September 26, 2008 by Thomas.

The subject of value wines came up recently on a wine Web forum.

In both my career in the wine business and in my at-home wine consumption I’ve probably spent more time seeking what I consider value wines than I’ve spent seeking whatever it is we call the other wines: excess, premium, top-notch, status, I don’t know.

I suppose when wine is a hobby the named wines of the world, the status products, the ones that a hobbyist “must have” are important. But hobbies like that can be quite expensive. Even those of us in the wine business have to think twice about the cost of wine, especially wine priced first in euros and then converted to dollars.

My wife says that she’ll know when I’m about to die; it will be two seconds after I refuse a glass of wine and a meal. Being that intent on consuming wine means that wine is not my hobby, which accounts for the relative paucity of the “great named” wines that have gone down my gullet when compared to the volume of daily quaffers, value wines, and general nice stuff that I’ve consumed—with dinner.

Years ago, learning wine meant reading about it—not about its ratings, but about wine, from writers who took us on a journey of exploration rather than on a ride through their palates. What some of us learned is that, like most anything else, there’s a hierarchy to wine. That lesson never meant to me that something on one end of the spectrum is worth more than something on the other end of the spectrum, not unless I’ve tasted it and it touched me. It meant that some wines are regarded one way and other wines are regarded another way—end of story.

As I began to learn the nature of the establishment and maintenance of the wine hierarchy  I began to have questions about it, but I digress.

The first time I tasted a top hierarchy wine, Chateau Petrus, the wine touched me. It seemed worth what people paid for it—other people, of course, as I couldn’t afford it.

Likewise, the first time I tasted a lesser Bordeaux, a 1982 Chateau Coufran, it touched me, too. It was a wine that I could afford more regularly, and that about the wine touched me all the more; It was a value wine, since it expressed 1982 well and it did so without me having to take out a mortgage to try it. But that Coufran may not be a value wine to others today, because it costs well over the $14 or so that I paid for it two decades ago.

I just finished taking a look at a book called The Wine Trials, by Robin Goldstein. He’s the fellow who recently made a splash concerning wine list awards that Wine Spectator gives out.

Despite its title, The Wine Trials is not about people caught perpetrating frauds. The book is about experiments that Goldstein, et al, performed which he claims prove that high-priced wines are rated and prized not because of their quality but because of their status.

I won’t go into the evidence Goldstein presents to prove his case, I’ll just say that it isn’t a revelation to me—I’ve witnessed the phenomenon many times, but I’ve finally learned to shut up about it when it happens in my presence.

Most wine hobbyists don’t know what a blind tasting is—many don’t accept its value—but that is the only way for Goldstein to have proven his point, and that is why I value the results.

Still, people generally aren’t interested in being told that critics successfully manipulate them, never mind that their own brains are likely manipulating them, so even after doing the research, Goldstein’s findings will produce detractors, and many of them are likely to be wine hobbyists.

Non-hobbyists probably like the idea that lower priced wines can please people as much or more than the status giants. The idea has value, and it makes them value wines.

Copyright Thomas Pellechia
September 2008. All rights reserved.

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September 11, 2008 by Thomas.

Out of the mouths of wives often come illuminating thoughts.

Last night, out of Vinho Verde for our before-dinner drink, I asked my wife if she would like a Prosecco instead.

“Sure.”

I ran downstairs and found the remaining Prosecco (Zardetto) in our cellar.

Although it is not the Prosecco that has pleased me most, I like Zardetto’s version of the bubbly. No matter. This blog entry is not about Prosecco that pleases, although to get to my point I do have to tell you how we felt about the Zardetto.

I was preparing duck seared breast with a maple/soy/wine/garlic/onion sauce, with rice and olives on the side.

There’s some preparation to the sauce and also to the duck, which I rub with soy/garlic and white pepper and then coat with a dusting of flour. Sipping the aperitif wine while working is fully in order, and for that purpose, I like the wine to be fresh and lively, with a bite that will tease my appetite.

Prosecco is both the name of a grape and two wine styles produced in the Veneto region of Italy. The wine is either frizzante, a fizzy still wine or it is spumante, a fully sparkling wine.

In either case, the wines are generally light, fruity, a touch sweet, and nicely acidic at the finish. The Zardetto tastes somewhere between a 7-Up and Schweppes Tonic, but on a higher plane; its bubbles seem more gentle than a Charmat sparkling wine process usually throws at you (see the link below).

In short, the Prosecco was exactly what I wanted while cooking—a fine alternative to Vinho Verde.

Somewhere between when I dusted the duck breast with flour and added flour to thicken the sauce that was cooking, my wife came into the kitchen. She pointed at the Zardetto bottle and asked, “Why don’t we have something like this produced in America and at this price?”

The price of a well-made Prosecco is between $13 and $15 a bottle.

It is a good question, to which I have no answer.

