Say it ain't so...

If you think that my "normal posts" are circuitous, this one will stop even my most devoted readers in their tracks follow along. A while back, I met my friend William Bellomo through a handful of mutual friends from Philly. We actually didn't put this together until much later, because at the time, we (myself from the City of Champions, my friends from the City that Celebrates Fictional Boxers for lack of anything to actually Celebrate and occassionally William) used to regularly gather on Fridays to have dinner parties: the only requirement was to bring a bottle of wine.

Well on Saturday - would that have been 2002 -- during the winter Olympics, I sat with the Fictional Boxer Idolators and actually rooted against Mario Lemieux. The USA was playing Canada in the Olympic Hockey tournament and I was being forced to root for John LeClair to defeat Mario Lemieux. It was very much akin to picking the grey Army Men instaed of the Green ones or (for you females) trying to hook up with Blair rather than Jo from the Facts of Life with the Dreamie guy. Simply unheard of.

So then it happened. We thought it might. The #8 Budweiser car and its driver (along with it's current and exponentially increasing $2Billion in merchandising) joined forces with Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson - a fate truly worse than death. I strongly considered buying a case of Miller Lite rather than one of cool, crisp mildly-hopped refreshing American lager with nuances of beechwood aging. But I instead began to consider the other, more likable options. Being an emotional person, I considered the immediate purchase of #11 FedEx Merchandise, but cooler heads prevailed (although I have not eliminated the possibilty).

(Here's the point at the end of my seemingly random session of complaints.) Do you know what a corked wine is? A lot of people don't. Let's review. You're at a restaurant. The sommelier offers you a taste of the wine that you are about to consume. You don't like it. Do you send it back? The answer is emphatically no. The waiter allows you to taste the wine to ensure that it is not flawed. If he recommended it, and you detest it, you drink it and never come back. You are given a taste of wine to check for flaws, not quality.

I once submitted a bottle of wine to a journalist that I thought was best in class. (The wine was 1998 Fleurie, Vieilles-Vignes, Domaine Bigot/Alex Gambal.) It was truly unbelievable Beaujolais. The journalist brogught the bottle back to me the nest day and said "Taste this". It was floored. I gave him another and a few hours later he called me to tell me that it was one of the finest under $15 bottles of wine he had ever experienced.

When a wine is "corked", it smelles of wet cardboard. It's a little hard to describe until you experience it, and honestly that bottle of Fleurie was on of the most corked bottles of wine that has ever been. The wine itself is good, but a bacteria gets in the cork and permanently taints it.

This causes a lot of problems for wine geeks because somewhere between 5 and 10% of all wines experience cork taint - and it's completely random.

So to return to Mario Lemieux and Dale, Jr., recently a few producers of Grand Cru Burgundy have decided to begin bottling their Grand Cru wines in synthetic corks - that is corks that are not susceptible to being corked.

My opinion remains: wine is a living breathing thing. There is a better chance that I will drink a wine with the wrong dish or at the wrong stage in its development than pull the cork on one that is flawed. Call me traditional, but when I open a 30 year old-bottle of Vintage Champagne I want to hear a (rather improper by Sommelier's rules) pop. Somehow a screwtop doesn't cut it - even if there's a 10% chance that the cork will fail me.

I want a cork. I don't look down on a screw top - rather I evaluate a wine on quality alone: the importer doesn't matter, the price doesn't matter and the type of encolsure certainly doesn't matter. But do I really have to root for Jeff Gordon?

To Age or Not to Age?

As I mentioned in my last post, I had the pleasure of having a quite delicious bottle of 1987 Robert Mondavi Cabernet sauvignon Reserve the other day. I always love to add a wine with a bit of age to it to any tasting I run because it allows people to experience something unusual and perhaps get them to understand what the fuss is all about. As they always say though, with an aged wine, there are no good wines only good bottles. Luckily the Mondavi was stored properly, and was just beautiful.

