Banish Care

Fakers and how I faked my way to the top

Jason Ohmann — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 19:28:50 +0000

The top? Well, maybe not the top, but I’d say that I have to count myself among some of the most knowledgeable wine people in my vicinity. And I did it simply: by being a bigger faker than the next guy.

The wine industry is largely an industry of fakers, of schnooks and of wannabes. Unlike wine-making itself there are very few institutions that offer any definitive or authoritative courses of study on general wine knowledge. This is especially true the further you get from major metropolitan areas. And to be honest, most people would probably believe that such studies would be frivolous even in the face of equally frivolous, yet much more established studies. And I’m not exactly sure they’d be wrong.

Floating in a world of wine that is absolutely deeper than just about every layperson can fathom and even deeper than most “experts” would be willing to admit, most of us who are forced to find our own way in this business rely on faking it to get us to the top. But believe it or not, there’s a beauty in faking it as well as a dark side.

There is a chasm in the wine world between the knowing and the know-nots. The surest zipline across this chasm is faking it. Yes, faking it is essentially lying or padding out the scant information you do know with information that certainly sounds good, but may be uncertain. Good fakers know how to create sort of “informational curlicues” that either reiterate known facts in subtle ways that make them seem fresh or expounding a kind of sensational empty talk that may be evocative, but not of any concrete pieces of information. Bad fakers simply lie or fabricate information to sound technically knowledgeable. Really bad fakers create fabrications when there is no cue to do so in order to assert authority where they haven’t a right to any. Good fakers are aware of the chasm and know that a few pieces of salient specificities plus a solid knowledge of basic wine principles is more than enough to make it without having to resort to outright lies.

I suppose this notion translates to many industries that are generally rich with information. But let me give you a couple examples of good and bad fakery in the wine business.

Not long ago I was talking to a client about different wines out of Piedmont. He was talking at length of his affection for 2001 Barolos. Having had a number of Barolos from that vintage myself, I couldn’t help but agree with him that the vintage was largely underrated and deserved all the attention we could give it. Because I was working for a distributor at the time, he asked me if I had any Barolos from that vintage. Sadly I did not, but I did have a couple Barbarescos from the same vintage from a small, regal house that was almost universally praised by critics. When I told him this, he wrinkled his nose and said “Barbarescos, in my experience, can’t hold up longer than 5 years. They just don’t have the legs.” Unfortunately for that man I instantly knew that he was lying and that he had no experience with Barbaresco much less Barbaresco from the 2001 vintage. It’s an absurdity to think that Barbaresco somehow shares common longevity with the likes of Cru Beaujolais and maybe California Pinot Noir. The man was clearly trying to assert dominance and authority by faking it. Because he was a client of mine, I could do nothing but give him a pass on it and I’m sure the man is incapable of recovering like a good faker can, but I’ll explain a little more about that below. I have even heard a speaker who made great claims to expertise make the statement that the winery which he was discussing “never fell below 250 hecotlitres per hectare” and so was a “very selective” grower. The absurdity is that very few people—even wine experts—care about exact yield numbers. Laypeople wouldn’t even know what the hell a hectare was much less how it related to whatever a hectoliter is…and why should they? The man falsified an irrelevant piece of information and so burned for it as he was speaking to a room full of professionals.

Also recently I was called upon to do a French wine tasting for a client of mine with less than 4 days notice. They were good clients so I agreed to work them into my schedule. In our hurried communications to get the thing set up, I missed a few important details. When I walked into the establishment to make final preparations for the tasting, I realized that the tasting was not to be conducted as a “stand-up” tasting as I had presumed, but a “sit-down” tasting. In a stand-up tasting, the people come to you and sift through the wines fairly casually. In these types of events you need to only distill 5-10 second blurbs about the wines and simply repeat them over and over again. In a sit-down tasting you’re the ringmaster and you are called upon to talk about each wine at length. People look to you to captivate their imaginations about each wine. They want you to paint a picture and tell a story. Thankfully at this tasting I was well versed in most of the wines and consider my general French knowledge to be decent enough, so I felt comfortable faking it for most of the tasting. However, there was a brand new wine that I had placed into this tasting that I had no time to research and knew little to nothing about. The wine was a Minervois, for those that know what that is. Again, thankfully, I was and am a rabid fan of the likes of Minervois, Corbieres and Cotes du Rousillon, so I knew a lot about the area. When that wine came up for discussion I had a choice. I could lie about technical data such as the precise varietal blend and the family that produced the wine or I could fill my time with evocative language about the deep south. So, I regaled the people with talk of Le Mistral, Garrigue, and “the Lake of Wine”. I spoke of the dried herbs that the area was famous for and their influence on the palate profiles of the wines. I did speak to the wines technical specs, but only generically in terms of what tends to be grown there. The tasting was a success, I never had to lie outright, and the Minervois won the day, selling the highest amount.

And now the real crux of what differentiates a good faker and a bad one: as soon as I left that tasting—that very night in fact—I went online and absorbed all I could glean about that producer, their wines, and their specific story which was a very compelling one I was to discover. You see, bad fakers are content to sit on the pomp of high wine knowledge, often using condescension as a tool to keep people from pulling back the velvet curtain. It is this group that tends to drive neophytes away with intimidation and snobbery. Good fakers know that fluff is much less harmful (may even be beneficial) than deliberate falsifications. What more they know that “getting it right” is of high importance, even if good information isn’t always convenient.

From now on, when you speak to “wine professionals” I hope you see us all as fakers. And I hope you can someday see yourself as a faker too. In engaging with that which you don’t know you are driving yourself towards that which you will know. While faking it may really only be necessary when people are looking to you for authority, its lesson of intimate engagement with the subject matter is invaluable.

Book Review: Vino Italiano

Jason Ohmann — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:59:07 +0000

I will be occasionally reviewing books on wine in this blog. While my reviews will be reviews in the usual way, I would like to make a few points of reference so that neophytes can better understand how to approach the book in question. Most of this information can be found in the prefacing Synopsis. I previously wrote this anecdotal article in preface to this review.

Synopsis

Title: Vino Italiano

Authors: Joseph Bastianich and David Lynch

Published: Clarkson Potter Publishers, NY (2002, 2005)

ISBN: 1-4000-9774-6

Paperback and hardcover, 531 pages

Expertise Level: Moderate

While this book is a wonderful appellation by appellation guide of all of the Italian winemaking zones, it does presume a certain amount of prior knowledge and can generally be classified as for people with “just enough Italian wine knowledge to be dangerous to themselves.” There are some basic black and white political maps attached to each section, but again they presume a general prior notion of topography in the reader. Often this topography is described in the narrative texts, but as always, I recommend using the World Atlas of Wine as a companion while reading this book. In fact, Vino Italiano is a perfect mate with the Italian sections of that Atlas.

It should be noted that if you are willing to let things go over your head quite frequently, this book is still extremely effective at portraying the spirit of each region (for more on that, read on), which is invaluable at tackling the sometimes paradoxical zones that are more often at odds with each other than in agreement on any one standard or definition. The book claims to be an overview for newcomers to Italian wine, but I think that the totally uninitiated, even if they know a little about winemaking in other parts of the world, will have to do a lot of cross-referencing to feel fully comfortable reading this book. Learning is, by definition, leaving your comfort zone at least a bit, so I do recommend this book to anyone with a desire to know more about Italy and its wines.

On schizophrenic women and Italian wine

As I touched upon in the prefacing anecdote to this review, Italian wines were my first love and my first avenue into the world of fine wines. While I have been in love with Italian wines for several years and while I seek out new and exciting ones all the time, I find myself constantly in a fog of misunderstanding and more importantly, I find myself constantly exploring and discovering new things. As Vino Italiano hopscotches along from zone to zone it becomes clear that no precedent set in any one section endures to the next. In fact, a casual reader might assume that iconoclasm is paradoxically a rule and not an exception when it comes to this winemaking tradition. The casual reader would be right on this count. If you are a bit more advanced (let’s say you know a thing or two about all the major French appellations), it’s probably best that you check your left brain at the door—you’ll find little such consistency here. Even within any of the individual zones there are reversals of rules and norms even from one town to the next, often a mere 10 miles away.

So one might ask of Italian wines and the appellational authority of Italy what can be done to clean that up, to make things consistent. And while they certainly have made several sometimes disastrous and oftentimes impotent attempts to make Italian wines easier to understand and more palatable to international audiences, I think nothing would be more apocalyptic for these longstanding traditions. After all, Italian winemaking is living oenological archaeology. While not historically the origin of winemaking, Italy, or Rome more accurately, was the seat of winemaking for centuries—quenching the thirsts of kings and paupers throughout France, Italy, and Germany long before those countries had thought to put their own land under vine. These drastic differences in approach should not be hammered into some ill-thought convention, but celebrated and highlighted.