Certainly, we have the technology for Charmat wines. They are on our market and for a lot, lot less than $15. But are they as fresh, lively, biting, and pleasing as Prosecco? Not to me.

Admittedly, it’s been a while since I’ve tasted an American Charmat process wine, and that’s because I’ve hated most of them. With bubbles as big and seemingly as damaging as brass marbles, plus the cloying, often limp quality of the wines, I simply gave up trying.

On second thought: why can’t I find an American version of Vinho Verde at $5 that is as pleasing as the Portuguese wine?

I know that everything is costing us more these days, but I also wonder if the general cost of American wine, relative to quality, has been split dangerously into camps. For real money, you get real wine; for small money, you get barely drinkable wine.

Of course, I know the real answer to my wife’s question, but I hate thinking about the part of the domestic wine scene that has to do with supply and demand. It’s too depressing.

Oh, with the duck, we had Cannonau, from Sardegna…it’s Grenache.

Charmat Method

Copyright Thomas Pellechia
September 2008. All rights reserved.

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September 6, 2008 by Thomas.

When we go out to dinner, my friends often look in my direction when the waiter comes around with the wine list in hand. Then, they tell me to order whatever I think is good, and at whatever price. They trust me—probably not a good idea, but they do anyway.

My usual response is to ask each what meal he or she plans to order. I’m trying to balance the varying orders with the offerings on the wine list. Generally, we wind up with red and white on the table and after a few oohs and aahs over the wine, everyone fills their glass with whichever wine they like best, damn the pairing with their food.

Last week, over dinner at the home of a friend, he served a Merlot from the Dolomiti of Italy. Boy, was I impressed by this non-wine geek’s selection.

The wine comes from the Dolomite Mountain range located in Northeastern Italy. It is an impressive mountain range, known by us for climbing and skiing more than for anything else, unless you are a wine person.

For wine people like I, who has visited the region, it is as exciting as visiting another mountainous ski area in Italy, Valtellina, the home of Sforzato, a red wine produced from the nebbiolo grape—in Valtellina Italian, sforzato means “strained,” a reference to the way the grapes are dried like raisins to make the intense wine, which is similar to Amarone produced in the Volpolicella region.

What makes these two regions, plus Piemonte located in the country’s Northwest, is that the mountains face due south; the sun beats down on them in all seasons, and that makes for intense red grape growing; hence, a fine Merlot from a mountainous region.

Merlot has been growing in Northeastern Italy for more than a century, yet we hear little about it, and we get to drink even less. This wine was a delight: bright, cherry-like acidic fruit qualities and with a medium body normally ascribed to mountainous wines that was accompanied not by powerful but by fine enough tannin structure to hold its own and to offer a lingering finish.

The wine is Mezzacorona 2005 Merlot (Imported by Prestige Wines, NY). It’s not a powerhouse wine, just a stable, good drinking Merlot that paired with skirt steak, and it cost my friend $10.

The skirt steak had been marinated in soy, garlic, and pepper. I liked it so much that I got me some of the wine and some skirt steak and tried them at home later on, and got the same result.

My friend is a wine person—not a geek. He loves wine with his dinner but he hasn’t much education concerning winemaking and he cares little about wine producers. He just likes wine with his dinner. He searches for wines unknown to him.

It makes me feel good that my friend sometimes asks for advice, not about a particular wine or wine and food pairings, but about general wine categories that he knows little or nothing about and that I think he should try. This time, he went after the Merlot without my help.

It’s certainly nice to know that I can get through to someone in this world, but it isn’t a given. Let me explain.

The wine forum called Wine Therapy is no more. The forum got its start, I believe, because some wine geeks wanted a place where they felt secure and, apparently, where they could act like the prep boys they may once have been, complete with four-letter ramblings just for the fun of seeing them on a screen, although without hearing the guffaws and sniffling that often accompanies an adolescent burst, I don’t understand the appeal of typing them out online.

No matter. They got what they wanted.

I made fun of Therapy, but I also participated once in a while. I’m no prude, I can take the snappy riffs of infantile swear-wording, and every so often, I felt the desire to enter into a conversation.

Admittedly, I can become a pest to those who seem to know all there is to know, because I am always asking questions. Immature people often take a question as a challenge to their knowledge rather than as, well, a question so that I might learn something or—heaven forbid—that I might be able to point out what I consider an error in thinking.

There were many problems with hackers getting into the Wine Therapy site, so a cabal got together and created a new site called Wine Disorder—don’t blame me for their penchant for cutesy monikers!

I call it a cabal because, well, that’s almost what they want us to think of them. They call themselves the politburo, and when you register to become a posting as opposed to just a lurking member, you must deal with the politburo—I don’t know by what method, but they decide who gets in and who does not. Guess who does not.

