Learning and Tasting

These last two days I have been up in Napa, taking a two day wine course put on by Diageo. It’s an exciting time to be in wine country, as fruit is just beginning to be picked and there is a palatable enthusiasm in the air-conditioned halls of the DC&E headquarters. I learned a lot over these last two days, as this course was more advanced and more thoroughly engaging than the last class I took. There were two intriguing tastings, one at the end of day 1 and one at the start (9am) of day 2. The first was white wines, with all the common players, and it was blind, meaning we had to identify the wines by tasting through and finding well-known varietal characteristics. I was proud of myself, because I nailed all six, where just a few months ago I only got two out of six in the same style of tasting. The first and easiest was the Chardonnay, look for yeast and a golden color, symbolic of sur-lees aging in Oak. Check! Then I went to the Alsacian wines, Riesling and Gewurztraminer. I knew the Gewurzt right away, it’s all in the Lychee nut smell and the spicy taste, that’s a dead give-away. The other sweet smelling wine with honey and high acid had to be the Riesling. The Sauvignon blanc was next, just pick out cat pee (it’s not as bad as it sounds) and bell pepper (known as “Vegetal” in the wine snob world). I was a ringer when it came to the Viognier, because it was a Rosenblum 07 Kathy’s Cuvee, and I know that taste at first sip. Lastly came the Pinot Gris, which had to be the Pinot Gris, because… it was the only one left! I will spare the details of the red tasting because I didn’t do as well, all I can say is that I need to trust my gut instinct more, because once I start second-guessing myself, I start to miss them.

On the first day we also did a component analysis, testing the scent and taste of sugar, acid, oak, and tannin in water at various levels. This was very interesting because often the taste of the wine masks the true makeup and makes it difficult to really decipher what is what. The most intriguing aspect of this to me was that sugar, acid, and tannin have no scent. A wine may smell sweet but you do not smell sweetness, and a wine may smell acidy, but they really have no scent. Instead your palate is sending a signal to your brain telling it that the honey smell on a Reisling, or the tannic notes on a Petite Sirah mean that the wine will have those components, but often a sweet smelling wine is actually bone dry. Later in this lesson we discussed why we smell what we smell in wine. Take a pineapple for example. When you smell a pineapple, it smells… like a pineapple. No breakthrough there. But why does it smell like that? It’s because it contains ethyl butyrate, which smells like pineapple. Finished wine imparts tiny bits of these chemicals and grapes, and grapes are the only fruit that can achieve this complexity, add oak and fermentation and the possibilities are endless. So when your friend (or my brother in this case) tells me I sound like an ass because I say I smell coffee beans and dark chocolate in a Syrah, I can look at him and tell him that it’s because those chemicals are actually in the wine, then he can laugh at me! To help with this we were given a lazy susan with wine glasses full of typical scents, lemon and lime, honey, marmalade, apples, etc for white wine and plum, coffee, mushrooms, tobacco, etc for red wines.

My favorite exercise during the two-day course was the blending seminar. They poured glasses of all five of the classic Bordeaux varietals, two clones of Cabernet Sauvignon (clone 4 and clone 6 from BV for those keeping score), Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petite Verdot, and Malbec. We then used pipettes and beakers to blend distinct proportions of each varietal, attempting to achieve a balanced blend, with good acid, nice mid-palate, round lush tannins, deep color, and a great taste. Each of these wines adds something, Cabernet Sauvignon is the classic chocolate, cherry, deep base. Cab Franc is softer than Cab with some of the same characteristics, and along with Merlot it takes the bite off of the Cab, where Petite Verdot and Malbec are used sparingly to add a bit of length and personality to the wine. This is truly where winemaking becomes and art, and in the business it’s not just finding what you like, but understanding what your customers expect and desire from your wine.

All in all this class was wonderful and I learned a lot. The final test was a blind eight wine tasting of four different varietals side by side. My small group managed to nail all of the varietals, then we had to establish where they came from, using the characteristics of climate and terroir, and then try to name the exact winery they came from, although we knew that they were all in the Diageo Portfolio from California. Amazingly, we were able to name six of the eight wineries and where they were from, and don’t worry, I got the glass of Rosenblum Paso Robles Appellation Series Zinfandel correct, as well as the other Zin! I was proud of myself for getting these right and seeing how far I have come in my wine knowledge. My group winning this contest and walking out with a Magnum of 2004 BV Georges Latour Private Reserve was just the icing on the cake! I hope to continue to take these classes and continue my studies as the progress I have made is just the beginning of what I hope to learn.