Italian wines are that schizophrenic girlfriend you had in college (or maybe you are that schizophrenic girl—if so, welcome to my blog, you can contact me here). Erratic, possibly insane, never the same from day to day, but seemingly living for love. Maybe later in life you met that “special someone”—perfectly balanced and adjusted. While your life may be a good one now—better perhaps than if you tried to saddle the bronco that was your schizophrenic college girlfriend—you think of her sometimes, don’t you? While life in her company may have been a brand of living hell, no highs were higher, no lows lower, and no day perfectly boring. So maybe you’re just a regular person, you have your stable of Napa cabs, Bordeaux, and Burgundy wines. But wouldn’t it be fun to take the stallion out every now and again? What’s great here is that your Burgundies won’t get jealous and leave your cellar. It’s just a night of random passion with an unpredictable schizophrenic wine with no one around to judge you harshly. Little in life brings this kind of creative élan.

Italy: land of intuition

As I touched upon above, Vino Italiano is a sort of hybrid reference and narrative with a little cookbook thrown in for good measure. Even better is that it all comes off effortlessly. Bastianich and Lynch’s narrative writing is excellent, fresh and interesting. Each zone section begins with a short narrative that seems to be equally concerned with the place and with the wine—presumably with the goal of making readers understand that these are inextricably linked. These narratives are unflinching, not attempting to gloss over the less savory elements of Italian culture. The subtitle for the section on the Veneto zone reads, “They Eat Horses, Don’t They?” And rather than pass judgment on such a practice, it is merely described in the overall pattern of culture that defines Veneto. Too often American notions of Italian wines get lumped into one great characterless mass where people believe all Italian wines are akin to basketted jugs of Chianti. With each section of the book we are gently asked to break down this unfair conglomeration of many zones which could almost better be understood as separate countries unto themselves.

While the authors have an obvious affection for the more pastoral and antique elements of Italian culture and winemaking, these sections include frank assessments of modernization attempts. There is an acknowledgement that modernization can occur in such a way as to continue and better tradition—the real story of Italian winemaking in the last 20 to 30 years. They talk about the rise of Aglianico del Vulture, a super-ancient varietal grown in Basilicata, which has seen an exciting resurgence in quality and importance as of late. “While your friends are battling it out for rare (and often incredibly expensive) Barolo and Brunello, you might consider checking out [some of the finer Aglianico del Vulture producers].” They continue, “If you care about the wine, not the show, Basilicata is a place to consider. Get there before everyone else,” thus placing the quality of the wine in a place of prominence and inferring that obscurity can lead to extraordinary value in almost every zone in Italy.

In these narratives we get acquainted with the people most important to winemaking in that region. These people and their estates are described in very specific terms in the subsequent breakdowns of wine types of that region (commonly white, red, sparkling, rose and/or dessert). This book brings a specificity to each region that allows it to be used as a buyers guide, assuming you have a well stocked, thoughtful retailer in your neighborhood.

All of these narrative sections taken as a whole urge readers to ditch their will to know and adopt a will to understand—meaning rote memorization of facts will not get you far in “getting” Italian wine. What’s necessary is a will to understand the region as it is, along with all its cultural, historical, climactic, and winemaking quirks—and there are plenty of quirks to go around. “When [Costantino Charrere, Valle d’Aostan winemaker] greets a friend on the trail in his French-inflected Valle d’Aosta patois, it’s yet another example of the indefinable, imprecise nature of the ‘Italian’ culture.” It is this very imprecision that we are asked to embrace.

Some of these narrative sections are so strong that they could almost stand alone outside any guide as simple prose. Sections like “The Guns of Barbaresco” in which the authors describe a day sheltered underneath a noisy roof as hail stones bounce off it and artillery shells are whistling into the clouds to hopefully drive the hail away, are beautiful, terse and prosaic. They do much to evoke the specifics of each zone without dragging the reader down in endless description.

Just the facts

Accompanying these wonderfully written narratives are boxed reference sections with a basic rundown of the more important varietals in each zone as well as other facts like overall production, percentage of DOC wines produced, and other native food products of that zone. These sections also include “Degustazioni” or recommended tastings. This section contains a breakdown of several of the zone’s most important wines and some suggested producers to try from each of these wines. There are notes guiding readers what differences and similarities to look for when tasting these wines. Again, mention of these specific producers presumes access to these wines—sometimes very hard to find in US shops without some effort—but they are great guideposts to tasting Italy’s most authentic and character-filled wines. After all, reading will only get you so far along in your understanding and appreciation of Italian wines. Sooner or later you’re going to have to put your lips on a few—a chore I’m sure none of you dread.

After the narrative and data sections for each zone you can find a pretty thick set of appendixes, again meant for straight reference. These appendixes include breakdowns of the various DOC appellations across Italy, prominent producers, and varietals among other things. I found this information to be appropriately concise and easy to read. While not complete or, I assume, meant to be complete, these morsels are the perfect aperitif for a greater appetite in any of the specific zones or DOCs.

Not necessarily meant to be read from front to back as you might with the narrative sections, these sections ensure the longevity and usefulness of this book on your shelf. As you explore Italian wines, this information should provide the perfect level of illumination to remove trepidation of the unknown, and entice into deeper understanding—something that college girlfriend of yours never came with. I found the Degustazioni sections to be particularly novel and great encouragement to get out and taste these wines and have fun with it. Too often books on wine are too far detached from the stuff itself.

Cucina Italiano

At the very end of each zone section, you can find authentic recipes native to that particular zone. While I found these recipe sections to be a bit out place, they were in no way unwelcome. Each recipe is written by famous restaurateur (and mother to the author), Lidia Bastianich or equally famous chef and restaurateur . I have yet to try any of these recipes, though more than a few caught my eye, but as with the tasting sections, these recipes seem to call for some more exotic ingredients that will be difficult to find if you live in the US and not near a major metropolitan area. They are meant to be a sort of backdrop to the portrayal of the authentic culture of each of the zones and so further the efforts of the narrative sections. As with Italian wine, Italian cuisine is oftentimes maligned by being lumped into a generic and unjust stereotype.

Sì sì, Vino Italiano

Jason Ohmann — Thu, 22 May 2008 21:14:17 +0000

The following was initially meant to be an introductory anecdote to introduce a review of the excellent book Vino Italiano by Joseph Bastianich and David Lynch. As most of you know, brevity is not my strong point, so I decided to break the review up into this anecdote with the actual review to follow. Please bear with me. I think a lot about cutting down what I do into more digestible parts.

Upon reading the title of Joseph Bastianich and David Lynch’s new book Vino Italiano, I was reminded of a sort of employee picnic I attended some years ago. I was young and working in a small Osteria in central New York State run by a crazy Piemontese gentleman by the name of Giovanni. While Giovanni was almost completely insane and dependent on more substance than Lou Reed, he was a great guy to work for most of the time. From him I learned a lot about Italian food, wine, and culture while sitting in on his early morning espresso and grappa sessions, right before he would go down into the basement and add pot and prescription painkillers to the mix to become unintelligible in every way. It was really at his hands that I became a true fanatic of Italian wines and simply wine in general. He had loaned me a book by Terry Robards, former long-time wine columnist for the New York Times and, as it turned out, the proprietor of a small wine shop in a neighboring town from where I grew up. The book was inscribed by Gio and addressed to Gio as he had given the book to himself on one of his birthdays. Mr. Robards was obviously a huge fan of Italian wines himself as I remember long sections of that book where he urged buyers of ultra-premium Bordeaux to look towards appellations like Brunello di Montalcino and Barolo.

Giovanni had under his employ as his dishwasher an older Neapolitan gentleman by the name of Guido. It was rumored that Guido had a bad gambling problem and indeed he would disappear for days or weeks on end without notifying anyone. In his stead, Gio would often hire some young kid who would instantly get the boot the moment Guido came rolling back into town. Guido spoke very little English, was impossibly vitriolic and reeked of booze, tobacco, and clothes that he probably didn’t even change weekly. He was short and bald and his teeth and lips were stained brown from the chewing tobacco he used. How Giovanni and Guido came together in that unlikely area in central New York, I’ll never know. All we knew of Guido was how much he hated us and the entire litany of slurs that southern Italians are known to utter in the direction of northern Italians. And let me tell you, these slurs were rarely ever delivered in good humor. But like an old embattled and embittered married couple, neither Gio nor Guido seemed to want to give the satisfaction of ending the relationship finally.

The picnic I am talking about took place in early summer on Giovanni’s property out in the rolling hills of that area. Gio’s house was not large, but it sat on an appreciable plot of land, even holding a couple of his step-daughter’s horses, though I would hesitate to call it a ranch. At his behest the picnic was to start at 10am, for we were to eat and drink straight through two meals and well into the night. That particular day was the first time I had learned the pleasures of a meal delivered at an excruciatingly slow pace, spread across many hours and hitting upon just about every high note of peasant Italian cuisine. Likewise, we toured many of Italy’s wine appellations, and even copious amounts of Heitz Grignolino back when Gio could get some mailed to him. Apparently Gio’s parents, Piedmontese vineyard owners, had provided Joe Heitz with the initial cuttings of this Grignolino, now used to make a port wine, I think.

Shortly after we had settled into the first round of many, a battered old white van with rusting body panels came rumbling up to the head of the driveway bearing the logo of a local electrical contractor. When it stopped we all looked up the driveway from our picnic tables to see Guido amble out of the van, pulling two large jugs bearing red wine out and onto the dirt drive. He left a third on the passenger floor. Guido, wearing the same wool sweater he always wore even though it was the peak of summer, hit the front of the van twice with his stout small hands, slammed the door shut, and raised his hand in salute to the driver, who roared off down the small country road. Guido hooked his thumbs into the handles on the two jugs and slowly hobbled down the drive towards the picnic area. Red wine sloshed back and forth as he walked.