I think I became a pest on Therapy, although I hadn’t posted much at all. (I know I pissed off one fellow, but that was well before Therapy existed, and I thought he had accepted my explanation.) Whatever, the fact that I am barred from registering at Wine Disorder bothers me only in a small way—there are people there with whom I love engaging, but I can find them on a few other forum sites.

I am, however, disturbed by this particular cabal that speaks an egalitarian message about wine, but obviously holds an apparatchik mentality.  But then, maybe I’m being too critical. After giving the situation some thought, it is to be expected.

If I remember correctly, schoolyard bullies loved to talk dirty and they also preferred to hang around together so as not to offend the gene pool. They didn’t let many outsiders in, and when they did let some in, it was mainly to torment and laugh at them with a disorderly display of giggling four-letter words and inside jokes.

I’m sure there is a place in this world for private clubs, but if you want to give it a shot, click below; before you do, brush up on the bawdy side of Kant and Kazantzakis: the cabal members may act like frat boys, but they are smart nonetheless.

Disorderly Conduct

Copyright Thomas Pellechia
September 2008. All rights reserved.

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August 30, 2008 by Thomas.

The following were posted online by two separate wine bloggers.

“Wine consumers basically want to know two things: which wines they should buy and why, and which wines they should not buy and why.”

“I blog to have fun, get some freebies and maybe meet some cool chicks.”

I hope the first one is not exactly the case. I have to hope that, since I don’t tell other people what I think they should or should not buy or why they should or shouldn’t buy the wines.

My aim for this blog was to dispel as many vinofictions as I could, because having been in the wine business for 25 years, I know that many fictions float about.

I’ve always believed, and practiced my belief as a wine salesman, that information is much better than opinion; it builds confidence in both the informer and the informed by establishing a give and take relationship. Opinions often boil down to a give relationship without much care on the part of the giver for what the taker gets—and of course, this is only my opinion.

As for the second blogger comment, I do hope it was posted in jest, but the context in which it was posted leads me to believe otherwise.

How can you measure whether or not wine has made it into mainstream American culture?

You measure by the level of media coverage wine receives, and lately that coverage has been a sorry affair.

In the last few months major wine frauds have been uncovered and explained. Frauds are always with us, in or out of the wine world, but since wine is now a mainstreamer, the fraud is blown into a major media frenzy, with a book already out and, I’m sure, a potential movie in the pipeline.

More recently, the Wine Spectator made news after someone scammed the magazine and exposed what many perceive as the magazines’ own scam.

The Spectator has had a program for years that accepts on good faith the faxed copy of a restaurant’s wine list, accompanied by a check for $250, for consideration of that wine list for the magazines Award of Excellence, or some such lofty title.

Many of us in the business haven’t given the program much credit, since we knew how it worked, but consumers didn’t seem to understand how it worked. Many of them assumed that the restaurant earned rather than paid for the award. And so, a gentleman scammer created a phony restaurant with a phony wine list that included wines the Wine Spectator had earlier decided were mediocre. Yep. He got his award.

The scammer did a few things that weakened his case in my view, but he did create a story that enlightened consumers.

In the hullabaloo over the incident, I don’t think anyone commented on the complicit nature of all those restaurants over all those years who paid their dues, got their award, and proudly lied to the public about the stature behind the award, but that’s a story on which only someone with a brain like mine seems to focus.

More recently than the Spectator fiasco, blogger Tom Wark, a PR specialist, took some other bloggers to task for reviewing wines after agreeing to preconditions. This incident is where the two quotes above can be found among hundreds of other quotes—the link is below. Wark’s initial comments about journalistic ethics began a torrent.

My view is that bloggers (or anyone) who review wine under preconditions may in fact be sincere, and they may even have a readership that doesn’t mind; they also may have valid or invalid opinions. What they don’t seem to have is an understanding either of journalism or of ethics.

If you follow the link (two links, actually), you don’t need me to recount what was posted or a he said/she said play by play. Still, I want to tell you what that thread has made me think about.

Back in the Stone Age, when the new invention of television was being sold to consumers, the major promise being made for the medium was that it will be the most innovative force for imparting information since the written word. The famous newsman, Edward R. Murrow, warned that is what television can be, but only if it is handled correctly. He warned what it would become if handled incorrectly.

Needless to say, Murrow was prescient, to a fault. Today, the words television and information hardly belong in the same room, let alone the same sentence.

Can anyone recall the promises being made when the Internet made its splash in the world? It was something along the lines of the greatest source for information ever invented. Well, yes, it is, but what’s the value of much of that information? As an author who must do a lot of research, I never trust the Internet alone as a source.

Wine blogging may have become another one of those information sources that must be taken with a large grain of salt, at least that’s how I’d feel if every blogger told me what the second blogger quoted above posted online.

I want to believe that wine blogging can be an alternative to the many bloviators that have infiltrated the wine magazine world. But I am slowly coming to the conclusion that I may be suffering from a case of wishful thinking.

