Why Serious Eaters Should Be Serious Wine Tasters
On Fridays, Deb Harkness of Good Wine Under $20 drops by with Serious Grape. This week, why serious eaters have the skills to become serious drinkers.
Wine tasting notes are funny things. Some people read them and wonder if the folks writing them have lost their minds.
Elderflowers? Acacia? Litchi? Gooseberries? Leather? Can anybody really taste those flavors in wine?
The answer is yes.
But you have to be able to identify the flavors and aromas outside the bottle before you can taste them in your next Merlot or Sauvignon Blanc. That's why Serious Eaters are more likely to be serious wine tasters than folks who dine on nothing but peanut butter sandwiches and Rice Krispies.
Ann C. Noble, the UC Davis professor who came up with the Wine Aroma Wheel, contends that most of us have extraordinary taste abilities. What we lack is the ability to link what we taste with a specific word. When someone like me tries to tell you about a wine, we have to make analogies between the flavors in the glass and other easily identifiable smells and tastes that you might be familiar with in another context.
But I find there's more to it than that.
It's really hard to taste bell pepper in a Cabernet Sauvignon unless you've tasted a bell pepper. Ditto for the more exotic terms wine critics and writers of tasting notes use. I once had someone tell me that it was nonsense that I thought a white wine tasted of gooseberries. "Have you ever tasted a gooseberry?" I asked, referring to the super tangy fruit that is quite popular in Europe, but less so in the U.S. "No," came the response. I suggested that tasting a gooseberry might be a good first step before dismissing the analogy as crazy!
This may be bad news for most people, but for Serious Eaters? If you're reading this blog you probably have a wide-ranging interest in food, and are willing to try new tastes. Your interest in food will only increase your pleasure in wine. If I, or some other wine writer, suggests you might taste soy sauce when you sip a wine, the chances are excellent you will have had soy sauce—and as soon as I mention it, you will be able to identify that savory, umami-like sensation in your mouth. This creates a link between flavor and word, and once those links are made, you'll find that wine tasting notes make a lot more sense.
Have you ever been tempted to shout "Eureka!" when you've read about a wine and tasted exactly what the writer described in your glass? Or are you one of those folks who just can't get a grip on the raspberry flavors in a glass of Pinot Noir to save your life? Feel free to share real life experiences.
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10 Comments:
Sometimes it helps to taste a really extreme example of a flavor in a wine. For example, I had a Cab from South Africa once that was all green pepper. It was as if someone had taken a pepper and mashed it into the wine. It was terrible, but I can now tease out the green pepper in almost any wine (which thankfully are less intense than that one experience).
Longj at 12:00PM on 01/23/09
SUCH a good article. Now I know why my husband, the Spaghetti-O's and Twinkies man, sticks to veryverysweet White Zinfandel and Riesling, while I, the foodie, have rarely ever had a wine I didn't like (except for a really bad California red Zinfandel once).
akk328 at 12:58PM on 01/23/09
Good stuff. And very true. The best way to articulate flavor nuances and descriptors is through experience. One of the things that has helped me with understanding and talking about wine is to talk about the feeling it gives. Tough because it's general, but I think most wine people can agree that a good champagne tastes like magic.
proncis at 1:33PM on 01/23/09
I am a big wine lover and I very much enjoy the whole process of discovering flavours and picking up on the notes with each swirl- I find it terribly fascinating. I ve had some oenology courses before and they made us smell & taste hundreds of different scent & aroma samples to "cultivate" our nose.& tastebuds. I'd love to take another course again and spend more of my free time studying wines. I also very much love discovering new world wines, I've tasted some great ones from chile & new zealand.
MariannaF at 2:21PM on 01/23/09
i definitely agree -- i used to think it was all BS, that wine people would were over exaggerating the detection of flavors.
then i went to mosby winery in santa ynez, CA, and the guy pouring the wine told me "this one tasted like an almond joy." and i could taste, very clearly, the chocolate, almond, and coconut notes in the wine. it was really eery at the time, but it was definitely my "eureka" moment like you mention above.
megannesta at 3:56PM on 01/23/09
This is totally right - but how do you learn to use wine discriptors that reference things you can't taste? http://laasinvineyard.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/do-i-have-to-taste-a-wild-boar/
mslaas at 4:22PM on 01/23/09
Alas, I'm still waiting on my eureka moment. I love wine, but really can't taste all these magical things others detect. I'm a super taster (about 25% of the population are), and so have twice as many taste buds as regular people. Consequently, I taste things really intensely. The problem is, alcohol completely overwhelms my taste buds, so all those delicate flavors are washed out. Hard spirits are even worse -- a fine single malt Scotch tastes like vodka with a drop of liquid smoke. I'm jealous of people who can taste all these wonderful things I cannot.
But, I'm still willing to try. :)
ilovebutter at 4:26PM on 01/23/09
greta article =) my light bulb moment was with an exceedingly green peppery cab sav too.
onedaylingers at 11:47PM on 01/23/09
This article was super helpful. I have a tendency to just look for traditional flavors when I taste like blackberry, leather, etc. I never thought to look for green pepper or soy sauce, but that makes perfect sense. I'm looking forward to expanding my diet and expanding my wine nose and palate. Thanks!
brataloid at 12:59AM on 01/24/09
My "eureka" moment and the catalyst for a career involving wine was experiencing an intense aroma of roses while drinking a Johannisburg Riesling and dining on spicy BBQ shrimp - I'm sorry to say I've long forgotten who I dined with, but I've never forgotten that incredible moment of wine and food synergy.
pdrabbit at 3:13PM on 01/25/09