The fact that Guido was there at all was amazing to us and the fact that he came bearing gifts doubly so. Guido parked himself on a log in front of the then-cold firepit and put the two jugs down flanking himself to either side. Throughout the day, Gio or his wife Theresa delivered food and wine to Guido who refused to even acknowledge the presence of the rest of the party at the picnic tables. I remember being somewhat baffled and offended at the time that such a bilious old man commanded such politeness from our hosts. Eventually the sun sank and our heads floated in a sea of wine, grappa, and amari. Gio piled wood into the firepit and lit a fire of a size only capable of a man under the grip of powerful muscle relaxers and a lot of alcohol. I myself was under the burden of quite a bit of alcohol so I do dimly recall the flames weren’t the only things dancing in my head. The party went on, though, and wouldn’t stop for quite some time.

At the time there was a very cute and quirky young chef working for Gio who was something of a musical expeditionist. It seemed that every couple of months she was trying her hand at a new and uncommon instrument. That month she had happened across an old accordion in very good condition at a thrift store, so of course she was trying to learn how to play it. She had brought it to the picnic to show Gio and the rest of us, and indeed it was a beautiful instrument with a white pearl casing and brass buttons.

No sooner had she snapped open the case to show a barely cognizant Gio than Guido finally uprooted himself from his spot on the log to gently ask her if he could try it on. Shocked, I’m sure, she said yes. All eyes were on him as he slung the strap over his shoulder. Without unlocking the bellows he ran his thick fingers over the keys and valves.

“It’s be-yoo-tiful,” he said to no one in particular.

You could see now the flames dancing in his eyes as he peered down at the accordion, which itself glimmered in the firelight. He unhooked the bellow lock and gave the accordion a couple of meek squeezes. It bleated a bit and overall sounded wheezy and atonal. I thought that maybe a father or uncle of his had played the accordion and that he had picked it up in a fit of nostalgia. No sooner had I thought that than he launched into a surprisingly delicate rendition of Amazing Grace, which surprised all of us.

He had only played through the first verse and first chorus when he simply stopped, locked the bellows and sighed, rubbing his hands together gingerly. His hands were trembling and I remember wondering if he was simply arthritic or if he had felt electricity crackling though his hands. He unslung the accordion and handed it back to Sara then wiped at the corners of his eyes with the filthy sleeves of his sweater.

“Thank you, Sara, thank you,” he said softly.

Sara placed the instrument back into the case and Guido stroked it as if it were a cat.

“It’s be-yoo-tiful,” he said again.

We asked him to play again, but the only response we got out of him was, “thank you, thank you.”

For the rest of the night everyone wanted to know more of this new—or old—Guido. Several had taken a spot on the log next to him, but while he was much kinder than we had ever seen him, he was as taciturn as ever. A gentle smile and eyes that reflected the firelight did not leave his face the entire night.

When I took my turn at cracking the enigma, I decided to ask about the two glass jugs of nameless red wine that still sat in the dirt on either side of him.

He asked, “You want to try? My uncle Salvatore make.”

“Of course,” I said, holding out my glass, bracing myself for a healthy dose of sugar and formaldehyde.

He poured liberally into my glass still with that wistful look on his face. “Vino Italiano,” he said as he poured. I may have done something so silly as to swirl and sniff.

Being the know-it-all that I was at the time I asked him, “So what are we talking about here, is this Barbera, Sangiovese, Primitivo, something from Campania perhaps?”

“Sì sì,” he replied, “Vino Italiano.”

Robert Mondavi: California's Caesar

Jason Ohmann — Sat, 17 May 2008 02:13:01 +0000

Having just read about the passing of Robert Mondavi at the age of 94, I felt compelled to say a few words. It may be difficult for many casual wine drinkers to truly know Mondavi's impact on American winemaking and in fact on American culture. To many, the word "Mondavi" represents a brand with all carefully crafted connotations that a focus group could come up with. But he is a man. A lion, in fact who believed in the golden land of California and fought off whole legions of doubters to prove his belief. His fervor was an inspiration to winemakers in California and in fact, quite far abroad.

Ultimately, he was sabotaged by his own success, though this was not something he endured silently. In a way his life is a parable that is applicable to the whole endeavor of Californian winemaking, indeed to any area that strives to erect a towering honor in a place where only scrubland stands. His is a lesson against corporate leeches who wish to grab, with hostility if necessary, all the fruits of creativity and decades of risk and toil without themselves bearing the burden of any of that risk or weight of vision.

As with the betrayal of Julius Caesar, Mondavi's less violent demise marks the age of decadence in California. An age when multi-millionaires plant vineyards out of nothing and demand hundreds of dollars a bottle on their very first vintage. An age when bucketloads of money change hands over small pieces of paper that may be affixed to the stuff itself, but have little to do with the toil and talent necessary to put an honest product inside.

To the profiteers and egotists of Californian winemaking, may I gently remind you of the man that passed away today and how hard-earned all his glory was and in whose name you currently earn your ill-gotten gains.

I do not want to belittle Robert Mondavi's life by ending on a negative note. What he did and what he gained through decades of ceaseless toil taught the world, not just California, to sit up on its hind legs and take quality seriously. He epitomized pouring the depth of your character and your soul into your work. And there's no vessel better to receive it than your wine. Goodbye, Mr. Mondavi, I hope you find the hills of heaven to be as lush and shimmering with promise as you once did the verdant but neglected land of Napa.

In defense of beer

Jason Ohmann — Thu, 01 May 2008 00:29:04 +0000

Spring has sprung, and like many across the world, thoughts turn to cold, refreshing beer—although for many different reasons, I suppose. The image of beer in the United States is something of a paradox. The inflammation of wine enthusiasm came at the absolute zenith of beer domination by a small number of bland and likeminded breweries. And so, sadly it seems, wine and beer have seemingly taken diametrically opposed positions among imbibers (let’s not complicate the picture with spirits, yet). To me, the products of any of America’s huge breweries are really alcohol for people that don’t like the taste of alcohol, or anything else for that matter. People often criticize drinkers of so-called “girl drinks” for wanting the effects but none of the real flavor and I would level that same criticism against “light” beer drinkers. Real beer, light in color or dark, is not afraid of flavor or character, is made with an artisanal mind, and can provide the same or similar sense experiences as wine. Anyway, now that I’ve driven away at least half of my scant few readers, let me make an impassioned plea to wine drinkers to drink more beer.

As a person whose vocation often requires I taste wine throughout the day, I commonly come home and with great relish, open up a fresh bottle of beer. In fact, I would say that beer is an almost perfect companion to avid wine consumption and especially to the hopelessly over-wined. I can’t imagine how much more tasting stamina I could have had during those absurd marathon tastings that I’ve been victim to if maybe a small glass of cold fresh beer would have been served throughout the tastings.

I often get asked by my wine drinking friends as well as my beer drinking friends why I’m drinking beer at all, supposedly being a “wine guy” who is curiously forbidden beer. First, to my beer drinking friends I might suggest that what they like is really not beer, but a weak brew tasting faintly of cardboard steeped in seltzer water. To my wine drinking friends I often ask, why aren’t you drinking beer? Maybe because of the former set of friends, beer has been mongrelized, leading us to believe that its only mode of being is to be unobtrusive enough to be guzzled by the gallon. To my more open-minded friends I might ask, can’t there be a bit more to it?

Like Champagne and all great sparkling wines, beer starts with a leg up in the charm department by being frothy. While beer can carry an appreciable acidity, many can get away with having none as effervescence can take its place as a cleanser of clogged up taste buds. Beer provides a more pastoral flavor profile—for lack of a better term—providing drinkers with flavors that tend more towards agriculture like wheat and barley. It has the option of a sharp floral note provided by hops, which also takes the place of acidity. Good beer can be more sugary or loaded with carbohydrates than wine, but magically it can carry these things with the illusion of being dry.

Wine has had an apparently absolute lock on food pairings for centuries. Wine lovers will debate endlessly over the merits of this or that wine with this or that food. While a vocal minority will tell you that there’s far less codification to these pairings as you might think, beer drinkers have almost totally shied away from the topic, choosing instead to default to who they see as the prognosticators of food and drink pairings. If you’ve read this column before, I hope there’s one thing you took away from any of my articles: iconoclasm and engaging in a Bacchanalian frenzy go hand in hand. So let us remember, beer and wine drinkers alike, that Bacchus is also the god of the threshing room floor.

Stout with a lean Filet Mignon? Hell yes. Pilsner with roasted Grouper? Count me in. Lager with fish and chips? Sounds like heaven to me. How we’re really blessed here is that there are none of the preconceptions around food and beer tastings as there are with wine, so we have a great opportunity to get off on the right foot. No longer do we have to fret that our food might not be up to our wine and vice versa.