In the course of that thread in the link below, I watched reasonable dialogue be overcome by pride, fear, defensiveness, childishness, and even a certain bloviation of its own making.

My position on journalism and blogging is made plain with my posts, so I won’t go over that now. But the whole affair certainly makes me wonder how long it will be before the slackers, PR stunt people, and overall opinionated children will leave the blogging stage and professionals will take over.

As long as wine blogging is a self-appointed profession, odds are that professionals may never take over. Maybe what is needed is a task force to develop criteria for creating not only a wine blogger’s professional code of ethics but also a market for wine bloggers so that those of us engaged in it can be paid as professionals rather than have to do it for love and small perks.

Newspapers and magazines have of course made that attempt, but those venues are failing at their main business; newspapers may not be around much longer and wine magazines long ago abdicated their earlier position as sources of information. Today, they are mainly lifestyle periodicals almost completely in thrall to their advertisers.

The crash of newspapers and magazines isn’t entirely their fault. Consumers, it seems, don’t have much attention span for information. They want quick and easy advice, and adding a celebrity crack up, to spice it up, doesn’t hurt the periodical.

Maybe the whole concept of informing the public has run its course. Maybe people don’t want information—they want to be led.

Maybe I would have more fun with my blog if I start accepting free wine—maybe I’ll even meet a few cool chicks, although my wife might have something to say about that.

Maybe a code of ethics for wine bloggers is a waste of time against the forces of the marketplace.

Maybe wine really has made it into mainstream America—maybe it’s time to move on.

First link

Second Link

Copyright Thomas Pellechia
August 2008. All rights reserved.

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August 27, 2008 by Thomas.

You know that something’s afoot in the wine world when wine geeks start touting the selection at their local Costco. This happened a few weeks ago on the Robert Parker forum Web site. That came as a surprise to me. I never would have thought that wine geeks of the magnitude that post on that forum would even step into a Costco

Well, something just may be afoot at Costco, as I have tasted my first few wines bought at a Staten Island store. For $10 to $12 a bottle, these wines okay.

One of the wines, a Pinot Noir, was under the Robert Mondavi label.

I’m unsure how the wines wound up in Costco, but it appears to be a sign that the once famous Mondavi name may be in some over-production trouble. I won’t even go into how sad that makes me feel. The sadness kicked in when I read the news that Constellation Brands bought the Robert Mondavi brand name. Ah well, what to expect from a culture that has become a brand name whore, but I digress.

My friends find the practice of taking notes annoyingly geeky, so when I am in their homes I honor their wishes. Therefore, I don’t have any notes about the wines they served, but I do remember the Mondavi Pinot Noir as a wonderful bargain, and it was joined by one fantastic and one not-so-fantastic New Zealand (Marlborough) Sauvignon Blanc—remember, each wine was from $10-$12.

There was a Chardonnay in the crowd, but it must not have made an impression among the other wines—I remember nothing about it.

My friend said he settled on $10-$12 to see what range of quality Costco offered at that reasonable price. Based on what I tasted that night, I’d say Costco did a good job in that price range.

Of course, I do not consider myself a true wine geek, but still, I have never been in a Costco. Part of my problem is that we have no Costco around my neighborhood. We have a Sam’s Club not far away but two things keep me from shopping there: it’s a Wal-Mart store and it’s a Wal-Mart store.

If Sam’s Club or Wal-Mart were giving away premium wine I’d still rather pay for it. Call me an elitist, but my aversion to that place runs deep. I view such mega-businesses as one major sign of a decaying culture, and I refuse to be made to feel a part of the decay. In my lifetime thus far, I have been in one Wal-Mart; more than enough for me (it’s the same with Starbucks, although I’ve been in that store twice).

I suppose I should feel the same way about Costco as I do about Wal-Mart as I understand the former is trying to gain major advantages in wine distribution and retailing. But since I have never even seen a Costco, the only opinion I can form is based on the decent wines I tasted that didn’t cost my friend a lot of money.

Maybe some of you can enlighten me. Is Costco just another version of Wal-Mart or is there hope?

Copyright Thomas Pellechia
August 2008. All rights reserved.

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August 16, 2008 by Thomas.

A couple of years ago I asked a winemaker friend to explain to me the difference between tannin and tannic acid.

This friend is trained in microbiology and wine production, so I figured he would have a definitive answer. He did not. He said that he wasn’t sure about the relationship between tannic acid and tannin, because the words have often been applied and misapplied.

Well, I said to myself, that clears everything for me!

Being fairly well acquainted with cool climate wines, I am positive that their aging potential is seriously helped along by their acid make up, especially tartaric, which is the dominant acid of a few that are natural to grapes—and if you find that your dominant acid isn’t tartaric when you make wine, it’s usually best to add some.