When a grape is presse and the juice has certain flavors and aromas typical of the grape. So for instance the juice from your Merlot will smell of plums, Cabernet Sauvignon will smell of black currants and cassis, Pinot Noir will smell like red and black cheries. These are called primary aromas. Primary aromas are present before the winemaker does anything.

Once the winemaker becomes involved and after fermentation occurs, some new and very different aromas - called secondary aromas -- are introduced. These can be quite varied, but the most obvious example is vanilla or coconut from the oak barrels. These secondary aromas add complexity to the wine, so that it smells and tastes like something other than just plain grape juice.

As a wine ages, an additional layer of complexity is added; indeed the more developed a wien is, the more prominent these aromas are, eventually coming to dominate the wine. They are tertiary aromas. The Mondavi in particular had a pronounced bouquet of dried leaves and also a bit of earthiness. These are the types of aromas that are in an aged wine. They can't be produced from merely grape juice alone, nor by a winemaker or fermentation. The intense bouquet of an aged wine can only be achieved through the gentle processes that occur in the bottle over the course of years or maybe decades. It is with age that a wine finally eveolves into a noble beverage to bee savored.

If you are going to age wine, here are a few tips:

The wine should be stored in a cool, dark preferably moist place. Cool - as in 55 degrees - ensures that the wine doesn't get "cooked". Dark because wine doesn't like light, and light can prematurely oxidise a wine.

If you stick to those three things, or purchase one of the many excellent designer wine cellars that mimics a traditional one, then you should have no problem replicating my experience with the 93 Mondavi.

The Golden Rule

As I mentioned in my last post, I became an Uncle recently, so I have been spending much of my free time trying to explain terroir to my niece Riley. I got into an argument with a few people on a wine discussion board regarding this very subject.

Here's the rundown.

Wine, like anything else, gives people who know (or claim to be in the know) a possibility to make you feel dumb (if you let them). Now I love Rielsing; I actually probably drink Riesling more than any other wine, mainly because they are generally lower in alocohol than other wines and so I can drink a whole bottle and not worry about the side effects. The problem is that Riesling people have a certain air of importance about them - you mean YOU don't think Rielsing is the greatest wine on earth.

Now admittedly, I am like that about Burgundy, but I freely admit that. I freely admit that I think that Burgundy is the greatest wine on earth (red or white) and I am a pretentious, arrogant slime because of that. But I'm not smug about it. It is what is.

More importantly, if YOU think that MERLOT or some other grape is the greatest grape in the world, I'm fine with that. I ahve often said that as a professional, I don't taste a wine thinking whether or not I like it, I taste a wine thinking who would like it. That my saound like a very capitalistic approach, but I don't mean it in that sense. YOU and I like different things. I like Haydn [a dead white guy] and George Strait for music, I like Burgundy for wine, I like the engravings of Albrecht Durer [another dead white guy], I enjoy sage more than basil, and I live and die black and gold with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Penguins and Pirates.

I'm only an expert in one of those cases - wine - but you still don't have to agree with me. I strongly suggest the wine sthat we have available for sale. If you read my posts, it's obvious which ones I prefer. But My 90 pointer may be your 80 pointer. Give us a call or send us an email. Although Riley may eventually hate Haydn's Symphony 101 "the Clock Symphony", for now, she's going to sleep every night to it (or well, occassionally she's at least sleeping). I won't do that to you!

More Cowbell?

I (you, we) hate the prices of wine. Wine is an imperfect market as I learned very quickly working for an auction house. Although stocks can dip or crescendo on the whims of one investor (Buffet buys a railroad - all of a sudden we think we're playing Monopoly), given the number of stocks that's not the norm. Wine's different. Public opinion and quality are very irregular.