I think that if you are a true follower of your senses that you owe it to yourself to give beer a chance. It is always your option to like or dislike anything, but the ancient companion to our favorite ancient drink hasn’t lasted 6000 years without a damn good reason. What more, even the most expensive of beers barely approaches modestly priced wines in cost per serving. In almost every state in the Union there is a renaissance of small, local artisanal brews. And on top of that many similar beers that may not be brewed in your home state have enjoyed a surging popularity, which is allowing them international distribution. All this is bringing more and more attention to the fine brewers abroad who have never gone away and continue to work through the ages making their amazing beers better and better. Beer drinkers are now faced with an unprecedented array of choice. So I hope you join me tonight in exercising that choice and replacing a tired old Sauvignon Blanc with a nice frosty brew on your dinner table. Believe me, it’ll make that Sauvignon Blanc all the much finer when you do return to it, for absence only makes the heart grow fonder.

Buff Palates Part 3: Brass Tacks

Jason Ohmann — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 14:59:00 +0000

In our previous two installments of this series, we delved deep into the more philosophical and experiential aspects of honing your palate through more astute tasting. Being so analytical and abstract is surely frustrating to some of you who may just want to know how to go about lifting barbells of flavor with your tongue. Before we move on to brass tacks, I want you to know that the mode of thought you happen to be in when approaching this task is equally important as the actual process, something that is too often overlooked in many guides. In an era where the befuddlement of wine drinkers grows with overall wine enthusiasm, we need to define purity of goal and make sure people are not undertaking the task of honing their palate to become boors and elitists. So if you have just stumbled upon this little guide, please take a moment to read parts one and two.

Wine can be given your appropriate concentration in many different forums. In fact, there are so many ways to squeeze in the more formal parts of this exercise that there may be many more times it is appropriate than it is not appropriate. Generally speaking, we need to remember the lessons learned and keep in our minds first and foremost the fact that we’re doing this to enhance enjoyment. Sometimes this is a medium-term investment when we sacrifice a little bit of fun for more down the road. However, if we are oppressing our own sense of enjoyment in order to achieve a stronger palate then we are clearly missing the point. To boil it down, just remember to have fun.

In part one we talked about some tools you may need to enhance our experience. Again a notebook is of critical necessity. The consideration on what kind of notebook to use is largely dependant on what situations you think you’re going to be using it in. If you go out a lot and like to sample through wines with friends (and who doesn’t?), a small portable notebook that can be pulled out of a pocket or purse is perfect. When you do pull out that notebook and choose to jot down a few notes, don’t make it a solitary interlude to a sociable experience, instead involve the crowd even if they themselves are not undertaking the exercise to buff up their palates.

It’s also important not to dull our senses because we’re trying to concentrate on writing down our impressions. From the very beginning of the experience you should be trying to open up all the channels of your senses and focusing them on the wine and the surroundings around you, the wine, and the overall experience. Revel in the anticipation as you, your friends, or your server goes through the ceremony of opening a bottle. Discuss or inquire about the history or significance behind the wine as it sits in your glass. Take it all in before you begin to write.

The table

“The table” is such a loaded phrase, isn’t it? Like lighting a fire or planting something with your bare hands, the table has seemed to become entrenched in our genetic conscious and just feels primal. Think of the sheer volume of civilization and culture that has passed across this often humble article of furniture. Be it rough hewn, in the style of the French renaissance, or even just a blanket on the green grass, the table is a necessity for what we’re doing. It is for us the mis en place, it is the stage on which the ensuing drama is about to unfold.

It need not be overly adorned, even just glassware and some bottles with red stains running down their labels makes for a beautiful backdrop. What’s more important is the acknowledgment that “this is the table. This is where it is all going to take place.”

Saying hello

After you have built up a bit of anticipation (and dare I say longing), address the wine. I know this sounds formal or stuffy, but what I’m advocating is to pick a moment to turn all your focus on the wine. The best analogy I can come up with is that moment in the taxi or at home after you and your significant other have gone to a party. The whole night you strolled around, socialized, caught fleeting glances of your counterpart doing the same. You got tied up in conversation, got cornered near the bathroom, and were generally deprived of your love. Finally, you get a moment alone and you turn to each other and say “Oh there you are. How are you?” As loaded as that analogy is, addressing the wine should be like that.

First you are engaging your sense of vision. Look at the wine in the glass as it sits on the table. Look at the hue of the wine glinting in the candlelight or against the beautiful panorama of the table. As you pick up the glass, give it a perfunctory swirl as much to feel the weight and get a tactile sensation as much to activate any aromas.

Smelling hello

Much has been made about the importance of our olfactory sense on our overall palate experience. Some even claim that aroma constitutes over 75% of our sense of taste. I’m not willing to comment on specifically how influential it is, but from my own experience aroma is the glue that really holds the whole experience together. So, take your time with the wine and let your nose in on the fun. It is not uncommon for me to smell great wines for 5 or so minutes before diving in and sipping. I feel I have to draw the analogy to love making again: the more you drink in the experience before getting down to the nitty gritty, the better the nitty gritty is once you finally get there.

Much of what the knowledgeable do seems like voodoo to the un-initiated and indeed oftentimes some of the ceremony is affected without knowing why, but almost every aspect of the wine tasting ceremony has a very practical purpose. In the case of swirling the wine in the glass, this is not done so much to aerate the wine as is commonly thought, but to vaporize the wine and enhance the aroma. To get the maximum use out of swirling, you should be swirling, then immediately plunging your nose into the glass to take a big smooth inhale through your nose. I also take in a little bit of air through my mouth as I do this and find that the aroma particles hitting my tongue enhances the experience. I have also, on occasion, swirled a wine somewhat violently to introduce oxygen to what I feel is a young tight wine, but that’s rare and such an effect is better accomplished through decanting.

In our initial learning phases we are simply looking to experience. Most wines of any quality will often have more than a few aromas going on in the glass. At first we simply try to pick them out and use experiences we know to compare. Ever trample through the raspberry patches when you were a kid? Smell something similar in this or that wine? That’s what we’re focusing on at first—only the most primal and basic scents.

From there we really don’t need to focus on getting more particular about our language and about what we’re sensing, because I think that comes naturally if you’re devoting your attention to the wine. The conscious part of an advancing sense of smell comes when we start to understand causality. Smelling brioche or vanilla or buttered toast? Ah, must be some level of toasting in the oak treatment. Hey, this California Chardonnay smells like sweet baked pears, what gives? Ah, I see there’s a little Chenin Blanc in it to sweeten it up, no doubt. There are really way too many aroma-vinification correlations to list here. The best way to deduce these links is to bone up on how the wine is made after you’ve thoroughly tasted the wine and wrote notes. You’ll be able to confirm or deny your suspicions then and in your future tastings your suspicions as to the vinification of a wine will become more specific and more accurate. In a group this can be quite fun and almost a game. If everyone brings one wine to taste to a tasting party and studies up on the wine they’re bringing ahead of time, everyone can then compare what they thought to what the winery actually did and see who was closest.

Once we have had a good whiff of the stuff we have a couple of options. Here we can decide to whip out our notebooks and start jotting down our thoughts. When we write, we are simply writing down the connections we have made to other things, whether they are simple or complex. It is important to note that some wines are just simple so if they seem to exhibit a limited aroma dimension it does not mean that your perception or the wine is flawed. Simple can be beautiful, too. Again, at this point we’re trying not to judge, only to evaluate.

Palate components: The money shot

We’ve put off gratification for too long and finally it’s time to taste our wine. If you are in a dinner situation, it is important to smell and taste the wine solo, before you’ve introduced any food elements. When you do drink, put only a medium size swallow into your mouth and as you do so, inhale through your nose. Don’t swallow immediately, but first make sure the wine hits every part of your tongue. Mouthwash-type swishing and swashing is unnecessary and foolish. However, some people continue to draw air in and sort of “gurgle” the wine. What this is doing is similar to swirling the wine in the glass by vaporizing it and shooting the aroma components up into your nasal cavity. This is quite effective and you can prove the efficacy to yourself simply by swallowing some part of the wine and not taking any air in, then taking air in suddenly. You’ll notice a huge intensification of the flavor experience because you’re getting your olfactory sense involved. Once I’m ready to swallow the wine, I often exhale through my nose as I swallow and that helps me stay on top of the after-palate.

Our straight aromatic sensations tend to be an “all at once” experience where all the components come at once and we have to pick them apart. The palate has a few different stages depending on the complexity of the wine, however. People refer to these stages commonly as the “attack”, the “mid-palate” and the “finish”. This is simply a way to segment an ever-changing experience to make it easier to convey. In reality, it’s less like a multi-stage rocket firing and more like ebb and flow of the Northern Lights. However, if it’s easier for you at first to concentrate on the “thirds” of the palate experiences, that’s fine. Just keep in mind that is an imperfect notion. The greater the wines you taste, the more this will become evident.

Breaking the palate experience up in thirds will help us to write down our thoughts. If it’s helpful to you to take three different tastes so you can concentrate on the three different stages separately, who’s going to stop you? Don’t be surprised, though, if some wines have no finish, or seem to rush from beginning to end quickly. In fact, you should be paying attention to how a wine develops and writing that down in your notebook. Again, when you are addressing the various stages, concentrate on the correlations to the outside world and rely on those. As with aroma, you can look up causal relationships after everything is said and done.

