Talk-A-Vino

If you had been drinking wine for a while, I would expect that you have developed certain taste expectations. As you drink the wines from the different regions, you find that the wines from the same geographic locality made from the same grapes would have somewhat of a similar taste and style (yes, of course, I just described what is properly called Terroir without using the word itself). At some point, the associations between the origin of the wine and its expected taste become engrained in your mind. Looking at the bottle of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, you are expecting to find bright acidity and citrus flavor profile even without opening the bottle. Looking at the bottle of California Cabernet Sauvignon you are expecting to find good amount of fruit with some explicit black currant notes and probably good amount of tannins – note that I’m really trying to generalize here, but you got the point.

This is the way the wine was for a very long time. However, when you taste modern wines, do you have a feeling that your expectations no longer valid and don’t match the reality any longer? I had this experience many times lately, when Amarone didn’t taste like anything expected (you can find my rant of pain here), or when unoaked Chardonnay tastes rather like Pinot Grigio – and there are many more examples of “taste confusion”.

Recently, I had another case of “broken” taste expectations – this time it was somewhat sanctioned, as we did a double (almost) blind tasting. The theme was set a bit ambitiously, as France and Italy. The “ambitious” part is coming from the fact that these two countries on their own have such a variety of wine production that it makes literally impossible to recognize the grape or at least the style of wine (either one of those countries would provide a plentiful selection for a double blind tasting on its own). Anyway, with the main goal of having fun with the wines, we actually had a great time.

We blind tasted 5 wines, which happened to be 4 reds and one white. For what it worth, here are my notes as we were moving along:

#1 – Very nice, a bit too sweet. I think Italy, Super Tuscan/Barbera/Dolcetto

#2 – earthy, nice, little green bell peppers, roasted notes? Bordeaux?

#3 – France, nice bright fruit, good sweetness, noit enough acidity? No idea about the grape.

#4 – interesting, lots of fruit, very nice – no idea.

#5 – great, round, good fruit – no idea.

While I understand that these a rather limited wine descriptions, would you try to guess what was what? Well, you can see the answers below in the picture (wines are set in the order we tasted them, left to right):

Here is an actual list: 2007 Comm. G. B. Burlotto Barolo Verduno; 1995, Chateau Haut-Corbin Saint-Emillion Grand Cru; 2009 Petracupa Greco di Tufo;  2005 Pascal Marchand Pinot Noir and L’oca Ciuca Brunello di Montalcino DOCG – now compare that with my guesses above…

In case you are curious – of course we voted for the favorite – Brunello (#5) was a clear winner, with Greco de Tufo (#3) trailing it closely behind (one point difference).

Where is the case of broken taste expectations? Fruit forward, bright and loaded wine with well masked tannins and almost non-existing earthiness, bright purple in color – 2007 Barolo? I’m very far from Barolo expert, but this doesn’t match my expectations of Barolo, albeit well decanted. Even winning Brunello was quite uncharacteristic, lacking earthiness and tartness, the traditional Brunello bite. I can’t comment on Greco do Tufo (it was actually quite nice), and the only varietally correct wine was 1995 Bordeaux. Am I making too big of a deal from varietal correctness and taste expectations here? It depends. On its own, both Barolo and Brunello were good wines, but if I would order either one in the restaurant with the goal of pairing with food, that could’ve been quite disappointing…

Okay, I can’t leave you with this sad impression of disappointment – it was not that bad at all. Also, we had a great cast of supporting wines, even with some pleasant surprises.

First, two sparkling wines. Chevalier de Grenelle Cuvee Reserve Saumur AOC, a blend of 90% Chenin Blanc with 10% Chardonnay was very good, full bodies sparkling wine, with good notes of apple and toasted oak. In addition to good wine, this was also a very special bottle – a magnum with metal imprinted label. Second sparkling wine was even more unusual – Abrau-Durso Semi-Dry – a sparkling wine from Russia, made by reincarnated famous producer of sparkling wines for Russian Tzar (original company was created in 1870). This wine had just a hint (a whiff) of sweetness, lightly toasted apple and nutmeg on the palate. Very refreshing and delicate. I suggest you will find a bottle and try for yourself – there is a good chance you might like it.