I was recentlt preparing a list of wines to be tasted for a business group and I had a few ideas going into the project. Nothing earth-shattering: I like themes like "A Walk Thorugh Napa Valley", "An Introduction to the Wines of France", or something like that. In particular, the latter is very inclusive and is a good theme. The novice interrogates, "Oh, so Sauvignon Blanc is from the Loire. Tell me more...". The more advanced taster asks, "Do you prefer Chateauneuf-du-Pape from 1998 or 1999 and why?" In short there's a broad range of exciting possibilities about which we can talk, and I feel out the audience.

Here's the thing, I've been given a budget that's "too high" for what I feel I can accomplish in a tasting, unless of course I'm reviewing, for example, the evolution of 1998 Grand Crus from Burgundy. I'm putting together my list, and I'm ignoring the budget, because my wines are going to be less. Why? Because once you're getting into the $60-$80 range (minimum) per bottle, another $40 doesn't really buy you better wine, unless you're talking vintage wine (i.e. '74 Heitz Martha's Vineyard) - and then the event becomes more than a gathering and instead a few hours for analysis and contemplation.

I have to be honest, I think wine can/should be less expensive than most people think it is. If two couple commit $30 - $40 once a week, you can taste 104 wines a year (all other dinners excluded) and cook a really nice brunch each weekend + have an appropriate amount of wine for a Saturday afternoon or Sunday afternoon for the young and adventuresome!

So as is typical of my history, I'm currently planning on a "down"-sell, but that's all right. I much prefer wines that are appropriate to the goals of the event (or consumer in question). In the end, more cowbell doesn't always do it...

Follow Your Heart

Those of you who know me best know that I had open-heart surgery when I was younger. I went for a standard checkup at Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh today, where I had my surgery in December, 1976. As expected (or at least as I hoped), I am in perfect health. I gave some thought to my next blog while I was in the waiting room, and, in one of those many "You might be a Wine Geek if…" moments, couldn't get Chateau Calon-Segur out of my head (see label). Not as bad as when I was at a relative's house who had a magnet on their refrigerator of the 1982 Farmer's Almanac for some unknown reason and I thought it was '82 Petrus, but still fairly geeky. Despite the image of Calon-Segur's label in my head, I started instead to think about what was going on in the wine industry in 1976. That's an easy answer: the 1976 Judgement of Paris, a tasting I have mentioned elsewehere.

In my opinion, the Judgement of Paris is possibly the most overdramatized, preposterous piece of marketing nonsense in the wine business, although those who I offend with that comment would probably point to terroir as the same. Before everyone beats me down, let me give you my reasons.

First though, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the Judgement of Paris let me briefly quote from Wikipedia as I often do to save my restating and retyping that which anyone can find with a simple Google search.

• Until 1976, France was generally regarded as having an unchallenged reputation as the foremost producer of the world's best wines. In that year a wine merchant in Paris, Steven Spurrier, organized a prestigious wine tasting in Paris, now known as the Paris Wine Tasting of 1976 or the Judgment of Paris.
  

  The 11 judges were Steven Spurrier, Patricia Gallagher of l'Academie du Vin, Odette Kahn, editor of the Revue du Vin de France, Jean-Claude Vrinat of the Restaurant Taillevent, Raymond Oliver of the restaurant Le Grand Vefour, the sommelier Christian Vanneque of Tour D'Argent, Aubert de Villaine of the Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, Pierre Tari of Chateau Giscours, Pierre Brejoux of the Institute of Appellations of Origin, Michel Dovaz of the Wine Institute of France, and Claude Dubois-Millot. Blind tasting was performed so that none of the judges knew the identity of what was being tasted.
  

The results were that 1973 Stag's Leap Cabernet Sauvignon beat out its able competitors from both California (and more importantly) Bordeaux, including the famous Chateaux Mouton-Rothschild, Montrose and Haut-Brion. This signified (at least for Americans) that California wines could compete with the best in the world (and I certainly agree that they can).

Why do I think the Judgment of Paris is ridiculous? Mainly because I think blind tasting and/or rating wines I ridiculous.