You may want to concentrate on how sweet the wine seems and how acidic it is. You want to think about how well you think the sweetness and the acidity work with the other flavor components. Likewise think about earthiness, fruitiness, effervescence, and oakiness.

Some may wish to wait until after they’ve analyzed the wine to start writing, others may wish to write from the very get-go. Neither way is incorrect, so do what feels more natural to you. To start you may want to order your notes in the same order you addressed the wine: look, smell, palate stages, general thoughts. More complex ways of making notes may come to you later and be dependant on your personality and your preferred writing style.

Logging your results

There are lots of imaginable ways you can write this stuff down. It's important that you establish a naming convention first and foremost and stick to it. I usually use the following: Producer, Varietal (if applicable), Appellation, Cuvee/Vineyard name (if applicable) and finally vintage. For example, I entered the following note into my notebook the other night, "Abadia Retuerta, Sardon de Duero, Rivola, 2002". I didn't use commas, but put them in here so it's easier to see the seperate parts.

From there what you decide to enter is largely subjective. I usually like to put the approximate retail price in there in case I decide to go back and buy the wine again some day. It goes without daying that the date tasted is somewhere on there, as well.

Don’t forget to drink the stuff

I’ve asserted before that the intoxicating effects of the alcohol are not undesirable in any way. So once you feel you’ve devoted an appropriate amount of concentration on the wine you’re tasting, don’t forget to stop tasting and to drink it. That’s the whole point, anyway.

At this point foods may be introduced and hopefully conversation will be the companion to your notes. These are not superfluities. If your companions compel you to realize something about the wine or to add a level of specificity you were grasping for, write it down. Write down how the wine interacts with the food. Is it acidic enough to cut through the fats? Is the sweetness of the wine tripping on the subtle flavors of the food or perhaps vice versa?

While you may want to take a brief time out from drinking to go through the whole address, smell, taste process again to see how the wine and your perception of it are changing, it is obviously pretty tedious to do all this for every sip of wine you take. Sometimes in the sterile confines of a structured tasting for “experts” while people sniff, gargle and spit, I often think to myself “Wine is for drinking, aren’t we missing the point here?” Indeed, whole swaths of wine are engineered to be stunning on those first steps, but after even half a glass they become tedious and overly loud. How a wine holds up to continued drinking is just as important to how it stands up to your momentary concentrations. So, if you find yourself becoming bored with a wine, or even better if a wine was underwhelming at first taste but has begun to show it’s charm and subtlety on further drinking, you should be noting this in your notebook. In the exercise we are departing from the standard wine critic review. But would you buy a car based on the evaluations of someone who just drove it once around the block? We’re in this until the bottom of the bottle, never forget that.

Days later

It is fun to go back and review your notes, especially upon the event of a later re-tasting of the same wine. In fact, that’s almost exactly why we are keeping these notebooks in the first place. I commonly find that many things of artistic nature (books, movies, good wine, etc.) often haunt me long after the experience is over. In a way these things plant a seed in my subconscious that keeps growing and prevents me from forgetting. Literally food for thought. I place a great deal of emphasis on my intuitive self and I think you should, too. If a wine seemed monolithic or underwhelming on first blush, but you can’t seem to shake the memory of it, then it was probably a great wine that needs revisiting both in your mind and in your glass. These are the perfect opportunities to go back and review and possibly revise your notes. If you think there is a possibility you can taste the wine later, perhaps you can save revisions for a whole other note.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Buff Palates Part 2: It’s all relative

Jason Ohmann — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 03:23:47 +0000

In the last installment of this series I discussed the basics behind how a strong palate is a liberated palate and encouraged laypeople to undertake what may seem on the surface as a thoroughly academic endeavor. I hope I made my argument convincing enough for you to believe that this is not necessarily so. Like true academia, knowledge goes a long way to further happiness. Our potential pleasure boost from a small amount of effort makes such an undertaking well worth while.

The main thing you need to ask yourself is how much is too much...or too little? It’s largely a personal question. The litmus test for the qualification can be explained simply, I think. If you find yourself focusing on the brain and paper work so much that the primal and sensual pleasure of the experience is getting dulled or obscured, then you may need to step down a notch and consider drinking a First Growth right off the neck, tasting notes be damned. Or maybe pouring some wine on a willing partner and study the effects of body chemistry on wine for awhile. On the other hand, if you’re having a hard time distinguishing the tart cherry from the black cherry that your friends are talking about and you feel they’re making it up, you might need to devote yourself a little more to the deliberate strengthening of your palate.

It’s of the utmost importance to remember that our goal is pleasure and richness of the senses. Like a good relationship or a nice bottle of wine to a vintner, patience and some hard work are required. But in our labors we must never lose sight of the fact that we’re doing this for us—to make our lives richer and more enjoyable.

The ocean of the mind

Becoming a good wine writer is not our primary goal, but good wine writing has an intimate symbiotic relationship with healthy wine enjoyment. Articulation is really the underlying force at work here. Since it’s silly to articulate your thoughts into the lonely chasm of your mind, why not write them down? As an armchair psychologist, I would like to think that much of what our subconscious does is sub- or super-verbal. Our deeper minds think in broad strokes of complexly interacting colors and sounds. There is no language adequate enough to express this beautiful tide of thought. Now, the act of attempting to attach language to these thoughts doesn’t make them static, but simply highlights them—makes our verbal literal mind focus on the ineffabilities of the deeper mind. I might be gilding the lily here, but the idea is not to describe, but to evoke.

Primarily, tasting notes are notes to yourself. They are cues of evocation. We want to accurately frame a sort of index image of one of those deeper thoughts or experiences. So, upon returning to our notes we can hopefully cue our deeper mind and our senses to re-experience or re-imagine what it did before when we had the wine in front of us. As with recording dreams, it’s necessary to strike while the iron is hot, because the next tidal phase of the mind is hot on the heels of the last and will surely wash away the previous impressions in the sand. It’s enough of a challenge as it is, but add the intoxicating effects of our favorite drink and the window of opportunity becomes even narrower.

Once we have served our duties to ourselves and accurately formed our verbal impressions of the non-verbal sensations, then and only then we get the added bonus of communicating to others. It is in this amazing act that we can see what really binds us. What we have is a rich sensory input, the wine, which is a constant. It tastes the way it tastes and presents the same chemical signal to each person. Like dropping the same stone into many and variously-shaped ponds, we highlight the differences in the ponds’ qualities by observing the differing ripple patterns. Likewise, if a group of people has attained a small ability to articulate, they are reporting the way our stone, this wine, is rippling around in their senses and their minds. Then we see the commonalities. When another person can evoke in you one of those deeper thoughts or sensations, they are achieving one of the highest levels of communication we can experience. They are sharing thoughts and entire mindsets with you for a brief moment in time. And this is only one of the many profound effects of this, our magical drink.

Evoking the ocean

One of the reasons I wrote this article was to help people understand that the reviews given by most critics are not at all similar to the tasting notes we write to ourselves then share with others. For those of you familiar with (or perhaps soiled by) these reviews, we should consider them sort of technical data with little to no ability to evoke the sensations you might be able to expect should you try the wine yourself. These reviews and reviewers are purposely devoid of most evocative kinds of language. In their ignorance, they are considered “objective” when the very nature of what we are trying to do with this project is almost the opposite. How drinking wine got confused with journalism or, laughably, scientific objectivity is way beyond me. For now let’s forget those people exist, even though, believe it or not, there is some use that can be derived from their kind of writing—surely a topic we can return to some other day. For now let’s pretend we’ve just invented jotting down our thoughts and impressions of wine.

Dirty mouths

So I’ve talked in pretty lofty terms here and maybe some of you have gotten lost in such talk. Maybe I’ve lost myself. The pillars of all that lofty language are easy enough to understand, so let’s start there.

Happily, there is a new generation of wine enthusiasts. They are young (or at least young at heart), inventive, and most importantly, not interested in the more elitist aspects of wine enthusiasm. It is sort of en vogue amongst this new set (among whom I’d like to count myself) to suggest that you do some goofy-sounding things like stuffing dirt in your mouth, or, less-goofily, conducting tastings of fruits commonly embodied in wine. There are even now candies made to evoke the sensation of drinking wine. While much of this borders on kitsch, I have to say that they breathe a refreshing air of irreverence into these stuffy and hallowed halls. That being said, I want readers to know that we need only take things to such extremes if it fits our personalities. Stuffing a sweaty sock in your mouth on a late night talk show is not a required activity. Though if you are brave enough to do so you certainly have our attention.

Most of those activities, as goofy as they may seem, have as a common goal that of getting drinkers to be more aware of the rich world of flavor and aroma around them. Outsiders sometimes balk at wine enthusiasts talking about wine almost completely in terms of things that are not wine. But that’s a major part of the charm. We are so amazed that a singular fruit can evoke so much and so accurately sense experiences from the non-wine world that we cannot help but coming back again and again. If you are not talking in this sort of parallel language, then you are missing the point, it seems to me. Any attempt to break down wine flavors and aromas in terminology that only refers to wine would have to be overly scientific and dry in nature.

