One of the most fun experiences in getting to know different wines is training your nose to identify the aromas and your palette to detect the nuanced flavors. With a little work and exposure to an array of wines, anyone can improve these skills and enhance their enjoyment of wine by so

oak barrels

doing.

My six year old son, Peter, seems to have inherited his Mother’s exceptional olfactory talents (she says she earned hers cooking for 30 years) and is proving to be quite the junior sommelier. Every weekend, Jill and I prepare meals together for our family and seek to match a wine with our main course. Our children have taken notice that we have a different beverage than they do and began to ask questions about wine. I invite them to sniff a glass and tell me what they smell. Peter, more often than not, produces 3 or 4 descriptors that are spot on (such as strawberries for pinot noir, raspberries for cabernet, coffee and chocolate for oaked reds, etc.). Although he shows no interest in sampling these inky beverages, he did once swirl and sniff his milk in a restaurant with only minor spillage.

One of the best ways to train your nose is to sample as many different wines as you can in a short period of time. Wine tastings, wine trips, etc., are good ways to immerse oneself and gain experience, but be careful of intake when tasting wines. Spitting is more acceptable than getting intoxicated.

Soon you will learn that there are certain aromas and flavors that typify certain grapes, regions and styles and can drill down to the nuances that make each wine a unique and rich experience. More on these themes soon!

glass cork

Having been in the wine trade for several years,
I have now had experience with most types of closures for wine bottles. We are all familiar with the traditional natural cork, made from an actual tree and found in most bottles of wine. Increasingly available are alternative closures made from synthetic compounds, glass and metal (e.g., screwcaps). Each has certain benefits, however great debate surrounds whether any departure from natural cork is good for wine.

Natural cork has one feature that is difficult to replicate: a slight permeability that allows air into the bottle very slowly over time. This attribute may be essential for wines worth aging, however, only a small percentage of wines fit this category. In fact, most wines are meant to be consumed well before they are 5 or more years old. White wines, with certain exceptions, are typically not meant for aging. Aging a wine means allowing it to remain in its bottle for several years, mixing with the small amounts of oxygen that seep in and change the chemistry, usually mellowing it and blending key flavors until they are more enjoyable than right after bottling.

synthetic corks

One significant drawback of natural corks is a fungus that is found in cork trees that causes a compound known as TCA to enter the wine. The effects of TCA on the wine, though harmless to humans, include masking the fruit aromas of the wine and replacing them with odors of moldy newspaper, musty basement and wet dog, as well as affecting the wine’s flavor. Cork producers estimate that roughly 1% of wine is affected by TCA, whereas a 2005 study by Wine Spectator’s labs found 7% of 2800 bottles to “corked”.¹ Corked wine is unpleasant and may be sent back (watch the Sommelier come running). Apparently there are now some ways to treat corked wine, as TCA will adsorb to polypropylene and may be extracted by other methods (though these methods may not be much use when dining out).

Synthetic and glass corks create a tighter seal and preserve the wine in a state closer to that when first bottled, i.e.,

screwcap or stelvin

little, if any, oxygen enters the bottle until it is opened. Screwcaps typically also create an impermeable seal, but some are now being designed to mimic the slow permeation of natural corks. Critics of these closures report that the too-perfect seal sometimes leads to sulphidization, i.e., due to the lack of oxygen, the preservatives in the wine create a sulphorous odor.

It would be interesting to locate two bottles of the same wine with different closures and taste them side by side. Unless you are a winemaker, good luck finding them!

There is a certain range of latitudes that work for winemaking; approximately [35-50] degrees from the Equator. Next time you see a globe or world map, you will notice that all of the major wine producing regions are located within this band, and this fact applies to both hemispheres. For example, New York State and northern California have roughly the same latitude as Burgundy and Bordeaux, as well as Austria and Italy. Down under, you will see that southern Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina and South Africa are all in the same zone as well. The key reason for this phenomenon is the seasons, i.e., grapevines require light, heat and moisture to grow, and vines produce grapes in Spring and Summer. Something to think about is that southern hemisphere vintages are about 6 months older than those up here.

So what is it that makes wines so nuanced? How is it that neighboring wine regions (and even wine makers) can produce wines that are strikingly different? Several critical inputs can be very different from one vineyard to the next such as:

• Microclimate
• Type of soil (rocky, sandy, minerals, etc.)
• Rainfall
• Heat levels in Summer and near harvesting
• Ripeness at harvest
• Temperature, length and type of yeast used in fermentation
• French, American or other types of oak barrels (if oaked)

If you ask a winemaker, this list would go on and on. I was once told of an attempt by Japanese scientists to synthesize wine that failed, due most likely to the incredible complexity of this “simple” and “natural” beverage.

All of these facts underscore the importance of a talented wine maker with good ground and vines. It has been said that in a good season, most winemakers can make good wine, but in a bad season, only good winemakers can make good wine—they just make less of it.