Blind Tastings

Blind Tastings are tastings in which the participants have no idea what wine has been poured for them. In this way, they have no pre-conceived notions as to the quality of wine. I have done blind tastings a million times, and still find them meaningless. I remember the first time I visited Domaine Daniel Dampt in Chablis. I had never had a wine from the Domaine before I arrived, but I was and am intimately familiar with the vintages and vineyards of Chablis. Following a brief tasting of his current vintage, five wines from the year 2000, he poured me a wine blind. After some evaluation I correctly identified the wine as 1997 Chablis Premier Cru Cote de Lechet. I also remember once tasting a wine and saying, "I would bet my job that this is a Premier Cru Meursault from the 1997 vintage": it was 1996 Staglin Rutherford Chardonnay. Luckily I was able to keep my job. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don't. It's like the stock market or playing darts. Over a sustained period of time, everyone I know in the wine business gets more wrong – and oftentimes vastly wrong – than anywhere close to right. As Emile Peynaud claims in his book, in a truly "blind" tasting where participants can't even see the wine, most degustateurs have a difficult time determining which ones are white or red.

But, in the Judgement of Paris they weren't picking wines, they were rating them. Personally, I think this is more ridiculous than trying to identify wines "blind". Magazines, most notably the Wine Spectator, claim that because all wines are tasted blind, there is no slant. On the other hand, "independent" reviewers such as Robert Parker indirectly point out that because they accept no advertisements, there results are not biased. Either way, they're all in the business of sales. Despite the fact that I am a wine professional, I, like you, do buy wines for myself, and I'll put myself entirely into the hands of anyone who has a palate I respect, ads or no ads, blind tastings or not.

When David Heimbourger (my apologies if I misspelled this) worked predominantly in Acker Merrall's retail store in Manhattan's Upper West-Side (last I checked he was largely running tastings and corporate events) I would regularly give him a price and a quantity and let him pick. "Dave, give me six bottles of good, cheap whites from Germany, Alsace and the Loire, around $120 total, and I'll pick them up tomorrow". I trusted him, as many of my clients trust me. In the end that's all that matters.

But I digress. Here's the thing, all wines are not created equal in a blind tasting. There's a reason why wines are served in a particular order (although modern cusine has skewed this quite a bit). Different wines have different characteristics. Let's take an extreme case. Unoaked Chablis (the real stuff, from France) would get lost in a tasting with nine Chardonnays from Australia, because it is less fruit-driven, is not as full-flavored and has lower alcohol. Its merits are lost. This is similar, by the way, to beer. Put the subtly powerful Samuel Smith's Taddy Porter among nine highly-hopped American Microbrews, and it has a good chance of finishing last although it is one of my favorite beers in the world.

So in the end, the 1976 Judgement of Paris while signaling an uptick in notoriety for California helped promote blind tastings as a useful tool, although in only rare cases, in reality they aren't. It also wrongfully promoted the notion that wines can be given a number or rating. They can't. As I always say, if you like it today, right now, then it's a 90 pointer. If you don't it's not. And that number may very well change depending on your mood, your company or what you're eating the next time around.

 

Uncle Pythagoras Would be Proud

I wanted to talk today about the use and misuse of the word "terroir". I will not give in to my desire to defend my beliefs as a "terroirist" despite my yearning to do so. But, whether one agrees with terroir or not, its frequent misuse only adds to everyone's confusion. Continuing with my theme of Dead White Guy refernces, I was thinking of how similar it was to the Pythagorean Theorem: in a right-angled triangle the area of the square whose side is the hypotenuse, c, is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares of the other two sides, b and a, that is, a2+b2=c2. One of the simplest equations ever written, but the greatest minds tried to prove it for centuries to no avail. Terroir is the Pythagorean Theorem of Wine.