Over time, the overall acidity (and tannin) in wine mellows as various reactions take place during the aging process, but it’s pretty well known that the tartaric portion of the wine’s structure plays a great role in fending off spoilage organisms, and that allows for the slow aging transformations.

For a long time, it was believed that tannins worked similarly to acidity as wine aged. Today, however, that belief is questioned and in fact, some question whether tannin is at all important in the wine aging process.

One of the results of being vocal or opinionated is that others will find you and take you to task. I was recently taken to task by a California winemaker because I  posted on the Wine Lovers forum that acidity is what allows white wines to age and tannin is what allows red wines to age—the latter having more tannin and less acidity than the former.

I was spouting a long-standing belief, but the winemaker will have none of that. He wants to know which scientific study has proved that tannins help wines to age.

I did some checking around and I can’t help my winemaker friend by providing a study to support the role of tannins on wine aging. I can, however, report that there are scientific studies on the effects of tannin in nutrition and many other areas of plant and human health. One of those effects seems to be that tannins slow down oxidation.

Here’s my question to the winemaker: if tannins indeed do slow down oxidation, wouldn’t that help wine age?

Here’s my other question to the winemaker: what IS the difference between tannin and tannic acids?

The below links are interesting reading on this subject. Notice within some of the links that tannins can link to tannic acids through a process known as esterifying, and that those acids are not nearly as strong as tartaric or another grape acid, malic, or even as strong as citric acid.

My sense of the situation is this:

Forget the nonsense that white wines don’t age as well as red wines. That old saw is proven wrong on a regular basis with just Riesling alone, but with many other whites, all with high acid content.

Reds surely do have lower acidity and higher tannin content than whites, yet many of them age rather well. I believe that the anti-oxidant effects of tannin has an awful lot to do with the aging of red wines. But that is not to say that all tannin acts that way.

Hidden in one of the definitions of tannin I found that certain tannins, particularly from woods like oak, oxidize more easily than grape tannins.

Hmm. Could that be why some reds age longer than others?

Although winemaking is a science, understanding wine is quite often a belief system. Read the links below for the science; then, like the rest of us, form your own belief system. But please, don’t tell others that your belief system is THE answer.

WikiTannin

WikiTannicAcid

TannicAcid 1

TannicAcid2

WikiTartaric

Copyright Thomas Pellechia
August 2008. All rights reserved.

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August 1, 2008 by Thomas.

The International Riesling Foundation says it has identified appropriate terms for describing the relative dryness or sweetness of Riesling.

The Foundation came up with five categories: Dry, Off-Dry, Medium Dry, Medium Sweet, and Sweet.

To help winemakers, the Foundation offers a technical chart of parameters and the relationship among sugar, acid, and pH.

What, no tannin? Of course no tannin; Riesling doesn’t concern itself much with that stuff.

I applaud the effort, but still, I wonder why only Riesling? What about the volumes of sweet Chardonnay and those blueberry milkshakes called Shiraz that flood the marketplace? Aren’t they confusing to consumers looking for so-called dry wines?

Wouldn’t consumers benefit from a chart that generally holds for all wines, which of course would then include tannin in the chart?

Of course, the answer to my last question is yes, but the challenge is nearly insurmountable.

First, while the winemakers may have guidance so that they can label their wine dry, sweet, whatever, there is no such thing as a monopalate—what’s sweet to someone may not be so sweet or sweet at all to someone else, no matter what a chart tells them.

Second, Riesling is in the enviable position of being the rare grape that can handle producing a stellar wine with or without sugar, and at various levels in between.

Third, I believe the emphasis is in the wrong place anyway.

When I run out of things to read, I go to my philosophy books for comfort. Lately, I’ve been digging into Aristotle, Hume, Epictetus, and William James. It occurred to me that maybe I can address this dry/sweet conundrum by using one or two methods of philosophical analysis.

Brace yourself. I’ve never done this before.

Let’s start with me proving the premise that dry is the opposite of wet.

You want proof?

When you wash your clothes they get wet; then, you dry them. When you perspire, your head (or under arms) get wet; then, the wind blows and dries your skin. When you jump into a pool, you get wet; then, a towel rub dries you off. When the barometer goes down, the air is wet; then, the barometer goes up and the air is dry—that’s’ a two-fer, because the opposite of down is up!

Now you can plainly see that the opposite of wet is dry.

Water is likely the wettest thing on earth. Our bodies are composed mostly of water. Without ample water, we would shrivel and die—in other words, we dry out.

The area of the body that has been assigned the task of warning us that we are drying out is our palate—we feel dry and so we drink water to replenish our bodies.

Our palate uses some of the water in our bodies to make saliva. Saliva is wet. When our palate feels dry, it means that our saliva is or has become less wet, or does it?

