Archive for the 'Wine Tasting' Category

This Monday, June 6th, marks the launch of the Sud de France Festival in New York. The month-long festival, now in its third year, encourages attendees to experience the spirit of the Mediterranean lifestyle, complete with fine wine, foods and entertainment from the Languedoc-Roussillon region. It allows people the opportunity to learn more about the culture and specialties of the region through a convivial approach of tastings and experimentation, all at exciting venues with welcoming ambiance and alongside local winemakers and artists.

For a region with so much to offer, the concept behind the annual festival couldn’t be more appropriate.

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“This is an interesting wine,” said the wine steward as he poured the bruised-looking white into our glasses. “I think you’ll find it….meaty,” he said, a wobbly sales pitch at best.

Everyone at the table looked at each other with sly, faintly amused alarm. That word: interesting. When someone describes a book, a movie, a lecture as merely interesting, it usually indicates a colorless, banal experience. With wine or food, though, the word can signal something ghastly or wonderful or both; a love it or hate it experience; a discovery at least.

I was about to have it all.

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“I miss the days when we made fun of wine snobs for saying that a wine was ‘ingratiating without being obsequious’.” So proclaimed LA Times columnist Joel Stein in a 2008 article titled “Sip, and Shut Up.” The article was a critique of what Stein saw as the excessively micro-style of many wine reviews—reviews that listed every single flavor and aroma detected but never went on to say anything larger and more interesting about the wine.

He had a point. While it’s good for a reader to be exposed to all the aromas, flavors and textures the reviewer detects in a wine, it’s  the figurative language—the metaphors and broader comparisons—that makes the review more engaging, entertaining and, often, more revealing.

One of the most common and most entertaining forms of figurative language in wine reviews—as demonstrated in Stein’s comment—is personification. You’ll find anthropomorphism on almost every page of our Buying Guide.  The wine you’re considering might be a fun and bubbly Prosecco, a big and loud Napa Cab, a sultry and sensual Burgundy or an immature adolescent (from any region really), who needs a few more years to get his act together.

I was inspired to create five wine “personalities,” based around a fairly common adjective in wine review writing. There are of course many more out there—including entire genres yet to be explored (As Stein points out, Gary Vaynerchuk once referred to a wine as Roger Clemens because it seemed “overly pumped up.”). Feel free to offer some of your favorite wine personifications. Here are the ones I came up with.

Big and muscular: the Athlete
Athletes comes in all shapes and sizes, from the big powerhorse quarterbacks (See  Nickel & Nickel 2005 John C. Sullenger Vineyard Cabernet )  to leaner, more elegant dancer types (See Château Giscours 2005 Barrel sample Bordeaux Blend ). Which ones are best is a matter of personal preference though it’s generally agreed that the beefier, bodybuilders can be overbearing and, occasionally, clumsy and oafish.

Earthy: the Hippie Wine
Most people find hippies quite lovable. Most people also agree though that hard-core hippies—the ones who eschew deodorant and bathing on a regular basis—can be a little unpleasant, or—to use another common wine term—“funky” at times.
See JLC 2004 Spofford Station Estate Syrah (Walla Walla (WA))

Sultry, moody, dark: the Troubled Artist (or the Sensual Seductress/Lothario)
Though too intense for some people and/or situations, no one can deny that brooding artists are complex, soulful and, often, highly seductive creatures. See Muratie 2007 Shiraz (Stellenbosch)

Easy, fun, playful, easygoing: Everyone’s Friend
While not known for intellect or conversational depth, the guy or girl who’s  friends with everyone is predictable, rarely moody and fun-loving, so he/she always does well at parties (unless the gathering is of the intellectual, serious variety).  Of course, if you’re seeking more substance the excessively easygoing might come across as vacuous and vapid.
See Solemar 2006 Pinot Grigio (Delle Venezie)
Also see Funky Llama 2009 Chardonnay (Mendoza)

I had a terrible wine the other night. Without naming names, let’s say it was a Viognier with 15% alcohol, from a region with little Viognier experience. Oh, and it had 5 years of bottle age. This wine was truly hard to swallow. In one moment it was hot, another sweet and then flabby. The melon flavors in this poor Viognier tried desperately to peek through the faults, but there was no hope.

Still, I had to finish my glass. And my friend agreed that it was bad, but he poured himself another glass, desperately trying to convince himself otherwise. He’d made the commitment and purchased it, after all. Even at just $9 a bottle, he felt compelled to consume.

I know the feeling. The logical part of my brain says: just because I’ve paid for something bad, doesn’t mean I endure further punishment by drinking it. But the thought of pouring wine down the drain pains me. With Passover this week, I’m inclined to think it’s my own Jewish guilt! I’m reminded of Sue’s post last week, about the sweat that goes into starting a winery. Pouring out a wine is a real insult to the producer, who’s invested tremendous time in crafting it, bad as it may be.

I’m curious what other people’s habits are. Do you treat your palate to just the finer things? Or have you been guilty of drinking plonk out of guilt?

At what point do you give up on a wine?