I think it is true that everyone that is of legal drinking age has already stored a repository of sense experience. Most of us have had raspberries on more than a few occasions. For this reason I don’t think it’s of the utmost importance to conduct raspberry tastings—though such things can certainly be fun in their own right. Again, the importance here is paying more attention to our senses on an day to day, minute to minute basis. Next time you put strawberries on your cereal note how the berries, milk, and grain interplay on your palate. All you have to do is pay attention and devote your concentration to your palate for a moment’s time. Such experiences may not end up relating to your wine enthusiasm, but you are richening your sensory life in general and that cannot be bad. If you go out of your way just a little to taste things you never had before, again you’re only the wiser for it. Relating to wine, it’s often fun to go out and either smell or taste (or both) the more obscure sounding things that are common currency among wine writers—such as leeches nuts or freshly-laid asphalt. It’s fun because sometimes we find out some pretty wild sense experiences are represented in wine, and other times we see that some very commonly used expressions are totally bunk.

We are lucky that the sensations associated with our palate (primarily taste and smell) are so strongly linked with memory. It is this relationship that makes what we are doing so strongly evocative. So, when you finally do sit down to your evening glass alone or with friends, open up the channels of memory and let your relative mind equate what you’re drinking to what you already know. If you’re working to both expand what you know of taste and aroma sensations in parallel to trying to equate those things to what you’re drinking your wine appreciation powers increase tenfold. A little really does go a long way.

Now, after all that when you decide to put pen to paper, hopefully all these relationships will write themselves. There are other more technical things we’re looking for when we’re experiencing both wine and non-wine things, but we’ll leave the more technical things to the last installment of this series.

Buttered toast with strawberry jam

When I was a kid, I used to spend an occasional weekend night over at my grandparents’ house. This was my father’s side of the family and they’re much more on ceremony than my mother’s. I would wake in the morning and my grandmother would always have everything laid out for us. Neatly folded napkins with a vitamin pill sitting on top, a glass of fresh juice, and freshly buttered toast. My grandmother, you see, is a butter fanatic. Everything that has bread has butter in one form or another. Ham and cheese, turkey on rye…all on buttered bread. So, even if you wanted toast with jam there was some melted butter along for the ride. Now toast, butter, and jam are actually pretty friendly flavors and of course the richness and the sweetness were quite alluring to a young palate.

A few years ago I was tasting a Carneros Pinot Noir at the winery. It was a young wine and, thank god, varietally correct. It had a beautiful almost glowing light red color. As was the style of the times, some of the oak that the wine came in contact with was new and toasted—lightly charred by fire on the inside. While the wine was young and light, it was beautiful and well balanced. I remember first putting my nose in it and I was instantly transported to that younger me at my grandmother’s house—in my pj’s, sitting at the table with bedhead hair trying to chomp down breakfast so I could get to weekend cartoons. For there in the glass was buttered toast lightly spread with strawberry jam. It was all there and perfectly complete.

Many of my companions at the tasting didn’t think much of the wine. Perhaps it was too delicate at a time when many California Pinot Noirs want to be much broader. Perhaps they never had a grandmother that served them buttered toast with strawberry jam. I don’t know but the beauty of my enjoyment of the wine almost flowed directly from the fact that it was intimately personal. I related my experience to one of the assistant winemakers there and she instantly smiled at me. She “got it” even though I’m sure her experiences with buttered toast with strawberry jam were different. We nonetheless made a connection much deeper than the wine and much deeper than buttered toast with strawberry jam. We shared a sense experience, raw and unadulterated. There really is no substitute for that.

Now there are technical reasons to why those particular flavors came out of that particular wine, but we shouldn’t burden ourselves with those now. For now, we are simply using wine as a gateway to memories past and maybe future. We are also using these new gateways to connect with others in a more socially pleasing way, expanding our pleasure exponentially.

Back in business

Jason Ohmann — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 17:10:43 +0000

After an unexpectedly long update time, I'm back and with a newly revamped layout. While all the old content has been migrated, minor theme updates will continue, so if you see something odd on your page, refresh your browse as I may be working on something, or more likely trying to fix what I messed up.

I've eliminated the unused SMF forums and will now use the onboard Drupal forums. When I first launched this site, I had hoped to provide forums as a setting for friendly community exploration on the topic of wine. I still hold that goal, so if you have questions or would like to discuss wine in an usnobbish arena, head over to the forums.

If you'd like, please use the comment section of this article to express your opinions on the layout, future content, or the future path of this site. Thank you.

Buff palates in 2008 Part 1

Jason Ohmann — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:00:39 +0000

The real miracle of viticulture and the real blessing of wine enthusiasm is observing the almost perfect microcosm in a glass that starts from the humble dusty grape on the vine and somehow parallels so much of what we know in life.

I might be a little late for New Years, but I would like to make the resolution to whip that flabby palate of mine into shape. As well as the de rigueur health kick I’m on this year, I’m going to be performing an exercise regime for my palate as well as my cardiovascular system in the coming year. And I’d like to invite my readers to join me. Thanks to a myriad of clinical studies released in the last decade, we now know that these two endeavors can be very mutually inclusive, and we can rejoice.

My trail to a more precise palate will end, I hope, with CWE certification later this year. While I taste many different wines every week which I think gives me a pretty astute palate, I don’t feel I’ve ever had to submit myself to palate boot camp. For you, fair reader, a more buff palate is quite simply a pleasure-enhancer. Simply being able to articulate what about a wine is alluring will open doors to literally thousands of wines like it. While the intensity level of these exercises may differ between you and I, the basic technique is the same.

Your palate is simply a muscle

All these fitness metaphors I’m using are for a specific purpose. As with many aspects of the wine world, things can seem overly convoluted from an outsider’s point of view. Given a little bravery and a slightly deeper look, we see that oftentimes this is not so. A refined palate is definitely one of those things. When we strip away the artifice, we see that a palate is not unlike any muscle in your body. A little exercise goes a long way. As with physical exercise, you need only bring a small amount of thought to the subject and a great deal more dedication. The real “thinking” or intellectual growth happens deep in the less deliberate parts of the mind. If you stay dedicated and try to exert your descriptive and sensual faculties, you’ll find your vocabulary automatically richer and your sense automatically deepened.

Looking in from outside, I can see how people are intimidated by notebook carrying wine snobs that seem to over-analyze every component of even the simplest of wines. What people fail to see is the sheer joy such exercises can provide—truly a melding of sense and intellect.

First, let’s drop the snobbery

I’ve written quite a bit on snobs and snobbery on this site. I stress this now because among the uninitiated there’s often a sort of inverse snobbery where people see the more sophisticated surrounded with the common trappings of a healthy wine enthusiasm and automatically think “snob”. As with body image, it’s important to keep in mind that we’re not doing this for anyone else. We’re not trying to prove ourselves to the fit, nor distance ourselves from the unfit. What we’re doing here is trying to deepen the experience, to make our interactions with wine more deeply hedonistic. So when you approach these exercises, try to do so with a mind unclouded by the swirling world of wine around you. When you sit down to your first glass of the night, do so with a singular mind. Your sole goal is finding another avenue of pleasure—both sensual and intellectual—in life. As with many things, your mindset going in will dictate the tone of the exercise.

The tools

Again, a proper mindset is the most important, but there are a scant few things necessary.

A notebook. This can take many forms: a pocket notebook, a spiral ringed binder, one of those almost iconic marble-textured composition books (which is what I use), anything will do. The only real criteria that such a book must meet are a certain degree of usability or portability and a lack of value. That’s right, it should be cheap. For now, simply the exercise of writing is most important. We want something that will encourage writing freely and, surely at first, badly. A leather-bound blank diary with a brass clasp will only work if you are already a great wine writer and I somehow doubt any of you are (nor myself). We don’t want the notebook to show us up or intimidate us into writing above our level.
A tongue and a nose. While it’s a bit obvious to list these as tools, it’s important to note that you’re going to be paying attention to these organs a lot more than you usually do. You should think of these as tools of the trade and add them to your mental checklist before embarking on any of these exercises.
An open mind. You may be carrying your mind around, but it may not necessarily be open. As you approach new experiences, be open to thing that you have never liked or learned to like. There are very few palate attributes that are objectively “bad”. The act of recording what we do and paying it close attention is NOT an act of critique. You are not a wine critic, you are a wine enthusiast. Start thinking like one. One of my most positive wine education experiences came from learning how to sell wine. Being forced to sell a broad set of wines, I was forced to see the positive in all wines—and almost all wines have positives—so that I could match up tastes to those positives, even if they weren’t positives for me. Think like a wine salesman. You may not like it, but isn’t there something about it that someone would like? If so, what are those positive attributes?
Friends (optional, but encouraged). These are exercises that one can undertake alone, to be sure, but a group of likeminded others with open minds are bound to be sounding-boards to each other and magnify the discovery experience tenfold. While it’s important to avoid grafting a friend’s opinion as yours, it may be more important to help jumpstart your imagination and richen your vocabulary. It may also seem disruptive to be whipping out a notebook in a social drinking setting, but if everyone is in on the game, then your experience is made all the more useful. Even if your friends aren’t taking notes as you should be, you can start a conversation about the wine. This need not be academic in nature. Casual, creative conversation is encouraged.