Do not be deceived by what seems a simple statement. Simplicity is not all that it is cracked up to be when talking about the palate. One can have ample supply of both water in the body and saliva in the mouth, but one can still have a palate that feels dry. You can test this hypothesis by drinking a gallon of water. You will be fully hydrated and certainly not dry. But if you wait a few minutes and then drink two glasses of Tannat or Malbec wine, watch what happens.

A few seconds after you drink either of the two wines you will begin to smack your cheeks, if you can, and rub your tongue against the upper part of your mouth in a near vain attempt to find your saliva. If you don’t panic, the saliva will return. In fact, it probably never left you but it certainly felt that way.

You have just experienced a dry wine, or have you?

It’s agreed that water is wet. It’s also agreed that dry is the opposite of wet. It’s further agreed that our bodies are mostly made of water; the same applies to almost all matter on earth, including wine. If wine is largely made up of water, then wine is wet. If dry is the opposite of wet, how can the Tannat or Malbec you swallowed have been dry?

The answer to the above question is complicated, but it can be illustrated thusly.

We’ve established that if you were to drink from a glass of water, it would feel wet.

If you were to stir in the equivalent of 1 % by volume of sugar to the water and then drink, it will still feel wet, but it will also taste sweet.

If you were to stir into the water a squirt of lemon juice and then drink, the water would still be wet, but it would not seem as sweet.

If you were to stir in another squirt of lemon, but this time add a pinch of shaved dark baking chocolate (99% sugar free), the water would still be wet but it would also seem even less sweet than before, or maybe not sweet at all, depending upon individual taste variations.

If you were to add successive doses of lemon and chocolate, in due time your palate will feel really, really dry. You won’t even notice the sugar, but it will still be there, and the water, of course, will still be wet.

The water, sugar, lemon, and chocolate experiment was a simulation of those components—acid, sugar, etc.—found in all wine, not just in Riesling. As your palate seemed to lose its saliva, it also made you crave something to drink (from this we can speculate over the origin of the phrase, “mouth watering,” when what you taste makes you want to produce more and more saliva.)

My hypothesis and solution:

We have agreed that water is wet, and that dry is the opposite of wet. We have further agreed that wine is mostly water therefore: wine is wet and cannot be dry. We have also agreed that when you add certain components to something wet it can alter your palate perception, and even make your saliva seem to dry up therefore: something wet can make your palate feel dry.

We have further agreed that sugar can make your palate feel good—and sweet—but it doesn’t seem to change the effect of other components and, after a certain point, sugar is overcome by the other components, or at least it takes a back seat to them. While this is happening, the other components are making you feel dry yet, the delivery system—the wine—is still wet therefore: there is no such thing as a dry wine.

For some time I’ve had the belief that the first time anyone used the word dry to define how a wine tasted, that person did not refer to what was in the wine—that far back, people hardly knew what was in wine, but it’s certain that major components—acid and tannin—were prevalent. The person likely used the word in reference to how the wine made the palate feel.

In fact, an Internet buddy once found historical evidence in writing that seemed to support my belief.

As the wine industry progressed, sweet wines took on greater importance. Large doses of sugar in wine changes the focus away from that dry sensation. Over time, people began to refer to wine either as dry or as sweet, and by extension, they began to think that a wine that makes your palate feel dry cannot be sweet therefore, it cannot contain sugar, and that false notion has been spread around ever since. Just one taste of a well-produced Late Harvest Riesling will put the notion to rest as such wines often provide sweetness alongside that dry sensation on the palate.

In my opinion, the new chart that is devised for Riesling is nice, but it is not the answer to the seeming age-old, and completely inaccurate question, do you like dry Riesling?

There is no such thing as a dry Riesling—remember, all wine is wet.

Here’s my solution to the dry vs. sweet discussion. Take the chart that is devised for winemakers and establish certain acid, tannin, pH, sugar balances that pair well with certain food types. This category may include wines with sweetness, like those Late Harvest Rieslings, which, because of their acidity do pair with certain foods.
Label such wines as: best with food (or insert the names of foods).

This system prevents people in and outside the wine industry from talking nonsense such as something wet like wine is dry. The system would also stop people from thinking philosophically about wine and instead think of it as food.

For those who can’t give up the chic, geeky practice of analysis, the winemakers can also label some wines: best to sip and analyze.

Plus, for those who cling to the taste of sweetness and refuse to try a so-called dry wine, and are tired of being fooled by those so-called sweet wines that make them pucker, label sweet wines that don’t make your palate also feel dry as: best for dessert.

Tongue may be planted in cheek here, but not by much!

Copyright Thomas Pellechia
August 2008. All rights reserved.

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July 28, 2008 by Thomas.

Whew!

After standing back some, I ventured into a few bulletin board conversations and was immediately reminded why I chose to stand back.