“Dear Colleague, your wine is wild and savage but brilliant…”
-Philippe de Rothschild to Mario Incisa della Rocchetta about his wine, Sassicaia

This past Wednesday, I had the pleasure of dining with Tenuta San Guido Technical Director and winemaker Dr. Sebastiano Rosa along with his wife Elena and several other industry professionals and journalists. For those in the business of wine, no matter what area of it, dining with one of the most respected oenologists working in Italy today is like a Rolling Stone writer hanging out with Jimmy Page or Mick Jagger. To be drinking one of the most iconic Tuscan wines of all time with the winemaker, geeking out about the different vintages and nuances found within each bottling, is just the ultimate thrill for any truly passionate wino.

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Each year, Wine Enthusiast Magazine awards three tiers of awards (Award of Ultimate Distinction, Award of Unique Distinction, and Award of Distinction) to submitting restaurants with notable wine lists. In reviewing this year’s applicants, I started to think about how wine consumers approach wine selections when they walk into a restaurant, and what most restaurants are honestly doing right (or screwing up) in their presentation of wines.

First, based on the applicant wine lists and my own dining in Manhattan, where I live, I’d say presentation and organization tends to be schizophrenic. Some restaurants organize by wine variety, some by region, and some by style. Others get cute and clever and organize choices by criteria that are more personal and subjective (i.e. “Wines for Romantics;” “Wines for Celebrating;” or “Rebel Wines”). Some include elements of all of the above. I’m not sure anyone is really sure of what diners want, or how they actually read wine lists.

We talked about the different approaches among the judging panel, and just as restaurants varied widely in approach, we all varied widely in what we preferred. Several of us liked the “wine styles” approach—this is great for wine drinkers who know what they like as far as style or flavor profiles go (i.e. “Dry, Crisp Whites” or “Big, Fruity Reds”) but may be lacking in the more advanced wine knowledge (which probably describes 90% of the American wine drinking public). It seems to go one step further in making wine and food pairings choices easier, too. This was in keeping with our own approach to organizing wines in the Wine Enthusiast Wine & Food Pairings Cookbook; we received a lot of positive feedback from readers who connected with this way of presenting wines.

Others in the group found this approach annoying and liked the traditional approach of cataloging wines by region or variety—it seemed to be associated with more “serious” lists and higher-tiered eateries, which, it could be assumed, attract a more serious and knowledgeable wine drinker. I felt this kind of list was less user-friendly and that if you happened to be a food lover who maybe was still learning about wine (again, probably like most Americans), then you might get lost in the endless columns of wines that may not be familiar to you. One hopes these types of restaurants would employ a friendly sommelier who could help diners navigate the list, but in some cases it wasn’t true, and often, people hesitate to ask for help for fear of “looking dumb.” How many of these diners stare numbly at the list, then panic and choose something based on price alone?

Finally, the more eclectic approach of grouping wines under “clever” headings (usually handpicked and chosen by the sommelier or wine director)was deemed among our group to be charming and add a human, personal touch (like having your wine expert best friend handpick wines for you), but only in addition to a list that offered more help, like one of the approaches above.

List organization style was just one of many things we considered in judging our own awards–depth of list, creativity, food-pairing elements–all figured heavily as well, as did staff education, storage and events. There was no one “right” approach to wine lists organization necessarily, but it was an interesting topic of discussion.

What type of restaurant wine list do you prefer? Old school, practical, zany? Are restaurants doing a good job in exposing you to new wines and organizing lists in ways that are helpful, logical and stress-free?

Berry-by-berry sorting is one of the big changes at BV.

On September 15, I sat down with Beaulieu Vineyard’s head winemaker, Jeffrey Stambor, for dinner, preceded by a tasting of several vintages of BV’s flagship wine, the Georges de Latour Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. With 2009 marking Stambor’s 20th year at BV, Stambor was able to offer an interesting historical perspective on the wines–one that I hope did not color my perceptions too much. Staying one step ahead of the FTC’s newly released regulations regarding wine blogging, let me make perfectly clear upfront that BV paid for the dinner and provided the wines.

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Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to take part in three vertical tastings, where a number of vintages of the same wine are poured for the purpose of comparison. Yet regular readers of Wine Enthusiast will note that we rarely include coverage of verticals in the magazine (or online). The verticals we do cover are pretty much restricted to rare and highly collectible wines that may turn up at auction, on fancy restaurant wine lists or in some prescient collectors’ cellars. So why bother attending verticals at all?

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In the recent comments on our 100-point scale for rating wines, we’ve received a number of questions concerning the use of “typicity” to award points. I guess the theory goes something like, “If a wine is typical of its variety/region, it should receive extra points.” To which I call, “Bullsh*t.”

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I recently traveled to Greece and Cyprus on a wine tasting tour and besides being seduced by the beauty, food and culture of the countries, was fascinated by stories of the ancient Greek, Roman and Crusader-era history of the places. Both countries have been making wine for millennia, and many of the wine and food traditions we enjoy today were born in that part of the world.

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