Proper posture

There are certainly many guides around the internet that can guide you on how to properly taste wine. Most are at least acceptable, though they almost always smack of dogma. There are many valid ways to approach the actual technique of tasting. Eventually you will find the one that suits you best. The most important thing you can take away from any of these guides is that we’re trying to pay our undivided attention to what we’re drinking, at least initially. Paying attention and “listening” to your total palate is one of those things that will help put the rest of the ducks in a row. If you taste on a regular basis and if you think about your senses as you do so, I think you’ll find things like proper tasting technique, wine vocabulary and astuteness of palate take care of themselves over time.

Many fitness experts will tell you that what you’re doing when you aren’t exercising is as important if not more so than what you’re doing when you are. Things like proper posture, proper diet, and choosing the less-lazy way of doing something are stressed. Likewise, before we get to the many exercises both fun and erudite we can undertake I’m going to take a moment to stress proper posture. It’s primarily most important to bring an analytic view to already existing drinking habits. As you take that evening glass of wine, or even as you are in a restaurant trying something new, pull out that little scratchpad and write your thoughts on the wine. I think that most, when starting to write their thoughts on specific wines that they’re drinking, often feel inadequate and inexpressive. Remember that you have to learn how to walk before you can run. Also remember that we’re keeping a junky little pad because we’re exercising, not necessarily for posterity, although that may be useful at some point.

Why writing is strongly tied to palate strength

As stretching is tied to muscle conditioning, so too writing is tied to palate acuity. How you write is somewhat unimportant at this point. The simple act of writing will force you to focus on your senses and stretch to find vocabulary that fits. This will never be perfect. The reason we’re drinking and tasting wine at all is because whipping out a postcard and writing a quick note at a dinner table will never have the same charm as popping a special bottle. The experience retains its charm almost because of its ineffability.

Almost every wine writer and critic calls on a reserve of likes—like-tasting and like-smelling objects—as a reference point. You’ve all seen it and perhaps even scratched your head at it. “Aromas of freshly laid asphalt,” is one that can especially confound laypeople. But by understanding why such a description and many other odd-sounding ones is legitimate and even learning how to employ such a phrase ourselves, we become empowered laypeople and can read the critics with our own critical eye. Not merely an exercise in flagrancy, using sometimes far out terms to describe what’s really rotten fruit juice has a purpose deeper than the hype and the glossy magazines. We are forced to use descriptive parallels that are oftentimes conspicuously not in the fruit category because wine is so astonishing as to mimic almost everything under the sun. The real miracle of viticulture and the real blessing of wine enthusiasm is observing the almost perfect microcosm in a glass that starts from the humble dusty grape on the vine and somehow parallels so much of what we know in life. It is to more properly be a witness to this miracle that we climb the altar of Bacchus. Only there are a whole lotta stairs up there, so lets hit the Stairmaster first.

Part 2

Sovereignty of the Senses: Drink Poor

Jason Ohmann — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:14:16 +0000

It’s as if you were walking behind someone on the sidewalk only to see them toss a $100 bill on the pavement thinking it’s merely a useless scrap of paper. That $100 bill has so much potential, can do so much—and so too ignoring the wine critics during your formative years can bring you a big pleasure payoff later.

It is my plan to write a review on Hugh Johnson’s autobiography, A Life Uncorked, once I get done powering through it. I should say “ostensible autobiography” because Johnson seems to be incapable of avoiding just expositing on wine in general in a broad, somewhat disorganized, almost conversationally structured flow from topic to topic. Up to about the half way point we get this or that glimpse into his life, but usually as a sort of footnote to whatever topic he’s informing us on. His strong predisposition to teach, to inform, and more importantly just to talk about the drink he loves is why I in turn love him and his works and why I think all levels of wine drinker out there should seek out his books.

In his book, Johnson somewhat famously attacks the “absolutists”, most predominantly Robert Parker Jr. He says, “[Scores] have reinvented that bogeyman, the wine snob, as a more potent force. A wine snob used to be anyone who thought he knew more than you and found a way of rubbing it in. He was also, by extension, a wine bore. Your recourse was not difficult, though: it is all a question of taste. Introduce the illusion of absolutes and your tastes have to shape up.” This particular segment of his book brought it quite a bit of attention when it was first published and there were a number of salvos back and forth on this issue. His argument is an interesting one and should be noted, especially to the newly initiated. That being said, Johnson’s comments are really sermons to the devout choir—albeit funny and relevant sermons. The novitiates in this picture are still on the wrong side of the velvet curtain. They hear a scuffle, perhaps the curtain dances a bit as two bodies struggle on the other side, but they are left mystified as to the cause. Allow me, fair reader, to part that curtain for a short period of time.

Mr. Parker’s good, if misplaced, intentions

Mr. Parker surely set out to offer more advanced readers a guide or a sort of shorthand to helpfully direct them towards wines of superior quality and craftsmanship. It was his success that ultimately put him under the bright light of criticism. If any real indictment can be made against him, it’s that he didn’t think of the ramifications of his actions if those with little to no savvy bought into his publications and his system. It should be noted, though, that there is really no indication that neophytes are Parker’s intended audience—quite the opposite, actually. His rating system, on the other hand, has done some serious harm to all levels of wine drinker, whether they are aware of it or not and whether or not Mr. Parker is aware of it.

If we look at what Mr. Parker did right or what he’s good at, we can more quickly get to the heart of the matter. I don’t think there are many that will doubt that his palate is exceptional and more importantly consistent. While his ratings system can hardly been seen as anything but absolute, if we read his ratings along with his reviews, we see a remarkable consistency of judgment. With extended readings and tastings of our own in parallel, we quickly learn how to “read” Mr. Parker’s judgments. He has certain palate and texture preferences that we can count as constants. He will acknowledge qualities that are outside his set of preferences—a valiant, if foolish attempt at objectivity. However, for people that have not developed their own palates, these judgments can mean nothing. In fact, Parker’s (and other absolutist wine critics’) judgments are often grafted into the neophyte’s sensibility with little to no grounding in their own real preferences. It seems a pitfall more dangerous to men than women, but I think it’s hard to overestimate its importance to a large and somewhat mystified burgeoning wine population.

There’s no room in the glass for critical dogma

The main problem here is that people think that it is a necessary part of the wine experience to be critical in the harshest sense of that word. Too often have I poured wine for people who know little to nothing only to hear back that the wine is “too dry” or “too fruity” or “too weak”. The problem here isn’t that they might be expressing their opinions. The problem is that they are scarcely aware of what having an opinion means. They have no palate experience to base their claims on. In other words they haven’t even earned the right to have an opinion. The unnecessary air of criticism around wine has caused even the very inexperienced to believe that you can’t properly taste anything without imposing a harsh and oftentimes baseless critique on the wine. This poor substitute for real personal judgment often blocks its more honest and introverted counterpart. It’s harder to have a valid and confident opinion of something than it is to simply graft a self-professed expert’s opinion onto your own.

More dangerous and exacerbating are the people (again, mainly men) who know enough to be dangerous, but who have supplanted 80% of a good wine education for a 200 word review and a pretty arbitrary number. We have to forgive them their sins, I suppose, for they are sins of ignorance. What is more difficult to forgive is the sheer volume of pleasure that they are missing out on. Exploration, failure, and more than a little doubt are probably the healthiest things you can feed a new love of wine. These people aren’t doing anything morally wrong by supplanting their own experience for the experiences of others. They are just doing something that is so unbeneficial to themselves that one can’t help but be a bit perturbed. It’s as if you were walking behind someone on the sidewalk only to see them toss a $100 bill on the pavement thinking it’s merely a useless scrap of paper. That $100 bill has so much potential, can do so much—and so too ignoring the wine critics during your formative years can bring you a big pleasure payoff later.

A good buzz keeps the critics at bay

If you count yourself among those grasping for knowledge and a heightened and more informed quest for pleasure, there are some important exercises you really must go through before you can really learn to read these publications that make some pretty aggressive claims to objectivity. These exercises really all boil down to drinking more (there, I said it) and more importantly to paying attention to what you’re drinking, unclouded by the thoughts of others, whether they be established experts or otherwise. I call this series “Sovereignty of the Senses” because I want readers to understand that there is never a wrong when it comes to wine drinking. There is only a right for you. It’s about the pleasure, stupid. So when exploring or trying something new, try first picking out what’s good in the wine, even if those attributes aren’t to your tastes. What’s wrong or what’s not to your tastes in a particular wine is just as important an evaluation, but you should always be trying to start out on the positive foot. Who knows, one day you may be judging the wine “too dry, but just dry enough for some” then the next you may be relishing its balance. The idea here is to try and close no doors that you may someday want to revisit.

I’ll be discussing some more concrete things you can do to keep your palate and your critical mind on an even keel in later issues, for now it’ll do for you to just keep tilting that glass. While yes, you should be critical of what you’re drinking, you should avoid at all costs becoming a critic.

First, before I continue any further, I should qualify that if you’re reading this article and if you are an avid wine buyer, you probably aren’t poor, regardless of what price tier you commonly buy your wines in. I think first that you should be thankful that you can afford such a powerful elixir to banish care. Once we’ve paid our humble regards to good fortune, then we can get right down to tipping a glass.