And for the last surprise – 2002 Fontanafredda Barolo DOCG. Why surprising? If you will look at the Wine Spectator’s Vintage Chart, you will see that 2002 was regarded as a very bad year for Barolo, with the rating of 72 and recommendation of wines being past prime. I decanted this bottle at some time in the late morning, and by the early evening, when we actually drunk it, it opened up very nicely – while it was lacking powerful tannins, otherwise it was quite enjoyable wine, very balanced with quite a bit of finesse.

Play with your wine, get friends together and do the blind tasting – I guarantee you will learn something new about your palate, your wine preferences and may be even your friends!

Cheers!

The idea was born – blind champagne tasting. It’s going to be fun! Well, blind sparkling wine tasting, to be more precise. The date was set, menu decided upon. Everybody have to bring a bottle of sparkling wine, which is expected to be of reasonable quality. No, it doesn’t have to be from Champagne only, anywhere in the world is good – with some notable exceptions. For instance, sparkling Shiraz was not welcomed.

All precautions had being taken to ensure that tasting will be blind. All bottles placed into the paper bags, and taped on top. We ended up with 9 different sparkling wines (mistake number 1 – too many). The simplest challenge was to have enough glasses as we adamantly resisted the idea of plastic, so we had to split tasting into two groups, 5 and 4 wines – mistake number 2 stemming from mistake number 1 – all wines should have equal time to breathe, even sparkling.

There we went with the tasting. Wine #1, #2, #3… Break after #5 to move glasses, open 4 more bottles, pour and continue. I think the biggest challenge was the fact that differences between sparkling wines (in general) are often very subtle, and it requires highly trained and sophisticated palate to pick them up. For most of us, we would probably stand at least some chance if we would take extended time to assess the quality of the sparkling wine. Typically white or red wine is “in your face” from the moment you smell the wine. Sparkling wine usually is not. Therefore, you need to reflect on each sip of sparkling wine a lot longer to assess its qualities. If you are moving too quickly, those sparkling wines are becoming almost “all the same”.

Anyway, here is the list of sparkling wines we had at the tasting, in the exact order as we tried them:

1. 2006 Bodegas Carrau Sust Brut Nature Vintage, Uruguay
2. Franciacorta Bellavista Cuvee Brut, Italy
3. 2006 Jacques Germanier Blanc de Blancs Brut Millesime Grande Reserve, Switzerland
4. Champagne Gosset Brut Excellence, France
5. Champagne Thierry Triolet Brut, France
6. 2007 Bagrationi Royal Cuvee Brut Vintage, Georgia
7. 2007 Graham Beck Brut Blanc de Blancs Premier Cuvee, South Africa
8. J Cuvee 20 Brut, California
9. 1998 Champagne Gosset Celebris Brut

Can you guess the winning wine? I would be surprised if you do (no, it was not the one from Uruguay if you went with the most odd choice). Actually, at the first vote we had a tie with 3 wines getting the same number of points, so we had to re-taste that group and then vote again to come up with the winning wine.  And the winner was…wine #6, 2007 Bagrationi Royal Cuvee Brut Vintage from Georgia (yes, we were also very surprised).

This wine was the most interesting of the pack with unusual zesty citrus notes, good acidity and good balance. J Cuvee 20 and 2007 Graham Beck (California and South Africa!) were close runner-ups (they were in the group we had to re-taste), and it is interesting to note that all three were more fruit forward than the other wines in the tasting.

