DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

According to the Chronicle’s wine writer,

The tongue only has four taste zones — the tip is sensitive to sweetness, the back portion responds to bitterness, the forward edges detect saltiness and the back edges react to sourness.

And so bad science is propagated yet again. Here’s the truth about the taste map.

The article contains this related and interesting bit about the impact of the shape of a wineglass on the drinker’s perception of flavor and aroma:

At a tasting that Riedel conducted, he actually proved that the thick oakiness of a Chardonnay tasted leaner in a Montrachet glass and a Zinfandel lost much of its sweet cherried fruitiness in a goblet meant for Bordeaux.

I used to see those Riedel glasses at wineries all the time. I always wondered if they were for real, or just a marketing scam aimed at people with more money than sense. I guess it’s time to start buying Riedel stemware now.

New Zealand’s Marlborough region features a “44-mile-long, inn-to-inn walking trail that seems custom-built for wine enthusiasts”. John Flinn scores by terming it the “Appellation Trail.” Ha!

Here’s the whole story: Walking New Zealand’s Wine Country

It reminds me of the Rotweinwanderweg.

Stories about people who can sip a glass of wine and tell you the varietal, the country of origin, the region, the year, and sometimes even the vintner:

• Noses Seek Wine Geekdom’s Biggest Prize, a NYT article about students preparing for the “Master of Wine” certification, administered by the Institute of Masters of Wine in London. “There are only 244 Masters of Wine worldwide.”
• A Man with Great Taste, a VIA magazine article about Larry Stone of San Francisco’s Rubicon, one of only 106 “master sommeliers” in the world, according to the London-based Court of Master Sommeliers.

We’ve attended blind wine tastings — even hosted a few. I know from experience that I am generally unable to distinguish flavor components. When I hear someone say “vegetal,” I can taste vegetal, but if nobody would say the word I would be unable to come up with it alone. I’d probably enjoy a component-tasting class if I felt I could free up a months’ worth of evenings to study and drink wine. Hmm, actually that might not be a bad thing.

More stories about Larry Stone:

• It’s 4 a.m. Do You Know Where Your Sommelier Is?… about A-list San Francisco sommeliers getting together to blind-taste wines after work.
• The Day-to-Day Life of a Sommelier… a chat with Larry Stone that has little to do with his day-to-day life, but answers some good questions like “can wine be sent back, and should the customer be charged for it?”

If you know nothing about wine but want to sound like you do, just memorize a few of these aroma words and component flavor words. Flinty or stemmy? Steely or coppery? Maybe just having a vocabulary of possibilities at hand makes it easier to identify the flavors.

In Awash in Pinot Noir, the LA Times describes a winery like none I’ve ever seen:

Working out of three rented rooms on the second floor of a Palos Verdes Estates shopping center with a staff of five part-timers and a college intern, [Castle Rock Winery’s owner Greg] Popovich buys wine on the spot market, paying a consulting winemaker a per-case fee to blend and bottle it in rented space in Napa Valley’s Calistoga. He then ships it to almost every state in the country through a network of independent distributors.

It’s wine without the winery. Without the vineyard. Without the winemaker, even.

Sam Adams Brewing Company used to outsource manufacturing of their lager, before they had a brewery of their own. An A-B employee friend of mine sniffed that Sam Adams couldn’t really be considered a real beer for that reason. But at least the Sam Adams folks had a recipe! The brewing was contracted out, but the final brew was not left to the whims of the hired help.

I mean no offense to Greg Popovich. In fact, I applaud him for selling $10 wines — anybody willing to challenge the epidemic idea that California reds have to cost $20/bottle is doing the right thing as far as I’m concerned.

I guess I’m stuck on the (admittedly outdated) idea that wines should be made by a family businesses with their own land, their own facilities, their own winemaker, their own mission. The idea of buying bulk wine and mixing it together somehow doesn’t conjure images of handcrafted vino.

Then again, nobody ever promised me handcrafted vino for $10/bottle.

Still, the idea of commodity wine just isn’t very appealing. The same thing applies to mass-market bread, coffee, olive oil, beer, and any of the other gourmet foodie-foods that have already enjoyed their renaissance.

Ironically, commodity Pinot probably pretty good anyway. Excuse me while I step out to Trader Joe’s… I’ll need to make this decision empirically.

The Chron has published a list of their Top 100 Wines of 2003.

Of particular interest are the three reds with single-digit prices. It seems to me that wine prices have climbed steadily for the past ten years, at least until Two Buck Chuck came along — but you won’t find Chuck on the list. It might only cost $2, but it is not a Top 100 wine. It’s merely drinkable, and then only if you’re so busy gloating over the low price that you forget to swallow.

Which is not to say that we haven’t put away a few bottles of Chuck ourselves…

I do wish they’d come up with some $5 Zinfandels though.