It isn’t that debating issues about wine is no fun—to the contrary, it can be great fun. It’s just that debating via the keyboard and electronic impulses is a weak form of communication at best. It’s so easy to be misunderstood, and after that happens, control of your own words seems to morph into a game of who should own those words, you or those who disagree with you?

There will come a day when I will back away completely—I hope, I hope. But until then, I fear that I will find myself hopelessly drawn into debates about wine production processes and wine criticism, debates that cover much of the same ground and don’t seem to change my or anyone else’s mind.

What is it about wine that makes so many of us so passionate as to hurl at one another whenever a belief or an opinion lands counter to ours?

In my often non-humble opinion, the phenomenon is as complicated as a California fruit bomb with alcohol that rivals jet fuel (now is the time for someone to accuse me of slamming his or her beloved California Cabernet).

On one level, we wine nuts express camaraderie (me, I’m a nut, not a geek). But how easily that friendship can fall apart— if you don’t believe me, just attack the wines of your wine buddy’s favorite producer.

On another level, we wine nuts give lip service to the idea that people have different tastes. But how easily that can devolve into a conversation of hurling epithets as soon as one of us claims to have, well, different taste.

On still another level, we wine nuts agree that we all have opinions. What we don’t seem to agree on is that the opinions of others have any merit. On this subject, I get into trouble regularly, especially when I attack the opinions of wine critics who hold no credentials, have no training, and make rather bizarre claims. I value opinions, but only when they have been formed through knowledge, not just through will and force of personality, or luck at having been given a pulpit.

One of my latest brush-ups had to do with the issue about which I feel strongly: that to be a credible critic, one needs to at least have done a little legwork in the subject, and since wine is a subject with technical, creative, and practical applications, a critic’s duty is to learn what they are.

All too often, I read diatribes from certain critics that display a blatant lack of knowledge alongside a volume of opinions. Not to make a pun, but these wine critics leave me with a bad taste.

Truth be told, and this is where I get into the most trouble with my attitude, I don’t give much credence to the profession of critic. Mainly, a critic tells us what he or she likes or dislikes. Mainly, I don’t really care what someone else likes or dislikes, unless that someone can point me to a reason beyond his or her bias or prejudice. At least then, I can explore and decide whether the critic speaks truth or blather.

I know this is blasphemy in certain quarters of the wine world, but I cannot imagine the value in “calibrating” my palate to someone else’s. My fun with wine includes me doing the exploration, not me finding out what someone else explored and then running down to the nearest wine shop to gobble up the latest achiever.

But then, I never was a follower, so maybe it’s not the critics; maybe it is I who is the problem. Maybe I should just teach people who want to learn what little I know, drink the wines I like, and just shut up.

To do that last one, I believe I might have to throw this computer out the window!

Below is the thread that got me thinking. Notice in the moderator’s post just before my final one that I am accused of having “chuztpah,” unmitigated gall for living my opinions, and I am also accused of being prejudice and lacking creativity.  Within the accusations are these hidden gems: subjectivity equals un-biased; objectivity equals prejudice; and, by extension, faulty logic equals creativity.

Talk about “chutzpah!”

 Critic’s Ethics

Copyright Thomas Pellechia
July 2008. All rights reserved.

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July 13, 2008 by Thomas.

Recently, a blogger, Lyle Fass, brought my attention to an article by Food and Wine writer, Lettie Teague.

The article Teague wrote was rather confusing, and I don’t fully understand what point she was trying to make, but in one way or another, it concerned the concept of organic winemaking. I was left with the impression that she considers the idea of organic winemaking or so-called “green” winemaking just another marketing scam.

I generally agree that words like “organic, green, biodynamic, etc.” all have the potential for scamming. I’m also sure that marketers use the words if not to scam at least to bamboozle us. To put it bluntly: organic was long ago sullied, and green is beginning to get on my nerves.

How many of you know what exactly is meant by the concept of green winegrowing?

I’d bet that your answer is not the same as mine or as someone close to you. Marketing has already messed that concept up to a fine jumble of confusion—is it “green” to use wooden or cardboard boxes, trucks or trains for transportation, glass or cans for packaging, tractors or donkeys, and how green is it to cut trees down to make barrels or worse, to make wood chips?

Sure, I want the environment to suffer less, but I want that to be a joint effort among industry, government, and us. And to me, a major part of why we pay taxes is for protection against threats to our existence. I can’t think of greater threats than being attacked or fading away because of global meltdown.

I’m convinced that we are threatening our own existence with outmoded Industrial Revolutionary thinking and practices, and that means fossil fuels and petrochemicals.

Along with a better environment, I want both my food and my wine to have as little exposure to petrochemicals as is humanly possible. But I know that there is no easy fix—our culture is heavily invested in the chemistry of petroleum. No company illustrated that fact better than Dupont with its decades-old commercial message, “Better living through chemistry.”