Terroir is the combination of natural factors that affect the way grapes grow. I personally stick with a pretty rigid definition, namely that within the larger arena of climate, one can largely determine the character of a grape by knowing the vineyards soil, altitude, slope and aspect. The point is not whether you agree with my assessment of terroir or not. What bothers me is the misuse of the term terroir.

I FREQUENTLY see posts on discussion boards or white-collar-professionals-cum-weekend-wine writers who think that terroir means earth. "The 2005 Chateau _____ Vintage Champagne was full of terroir with earthy tones throughout." Without delving to far into details and exceptions, Champagne grows on Cretaceous Chalk, so if it was "full of terroir" or tasted of the soil, wouldn't its flavors be dominated by chalk?

The French word for earth is terre not terroir. True terroir comes from the root terre, but it's not a direct correlation. The word sinister has its Latin roots in decribing one who is left-handed, but I have yet to hear someone refer to Osama Bin-Laden as that bastard, left-handed murderer.

The use of the word terroir is not restricted to wine. Its used for other agricultural products such as cheese, but also things such as forestry, specifically oak. Scholarly research, such as that of Drs. Paul Kolesar and Bruce Beaver of Duquesne University, doesn't examine how much earthiness an oak barrel imparts on a wine (and certainly not how much the wood tastes like earth!), but rather the characteristics of oak due to the sum total of natural influences and how this in turn affects the chemical composition of the wood. It's the same thing for grapes.

March Madness Update
In an earlier post "The Ides of March", I revealed my pick for the NCAA Tourney, Georgetown. I also revealed that I am usually out of contention very early. Turns out I was spot on, as Georgetown is heading to the Final Four, and I am in the bottom 3% of ESPN's Tourney Pick 'Em.

An Apple a Day...

Wine writers and professionals write tasting notes very differently. The "old way" consisted of less flavor and aroma descriptors and concentrated a bit more on charcteristics more fundamental to a wine and its development: texture, balance, length in the palate, etc. Most of the traditional British Wine Writers favored this method. Among them is the venerable Clive Coates, M.W. (Master of Wine). Here is an example of one of Coates' tasting notes, from one of my favorite Red Burgundies, 1965 Volnay Premier Cru Champans from the Marquis d'Angerville.

"Medium-full color. This is a little lean for the vintage. But perhaps it is still closed. The nose is classy and aromatic - nutty. The finish long and satisfying. The genrosity I'm sure will appear. Very good but not the class and depth for great."

It doesn't matter that I enjoyed the wine more (several years later). What is important is how his tasting note differs from the more modern approach, generall attributed to or at least having its beginnings with Robert Parker. An example from Mr. Parker. It is the same wine, vineyard and producer, but from a more recent vintage, the 1999 vintage:

"The medium to dark ruby-colored 1999 Volnay Champans, from a 4-hectare parcel where 50% of the vines are 40 years of age and the balance over 10 years, displays a sweet blackberry nose. Medium-bodied, this wine has an excellent depth of fruit, a supple, velvety texture, and a fresh personality. Loads of intense blackberry, cassis, plum, and spice flavors can be found in its juicy and expressive character. Drink it over the next 7-8 years."

It is not my intention to debate these two disparate techniques here, but rather examine the oft-asked question: can wine writers really taste such sensations? I emphatically say yes, though I admit that my notes tend to be somewhere in between the two examples given here and if anything are usually less wordy than either.

Nonetheless, as I was sitting down for a wholesome meal of pork chops, sauerkraut and baked apples Sunday, I did my own taste test, that I invite you to repeat at home. I had purchased three types of apples, Macintosh, Fuji and "green" apples to bake with some brown sugar and to accompany my main course. If wine writers and professionals are going to distinguish between Macintosh and Fuji, they'd better have distinguishing characteristics. So I sliced away and set about my tasting.