How not to drink rich

It is a common phenomenon that I have experienced in my extensive work in the industry to see a cost-no-object customer turning down a wine that might only be slightly below their target range thinking it to be inferior. The complex relationship between quality and price is perhaps a topic for another day, but sufficed to say costs incurred in making even the finest of wine is shockingly small compared to their final ticket on the retail shelves or price on a restaurant wine list. So, we can assume that the majority of what is being provided to the consumer is perceived quality. Quality is, of course, the most subjective of qualifications. Suppliers are charging for wines what they think they are worth and what they think they can get for them to maximize profit. Since not everyone is a sage in these matters, we have to assume that there are undervalued and overvalued wines the market over.

What’s exasperating about a cost-no-object customer that only wants to “drink rich” is not the arrogance or the flaunting of cash (I suspect that in most cases neither of these are in play, but rather fear of drinking “bad” wine). What the real tragedy is the fact that many of these customers who refuse to dip below a certain line are depriving themselves of the real adventure of wine and denying intimate knowledge of it. There are those that obviously have means, but still like to engage in the great game of exploration, of course. It is to the others and to you, the merrily “poor”, that I address this article.

How to drink poor and love it

All good wine enthusiasts allow themselves to get a little over-excited about the drink they love from time to time. Excitement about wine can have many different causes, but a seemingly constant multiplier to this excitement is value. Sure, an amazing meal topped off with a bottle of a forty year old d’Yquem is sure to get anyone’s engine revving, but a wine that provides half the experience at a quarter of the price is bound to illicit a different and more energetic kind of excitement.

Inviting some friends over and watching a $20 cab go toe-to-toe with a resting-on-its-laurels $60 cab from the same appellation is excitement personified. If you ever want to witness this energy second-hand, just go into your neighborhood mom and pop wine store and ask, “Hey, what’s killer for $10 these days?” You won’t always get an enthusiastic answer because those wines don’t come around every day. But when you see the shop owner or salesperson’s face light up as they walk straight to a bottle, you know you’ve found it. These people weigh value on a day to day, hour to hour basis to an excruciating degree that often goes underappreciated by simple penny pinchers (a category we want to avoid). When they come across these great values among the sea of wine they taste every day there’s a Eureka moment that tends to stick with them. It’s that moment we want to recreate in our everyday lives.

When embarking on a new journey of discovery, there are a few helpful things to keep in mind. First, no one is saying that you need to drink a wine only once or abandon your old favorites. In fact, it’s probably helpful to buy a good mix of stuff you know, stuff you’ve heard of, and stuff you know nothing about. Staying grounded in your favorites will help keep your spirits buoyed in case you run into a streak of plonk—and that’s almost an inevitability, which leads me to my second point. You should absolutely destroy all fear you might have of drinking bad wine. I think this is a fear that most people don’t even know they have, but it’s an understandable one. People just want to experience pleasure when they’re drinking their wine. But they fail to see the potential positives in a bottle of junk. Flawed (corked, madirized, oxygenated, etc) bottles aside, analyzing a wine and what particular components you find distasteful before dumping it down the drain or your throat is a very healthy exercise. Not only are you honing your palate, but you could be giving flavor components a chance to grow on you and thus expand your palate horizons. Most importantly, bad wine just points the way to good wine.

Finding value

It’s not easy to find value in a vast marketplace. And it’s not becoming any easier these days with the over-consolidation of the wine industry and the introduction of wines that are specifically engineered to look like something else and to play on the psyche of an oftentimes overwhelmed wine drinking public. I’m not advocating blind trial and error in most cases (though occasional random purchases can sometimes pay off big). Get all the help you can. Read the wine rags; talk to your wino friends; become the local wine bar’s bartender’s best friend; most importantly, talk to the staff at the local mom and pop retailer.

The most effective tool to finding new gems in the sooty earth of plonk is your own palate. If you believe what I believe, then your tastes are never wrong, because ultimately the wine has to pass your tongue on the way to your stomach. And if it passes someone else’s tongue before yours, it’s a private matter. Pay close attention again to duds, but also the hits. Don’t just “like” or “dislike”, know why. Identify why you like it and then note the place and the vintage because there are almost always commonalities among places both value-wise and flavor-wise.

Don’t be a penny pincher

There’s an important distinction between a value-conscious consumer and a cheap one. Cheap consumers are often extremely brand loyal—a death knell in the amorphous world of high production wine. Because of this brand loyalty everyone down the line is trying to compete on price on these labels. This flows all the way up to the winery that will slash costs and degrade fruit sources to make more and more cheaply. Pay attention to brands and labels that you see stacked out in all your local retailers that seem to be trying to one-up the other by a few nickels or dimes here or there. 90% of these wines devolve into a conduit to claim the penny-pincher’s pennies. I’m not advocating that you simply spend more to get quality, but spend more widely, into lesser-trafficked areas and labels. This is the rich earth with the most gems.

Some good places to start

As an expeditionary wine traveler and speculator myself, allow me to share some starting points where you might start. First, Dr. Debs at Good Wine Under $20 runs a great wine blog specific to commenting on good wines under $20 which I highly recommend. Her approach is a humble and refreshing one. Even though she’s obviously very knowledgeable, she speaks with the voice of an every day wine enthusiast who doesn’t want or need to get dizzy in the stratosphere of wine connoisseurship. There are also many great wine blogs that I have frequented myself that often approach wine with a humble and refreshing view that speaks very well to the wine adventurer.

There are many areas around the world that provide great values and would be a good place to start in my mind. If you haven’t noticed, many wine people are moaning about the strong euro and the weak dollar and how that’s inflating European wines in the US. There are many non-European regions that are known for value. Here are some that I recommend and some varietals that seem to be of the most consistent quality.

Chile. (Sauvingon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Carmenere)
Argentina. (Malbec, Bonarda Chardonnay)
South Africa. (Sauvignon Blanc, Syrah/Shiraz, Malbec) I have to strongly recommend you stay away from Pinotage.
Some Californian. This one is tough. The dominant paradigm for great cult value wines in California is that some small producer gets some nice fruit for a good price and makes a great value wine. Then, they get bought out by some mega-glom and the fruit source totally changes to the usual plonk the mega-glom pumps out on a daily basis, but the old label remains the same. In fact, in many cases, the only thing that gets bought is the label. However, it's not uncommon for other winemakers to go back to that original source and package it under their own label. These are tough to find, but usually even a better value than the first iteration.

It should also be noted that the money market is a game of percentage points. Since you don’t pay for you wine in percentage points but hard currency, the more value-promising European wines shouldn’t be overlooked. After all, 5% of a small number is still a pretty small number. The following are European appellations that are known for consistency of value and quality.

Languedoc. (Minervois, Corbieres, Cotes du Rousillon, Coteaux du Languedoc, Vin de Pays D’Oc) Some of the cheapest wines in France come from this region. It can be hit or miss, but the misses will rarely cost you much money.
Rhone. (Cotes-du-Rhone, Nimes, St. Joseph, Crozes-Hermitage) Cotes-du-Rhone continues to be some of the most reliable values out of France in both red and the oft-overlooked white. Nimes is much like the Languedoc for spotty quality, though it’s a bit more reliable. St. Joseph and Crozes-Hermitage are northern Rhone’s Syrahs and it can be a bit harder to find something under $20 from these regions, but there are a lot of great values if you look and if you like thicker, smokier style Syrahs.
Bordeaux. (Premiere Cotes du Bordeaux, Bordeaux AOC, Bordeaux Superiore, Cotes du Blaye, Entre-du-Mers, St.-Emilion) Yes, Bordeaux can be a great source for amazing values. People often get blinded by the luminance and price of the super-premium first growths and other luxury Chateaux to see that Bordeaux makes more wine than any other appellation in France. The quality can be spotty and the wines can be hard to American palates, but there’s literally a sea of $12 Chateaux with almost identical labels out there that can represent some of the finest values a consumer can get out of France.
Spain. (Ribero del Duero, Navarre, Bierzo, Rias Biaxes, La Mancha) The pace at which Spanish winemaking changes is dizzying even to the most astute observer. It’s important not to get too bogged down with the impossible details because Spanish wines can represent utterly amazing values. Quality can be spurious due to shrewd Spanish winemakers looking to cash in on the fad with over-produced wines, but again the costs of coming across a watery plonky wine are low. Tempranillo dominates most of Spain and most of the aforementioned regions produce it. Grenache or Garnacha is also spreading widely which makes for great drinkable reds for a great price. Albarino out of Rias Biaxes can have some serious price pitfalls, so choose wisely. Rueda is a great crisp white from Spain and usually a great value and underappreciated in the US.
Italy. (Umbria, Chianti, Puglia, Campagnia, Veneto, Abruzzo, Sicily, some Piemonte wines) By far, Italy can be the most confusing wine country in the world. Also by far it produces the broadest range of wines. In all the confusion, many amazing values fall through the cracks. While finding good values in Italy will always be hard due to a confused appellational authority and oftentimes over-confident Italian winemakers, the rewards can be immense. I personally love the Gambero Rosso guide to Italian wines, though it’s a bit monolithic.