The other day, while digging into my latest issue of Wines and Vines Magazine, I was slapped awake by my own incredulity. The article was about federal and local government requirements for certification for so-called organic grape growing.

The way things work, individuals who use petrochemical sprays on their vines must take classes and be certified, mainly because everyone recognizes the danger in using the chemicals. But nothing on a wine label is required to indicate whether or not there are potential dangers to the consumer.

Yet, when a wine is produced from grapes that were not grown in the “better living through chemistry” mold, giving us grapes that are pesticide and fungicide free, the wine producer must be certified by the authorities before the company is allowed to tell the consumer about its organic practices.

In other words, we aren’t warned when there might be danger in our wines, but we are warned when there probably isn’t any danger.

How about the following addition to the GOVERNMENT WARNING label:

The grapes for this wine were produced without petrochemicals, but don’t worry, these guys applied for and got certified for the privilege of doing things the natural way.

Rest assured that we’ll charge them a fee each time they do it right.

Copyright Thomas Pellechia
July 2008. All rights reserved.

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July 3, 2008 by Thomas.

Something can be said for the fun of that parlor game when you single out the wine know-it-all and get that person to taste a wine—blind—to try to guess what it is.

It’s fun to serve a wine that is close to a certain other wine that you know this person will have tasted before and so is likely to be fooled this time around.

It’s even more fun when you throw in a $5 cheapie and this knowledgeable fool proclaims it Pavie or Cheval Blanc or some other high achiever.

The above may be fun, but it has nothing to do with blind tasting wine, and I was particularly amused (and somewhat surprised) to discover that there are people out there who consume a lot of wine and spend a lot of money every year on it, but they don’t know the value of a truly blind evaluation and comparison.

Recently, I got into a discussion about the attributes of Finger Lakes Riesling. It was the same old discussion of how Finger Lakes Rieslings don’t hold up against German or Alsatian counterparts, a belief that I am convinced is of questionable merit.

The reason I think that consumers who make the claim that Finger Lakes Rieslings, though good, are not world class, is because I have numerous times sat in on blind evaluation comparisons. Finger Lakes Rieslings easily held their own.

The kind of evaluation I’m talking about is when the tasters know only that the wines are Riesling and that each flight of wines is within a certain stylistic parameter and vintage. We know nothing about their location, winemaker, producer, and price. That’s a blind tasting.

A double blind evaluation means that the taster knows nothing about the wines, not even the grape variety. That method is best used for training purposes, to hone one’s sensory abilities.

The task in a blind tasting is to evaluate each wine on its merits, to see if it lives up to varietal character and to stylistic parameters.

A blind tasting is not when a bunch of geeks bring bottles of their favorite wines and then someone puts them into a brown bag and the tasters don’t know which wine is in which bag. Just knowing that your wine is in the bunch will either expose or shatter your bias. It’s human nature to look in every glass of wine served for the wine you brought. It will confuse the hell out of you. You may find the wine, or you may think you have found it. (Not to mention that bottle shapes can give a lot of information.)

A blind tasting is not when the people selecting the order, opening, and pouring the wine also serve it to the tasters. To remove all bias, even the servers shouldn’t know what they are pouring. That way, they can’t give something away with unconscious body language.

In a well run blind tasting, the wines are poured in a back room or kitchen. The glasses are numbered to correspond with numbers that have been assigned to the tasting sheets. The pourers give the glasses to the servers and they take them to the tasting panels to serve.

Tasters are free to taste in whatever order they want, but they must be sure to correspond the correct glass numbers with the tasting sheet numbers.

The evaluation can be done with scores, verbals, or both. But everyone should conform to a pre-established set of scoring rules.

I and two other fellows proposed to the unbelieving that if they claim that Finger Lakes Rieslings do not belong in world class status with their beloved European products, then they should be willing to compare the wines in a completely blind tasting setting.

One geek said I was a chicken, apparently meaning that I was using the blind tasting as a way to back out of proving my point, which is that Finger Lakes Rieslings are likely to surprise those geeks.

His childish chiding, however, illuminates to me that he hasn’t a clue what the purpose of a blind evaluation is. More important, he seems to think that he has super-human talent, that he can remove all bias by simply willing himself to do so. I’m worldly enough to smell the bullshit in that concept.

I’ve seen too many so-called unbiased wine tastings in my day. The main purpose is to prove an already expressed opinion and to have fun while doing it. That’s a parlor game.

The truly blind tasting method is closer to science, and we all know that science is supposed to search for answers—not validate preconceived notions. Well, maybe all but the biased wine geeks know that.

I’m unsure if the blind evaluation will take place, but I know that I am willing to take the risk. I believe that tasters would find many Finger Lakes Rieslings to be world class wines, especially since they won’t know that they are tasting Finger Lakes Rieslings.

Copyright Thomas Pellechia
July 2008. All rights reserved.

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