Now, from the prospective of “mistakes” I mentioned before, here are few of my personal disappointments:

Wine #5, Champagne Thierry Triolet Brut, is  a Growers Champagne. I had a pleasure of tasting that wine on the second day, and it opened up a lot more, showing fruit and creaminess. It probably wouldn’t be the winner of the tasting, but I’m sure it would fare better given enough consideration.

Wine #12, 1998 Champagne Gosset Celebris Brut was the only Vintage Champagne in the tasting. It definitely didn’t get enough time to show off all its beauty. By the end of the evening it opened up enough to show off typical yeasty flavors of the vintage champagne, and it became a lot more appealing, at least to my taste.

Oh well, it was definitely a fun exercise! Should you do the champagne blind tasting? May be not. Should you enjoy a glass of champagne instead? Absolutely. Don’t wait for a special occasion, simply celebrate life as it happens. Any day is a good day for a glass of champagne. Cheers!

Can wine tasting be double-blind? You think this is a misnomer, right? Let me explain myself. The basic premise of the “blind” wine tasting is that the taster has no idea what is he or she is dealing with, and by using swirling, sniffing, gargling and any other techniques should identify grape (or grapes), the place where the wine was made, and ideally the producer and the year. For the example of amazing blind tasting I have to refer you to the movie Bottle Shock (if you are into wines, definitely worth watching).

In general, tasting wines 100% blind is rare. What I mean is that even in the case of the blind tasting, there are some limiting factors which help you to identify the wine. For instance, when the wines are tasted blind for Wine Spectator ratings, usually the territory and a year and well known (and the goal of the tasting is simply to rate the wines as good and bad, not to identify grapes and producer). Even when I was tasting the wines for the Certified Sommelier exam (for more info – see About section), it was known that there will be no Pinot Grigio in the glass and grape choices would be really limited.

So what would I call a double-blind wine tasting? I was asked to taste home made wine and provide my opinion. I was asked a number of times and couldn’t refuse. I do call this double-blind – all I know is that the wine is made at home of someone leaving in Connecticut, and I don’t even know if it is made out of grapes or may be berries? Of course the whole purpose of this exercise was only to say whether I like the wine or not (no need to identify producer and the year ), but who doesn’t want to play detective in such a case? Yes, I want to guess the grapes, and I want to guess it right!

While sharing my detailed tasting notes is really useless, as absolute majority of my readers will never taste this wine, I would like to still share a short summary. First and foremost, I did like it! I honestly don’t classify myself as a wine snob – I would gladly drink two buck chuck, as long as it tastes good. But I had a lot of home-made wines before – they are all sweet concoctions, mostly made out of fruit with addition of powerful alcohols – so they really have nothing to do with actual grape wines. This wine actually looked, smelled and tasted good, so here my notes, for what it worth:

Color: dark garnet.

Nose: wine opened with freshly squeezed berries, like raspberries and blueberries, complemented by lime zest.

Palate: very nice fruit (again raspberries, blueberries, ripe plums, some tropical fruit – very unusual for red wine), complemented with vibrant acidity and good tannins.

As you can see, it is a description of a very nice wine – and it was very nice indeed. So was it perfect? Well, it took me some time to realize what this wine was lacking. It was lacking place. There was no notion of terroir, no earth and no minerals. This wine can be from anywhere (and being made in Connecticut, it definitely is). Again, the wine was very drinkable, and a lot of commercially made wine have no notion of place whatsoever – but I think this is something to note when tasting the wine, so here it is.

What would you put as a grape(s) under such description? My top guess is Zinfandel, and if not, my next guess is Syrah. I don’t know the right answer, and I promise to share it – once I will find out.

And as I mentioned before – blind tasting is fun! Get your friends together and play the wine detectives game – I guarantee you a great time!

