says that what comes in the bottle is perfectly tailored to you? Some people add sparkling water, or ice. Others suffer through a wine with too much tannin for their taste, or one that’s sweeter than they’d like.

A few nights ago after a tasting, I was looking for something to sip and enjoy. But the tasting was of Bordeaux reds—not always the most sippable wines without food. One of the wines, a Lalande de Pomerol, was very light-bodied, almost watery, lacking structure but with decent flavor. On the other end of the spectrum was a Cru Bourgeois Superieur from the Haut-Médoc, a cabernet-based wine that was impressively intense, but too tannic for sipping. I added a dash of it to the weaker wine and came up with something reasonable and fairly pleasing.

The “rules” of DIY blending are to combine only same-grape wines or wines that are commonly blended by the winemaker, such as Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon, or Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. It doesn’t always work out, but sometimes the best of two options is to create a third.

Moving!

No wine today--just boxes. It's the beginning of "moving weekend." Back Monday!

 

Managing Expectations (One's Own)

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and yesterday, in a small way, this became evident. I bought a $25 Gelber Muskateller from Austria expecting a little of that heady Muscat essence that I love so much, especially in a crisp, dry version.

And what I got was lemon, wet stones, white grapefruit, and a very slight rose petal aroma that I’d never have noticed if I hadn’t been searching frantically for it. It was a beastly hot day, and I enjoyed my lemony-high-acidity, low-alcohol quaff well enough, but it got me thinking about typicity.

Typicity in wine is what should be expected from a certain wine type or grape variety, with a lot of wiggle room that takes location, harvest conditions, and other factors, into account. Basically, typicity says that if you’re growing the high-acidity grape Riesling but you end up with a low-acidity wine, you’re either a) doing something wrong, or b) intentionally altering what is typical for that grape—and if you’re going to do it that dramatically, why not start with a different grape to begin with? Low-priced wines, say under $10, will generally express less of the grape or wine type (less typicity) than handmade, small-production, single-vineyard, and/or higher-priced wines.

Knowing what to expect can tell you a lot about a winemaker’s values, and what he or she is doing in the vineyard and winery. It also, of course, sets parameters: If you go into the grocery store for a jar of tomato sauce, you’re not expecting it to taste like macaroni and cheese. In my case, “Yellow Muscat” set me up—but only for a disappointment.