Very quickly it became clear that the three apples smell and taste very dissimilar. The green apples as expected were typified by a brief sugar-sweetness as they tocuhed my palate and then dominated by the pronounced attack of biting, lemony acidity that followed through forever in the finish. The texture of the Macintosh struck me as it had a waxiness that was not present at all in the green apples and appeared only in traces in the Fuji apples. Flavors and aromas of bananas distinguished the Fujis. In fact the dry, waxiness coupled with the aromas and flavors in the end reminded me very much of the taste of banana as well. I'd like to repeat the experiment with other families of foodstuffs, but my initial observations are that when I say I taste green apples and when I say I taste Macintosh apples, that I am correctly pointing out very distinct flavor sensations. I suspect that with a little practice, or maybe your own experiment or two, you can do the same.

The Ides of March

This will be the last bit of culture of any sort that will be squeezed from me until at least after I'm effectively eliminated from my NCAA Tourney pool. If history is any indication (and this post will have a bit of history or at least historical context for the nerds among us), that will mean that I will again be blogging away about wine no later than Sunday, but possibly earlier. (For the record, I picked the Hoyas, and my sentimental favorite to do well was NC State because Sophomore Ben McCauley is from my home town. They got screwed by the committe and didn't make it much to my surprise. Also for the record, I coached his older brother and also defeated his father's team in a parents versus coaches game at our Championship Celebration, but the last time I saw Ben in person he was in second grade: I gather he's a bit bigger now.)

Anyways, do you know what a Hoya is? You would if you knew greek. It was once a requirement for all Georgetown students to learn both Greek and Latin and their cheer was accordingly half Greek-Half Latin, Hoyas Sextus, literally Behold that Man. You would only know that if you either went to Georgetown, knew both Greek and Latin or were a sink of useless knowledge like me. If you are one of the few that know either Greek or Latin, you may have read the words of the Greek historian Strabo, a contemporary of Caesar, who comments that, “the vine, as you thus proceed [north of Provence], does not easily bring its fruit to maturity.”* Why might that be? Because the further north one proceeds, the cooler the climate and ripeness is more difficult and alcohol is generally lower. Two milennia ago, when the wine trade was first really kicking in among the civilized world, Julius and Brutus and friends went for the sweet stuff with high alcohol.

(While we're on the subject of dead white guys, was it not Santanaya who proclaimed that, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."?)

Human beings are born with a propensity toward liking things that are sweet. (I can't find a reference for this although I've read it often, so you MD types please comment or otherwise chime in.) Since alcohol has an apparent sweetness to the palate, the macro-wineries of California basically give the consumer what they have always wanted (from the time they were children), wines with high-alcohol or wines with a bit of RS (Residual Sugar) or both. There's nothing wrong with that in of itself, I'd just like to think that most people would like their palates to advance to enjoy a wider diversity of flavor sensations than they did when they were just out of the womb. I always try to sell someone the wine that's right for them, but occassionally I fail. One of my best friends hates practically every wine that I pour, and even when I have one that I think he might like, he hates it. I simply tell him, if you have a wine (or a food item) that you don't like, try to enjoy it as best you can and think to yourself, "What might someone else enjoy about this?" That way, slowly but surely, you very well may enjoy the flavor the next time around.

* Strabo. Geographia. IV.1.2.

Liquid Gold

I'd like to continue with my previous post and tie everything together. The fact of the matter is that my first bottle of Sauternes was a bottle by the massive French firm Barton & Guestier. It was a wine that most aficianados would frown upon. At that moment in my life, it was the most profound sensatory experience in my life.