When tasting the wine, there is a lot of factors which will affect the perceived taste ( like/don’t like). Some of those factors are objective, like temperature (chill the wine, and some flaws will disappear), some of the factors are rather subjective, like your mood.  I want to talk about another factor which is hard to categorize, but it can greatly affect what we think about the wine. It is one and the same factor which comes in many forms – label, producer, cost, rating,  and wine critic in the end of the day. Of course there are exception to this rule, there are best of us who can simply disregard all the known facts, and simply taste the wine for what it is. However, majority of us (myself definitely included), will be influenced by what we know. Ah, Robert Parker rated this wine 93, it must be really great… This bottle of wine cost $100 – it must be great…

Well, there is a good way to eliminate this factor – it is called blind tasting. Considering this is summer, we decided to try a lighter red grape in the blind tasting format – so we chose Pinot Noir. Great thing about Pinot Noir is that it is grown in many different regions, and while the grape is the same, the wines from the different places will taste quite differently.

How do you run a blind wine tasting? Very easily. Each person brings a wine bottle in the paper bag and then opens it. All the bags are assigned random numbers. Then the wines get poured into the glasses which are standing on the mat with the numbers. Voila! Now all the wines can be tasted and independently assessed – no intimidation by any of the factors we mentioned above  – in the glass they all look [almost] the same (oh, boy, I can be bitten up by professionals for such a lame claim, but oh well…).

We had 6 Pinot Noirs and went through them one by one, assessing color, smell and taste of each, exchanging thoughts ( like “I think this is California” or “I can’t smell anything”), but not enforcing opinions. Here are my short notes as we went along (you can actually see the picture of all 6 wines and then see how funny my notes are):

#!:  New world, too alcohol – 2006? (Actual wine: Chateaux Corton Grancey 1999, Grand Cru Corton, France)

#2: New World, California, 2007/2008?(Actual Wine: Sea Smoke Southing 2007, Sta. Rita Hills, California)

#3: Not bad, needs time, Chile? (Actual wine: J. Lohr Fog’s Reach Pinot Noir 2007, Arroyo Seco, California)

#4: Bright acidity, fresh fruit, Oregon? (Actual wine: Terra Noble Pinot Noir Reserva, 2009, Casablanca Valley, Chile)

#5: Classic – perfect smoky nose (Actual wine: Hamilton Russell Pinot Noir 2008, South Africa)

#6: Young and reminding of Monastrell. Very nice (Actual wine: Wine by Joe Pinot Noir 2008, Oregon)

Once we tried all 6 wines, it was the time to tally it up and proclaim the winner, after which all the wines were revealed out of their bags. I would think that considering the title of the post, you already guessed that something unusual is coming. True, though for me it was way too  unusual. So the two winning wines were tied up – #3 and #5, both got the same number of votes. I can understand the wine #3, J. Lohr Fog’s Reach Pinot Noir from Monterey county, California. California is known as the place for Pinot Noirs, especially with the help of movie Sideways. But the wine #5, which I thought had all the traits of the classic Burgundy – please tell me honestly, how many of you heard of ( never mind trying) Pinot Noir from South Africa?! Of course there are great wines from South Africa – Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz, Chenin Blanc, Chardonnay, but Pinot Noir? And nevertheless, wine #5 was Hamilton Russell Pinot Noir from South Africa.

So here you have it – blind wine tasting, which removes all the intimidation and decision influencers, and leaves you one on one with the wine in the pure and honest fashion. No hints “oh, that should be good because…”, no pretension.  Of course there can be flaps. Wine #1 was spoiled (probably oxidation), so it should really be excused from the judgment. At the same time, wine #2, Sea Smoke Southing, would probably be decided a winner, simply because it is a cult Pinot, and it cost $80+ – if you can find it. And yet in the blind setting, it didn’t generate much response. Of course there is always a happy chance that none of us has sophisticated palate – but in the end of the day, the definition of the “best wine” is simple – it is the one which YOU consider the best, so I think we shouldn’t worry about it.

To conclude – get your friends together and try blind tasting one day – you might be surprised, but you will not be disappointed! Drink the wine, and have fun doing that .

Cheers!