The only experience that rivals my first Sauternes was my taste of a most celebrated one - 1975 Chateau d'Yquem. Chateau d'Yquem, in any year, is recognized as being quite a bit better than any of its rivals - for reasons not worth getting into here. It is so recognized that it is officially recognized as such by the French INAO, the governmental agency that classifies wines. Sauternes is classified as follows:

Superior First Growth (Premier Cru Supérieur)
Château d'Yquem, Sauternes


First Growths (Premiers Crus)
Château La Tour Blanche, Bommes (Sauternes)
Château Lafaurie-Peyraguey, Bommes (Sauternes)
Clos Haut-Peyraguey, Bommes (Sauternes) (Château Clos Haut-Peyraguey)
Château de Rayne-Vigneau, Bommes (Sauternes)
Château Suduiraut, Preignac (Sauternes)
Château Coutet, Barsac
Château Climens, Barsac
Château Guiraud, Sauternes
Château Rieussec, Fargues (Sauternes)
Château Rabaud-Promis, Bommes (Sauternes)
Château Sigalas-Rabaud, Bommes (Sauternes)

Second Growths (Deuxièmes Crus)
Château Myrat, Barsac (Château de Myrat)
Château Doisy Daene, Barsac
Château Doisy-Dubroca, Barsac
Château Doisy-Vedrines, Barsac
Château D'Arche, Sauternes
Château Filhot, Sauternes
Château Broustet Barsac
Château Nairac, Barsac
Château Caillou, Barsac
Château Suau, Barsac
Château de Malle, Preignac (Sauternes)
Château Romer, Fargues (Sauternes) (Château Romer du Hayot)
Château Lamothe, Sauternes

No one really doubts that Chateau d'Yquem is a one of a kind, even the legal authorities in France. The best wine I ever had was almost without doubt the 1975 Chateau d'Yquem (a particularly good year in Sauternes); it is scored 100pts out of 100 by Robert Parker the world's leading wine authority, in other words a perfect wine.

'75 Yquem goes for about $1200 a bottle give or take nowadays, but is it worth it? My opinion is "yes", making it the first time in my life that I agree with Robert Parker I believe. Nonetheless, my experience with '75 Yquem is equalled by my Barton & Guestier of unknown vintage drunk with a friend at 6AM in a fraternity house in Chicago. 100 pointers can be disappointing if they're not shared at the right moment, with the right company.

Never believe the hype of 100 point wines (or 95 or 90 pointers for that matter). A bottle of wine is an experience. I guarantee that over the course of my life I have a higher percentage of "90 point nights" with the most simple of wines, and I know for a fact that I have had too many disappointing nights with wines that were critically acclaimed.

In summary, every wine "is worth it" if you enjoy drinking it, the company with whom you share it and that moment in time where you felt more relaxed than you do every day at work or what have you. A good wine, like a book, or an opera, or a movie or a Steelers game is incomparable at that moment in time. If you don't enjoy it, no matter what the scores say, it's not worth it...

Are Gold Prices Rising?

No. This is not another investment blog (it seems that we have enough of them). I'd like to talk about Liquid Gold, or what we wine lover's call Sauternes. The real topic is the most difficult question I get asked as a wine consultant - "Is it worth it?"

When I was in college, I began to become interested in wine. I learned the fundamental principles of the snob - the only good wine is red wine, etc., etc. - most all of them were wrong. Being the inquisitive type, I researched more extensively on the subject of wine. Eventually, I cam across the concept of Botrytis Cinarea [BAW-TRITUS].

What? BAW-TRITUS...ahem...SIN-ER-REE-AH. Here's the big problem. From a biological standpoint - actually from the standpoint of a pure obsever - it's more disgusting than it sounds. So what is it? And what does this have to do with gold?

Wikipedia tells us that Botrytis Cinarea is:

Botrytis cinerea is a fungus that affects many plant species, although its most economically important hosts are wine grapes[citation needed]. In viticulture, it is commonly known as botrytis bunch rot; in horticulture, it is usually called grey mould or gray mold. The fungus gives rise to two different kinds of infections on grapes. The first, grey rot, is the result of consistently wet or humid conditions, and typically results in the loss of the affected bunches. The second, noble rot, occurs when drier conditions follow wetter, and can result in distinctive sweet dessert wines, such as Sauternes. The species name Botrytis cinerea is derived from the Latin for "grapes like ashes"; although poetic, the "grapes" disappointingly refers to the bunching of the fungal spores on their conidiophores, and "ashes" just refers to the greyish colour of the spores en masse. The fungus is usually referred to by its anamorph (asexual form) name, because the sexual phase is rarely observed. The teleomorph (sexual form) is an ascomycete, Botryotinia fuckeliana (see taxonomy box).

Let's rewind a bit. While "Is it worth it?" might be the most difficult question I get, the most frequent one is "How did you get in the wine industry?" Here's my answer...

I was in college in Chicago. I read about Botrytis. The descriptors made it sound amazing, in fact, at least one writer dubbed it Liquid Gold. I had to try it. So I took my bartending money and bought the cheapest Sauternes I could find - the only Sauternes I could find. It was about 25 bucks for the half bottle - not much in retrospect for a good bottle of Sauternes. I bought it before I went to bartend (looking back, it was likely an '83, a great vintage) and came home to my fraternity house, grabbed a bear and decided to go to sleep. I woke up a couple of hours later: I had to taste Botrytis, I had to taste Sauternes. Liquid Gold.

I said to myself "To hell with it", and there I was, in a Fraternity House in Chicago, uncorking a bottle of wine that would determine the future of my life. A "Brother" came downstairs as I sipped Liquid Gold with glee - at six AM.

...how does all of this tie in to the question "Is it worth it?"...if you are wondering, visit us tomorrow...

It's all in the balance...

Last night, I decided to relax and catch some Jazz at the Backstage Bar at Theater Square in downtown Pittsburgh. I sipped a martini while I perused the small wine list, and immediately gravitated to the 2003 Bourgogne Pinot Noir from Joesph Faiveley. Just a standard, every day Red Burgundy, just what I wanted and at $7 a glass it wouldn't break the bank. The aromatic profile of the wine was just beautiful - a melange of red cherries and raisins. Real pretty. The problem came when I took the first sip as the tannins immediately parched my palate, prompting me to order a club soda just to scrape the wine from my tongue.

Wine has to be in balance. There's a lot of combinations that will make for a balanced wine, but what does that mean. Emile Peynaud's The Taste of Wine is a seminal book that is as influential now as it was when it was first written over thirty years ago. I do warn that this book is more than a bit technical from time to time, but there are important parts that will be understandable to all. Particularly interesting is his rather extensive treatment of how to write a tasting note. And for our purposes, the parts where he discusses balance.

In a nut shell a balanced wine follows the equation:

Acidity + Tannin => Sugar + Alcohol.

There are a few corollaries that result from this equation. Namely that if there is a lot of tannin in the wine, there shouldn't be a lot of acidity, and it certainly needs to be offset by either sugar or a good dose of alcohol. Why alcohol? I'm so glad you asked. :)

Alcohol has an apparent sweetness to the palate. Most people don't realize it but it's true. The easiest way to prove this (if you're either a real go-getter or the scientific type or both) is to set up this little experiment. Boil the alocohol out of glass of wine. Run it through glass tubing and into a beaker. When all the alcohol has boiled out replace the same amount of water into the wine as the amount of alcohol that came out. The result: the wine will be unbearably bitter, either too tannic or too acidic or both. That's because when the alcohol is in the wine, it's apparent sweetness balances the wine. Without it, the wine is plonk.

Many people criticise California wines for being too alcoholic, and it's true that some are. But in the best California wines, elevated alcohol can still make for a balanced wine - all you need is the appropriate level of tannin or acidity to work in concert with it. Conversely, if there's a lot of tannin in the wine (something that will happen naturally when it's warm out because the skins of the grapes thicken and that's where the tannin is), the wine requires high alcohol, or else it will become to tough to drink - a problem that occurred in the heat wave of 2003 in France - the very problem that tainted my experience with Faiveley's Bourgogne. It's all about the balance.