A Dispersing Joy: Wine, Evening and Desire

I have the most trouble with the passing of time. There is inside me this grievous difficulty, a rebellion but also a petulant child screaming to re-exist in a certain moment and cherish the evolving echo of its passing. . 

I long for the recapture of a given moment. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than the joy of thinking that somewhere in our lives there is a door, an entrance into which we can briefly  re-enter the previous places we have seen, been, encountered and experienced.

Don't let time go, don't. 

But it does. It runs through our hands like flowing water from a tap, like wine across our palates. We pick up drops here and there but the flow is unkind, it is heavy and we are given only the wherewithal to indulge what we touch. Everything else seems to be meant for something, a somewhere else we can only imagine. Just as the water slips around us, just as the wine escapes into our bodies, all of it ends up in the drain, into the void after the present.

This evening I went to a trade tasting at Ravine winery. I got there shortly after six and slowly more people arrived from different wineries throughout Niagara-on-the-Lake. We stood outside amidst cast iron bar stools surrounding an outside bar. Wine bottles arrived, placed on the bar or in the steel ice cooler. Bottles from Cattail Creek, Marynissen, Josephs, Pillitteri, Konzelman, Coyote's Run. The green vines, the dark sky. The winery owners brought out various foods - pizza, deli meats, different cheeses and artisan breads. The vineyard fell away below us. Wine after wine, the creamy chardonnays traveled over my palates followed by the buxom and hearty red currant reds. My eyes felt softer, my brain and soul kinder in the enveloping spell of wine. (I fell in love with Pillittteri's meritage, Exclamation and Konzelmann's Heritage along with Strewn's and Stonechurch's Chardonnays.)

I chatted with co-workers, I watched the sky. It had been overcast for several hours. Then, throughout the tasting it burst here and there. The sky sobbed, the drops like pebbles. We scurried to one side of the bar to avoid getting wet. I didn't care. I got lost for a moment. Brown eyes blinked. They haunted me and I flirted with their owner the one in the white shirt, a beautiful brunette here and there during the tasting. Oh, her eyes and her high cheeks that infuriated me with longing. I thought of Madalena in La Dolce Vita, how close, how far, the woman lost in the castle. Her lips seemed innocent, unaware of the affect of her eyes and cheeks. Yes, she worked at the winery, yes, she recognized me from before and when she noticed the wind was picking up, she rushed inside to flip a switch and bring the delicate green awnings in.

Why do women do such wondrous things, say what they say and disappear? She asked me about the kind of songs I played. I talked and talked but being drunk, I only knew half of what I was saying. My heart sped after her, to find a way in. That's all I wanted. A doorway to her approval. But it's as if my soul had run out of breath in the pursuit.

She disappeared, the girl with the brown eyes who rescued the awning. She went away with her white shirt and black cargo pants. I saw her feet in the sandals, I saw her amidst the other heads but little else. Gone. First she left me for the other side of the bar. Then truly gone. In her wake, I spoke in German with a girl from another winery. I understood her words and spoke the best I could. But the brunette with the almond eyes had left and that was that.

But I know where she works but I don't want to chase her like dreams I can't get back into.

Yes she left and I went inside the bar area with three co-workers, one an older gentleman and two young ladies I work with. In my secret heart I have a spiritual crush on both of them and desired their nearness. One, yes, another brunette with a gentle face, the sweet, kind expression of someone who wants to listen but you want to put your head on her shoulder. And the other, a red head with a voice that could take you into both the future and the past. We talked and the rain fell, we four and the older gentleman told us about  a previous wedding at our winery, restaurants in New York, meeting Mr. Antinori, concerts he drove his daughter to. We listened.

The red sky crept down below the vineyards. The rain chatted with the grass.I wanted more wine and more wine but it was getting closer to going. Someone stoked a fire at the far end of the outside bar, the flames shooting up, the shadows scattering and wandering back along our faces as the fire settled. The rain pelted on the iron roof and the lull of conversation felt like an ocean going back and forth above our words.

The last of the red sky blinked away and the black-blue fade of rain blew wet misted kisses at our skin. A rain that continues and disperses a crowd.

Let me go back in time, just once, just once. Let me. There is no one there to caress or hold but the nearness is like a heartbeat outside of my chest. I feel this ongoing burst of dreams, a drunkeness, a melancholy, a wonder, a wistfulness, a tenderness that merges goodbyes with the ensuing gasp of downpour.

So it goes. I would have liked to kiss the hands of those two girls, and also the brunette.  I could have and I couldn't. I can't. But it's not like that. I don't want to give the kiss of taking and having, of chivalry. Not a kiss that signals possession, a boyfriend's gesture but a kiss that speaks about letting go, letting others stay extraordinary, who they are. Like tasting a wine and knowing its beauty but not drinking it. I want to experience a brief bridge to beauty. 

Sometimes, when I'm a little drunk I want to walk up to strangers in the streets, in the malls and let them know how much magic exists in their skin. How often are we told how wonderful we are? 

These faces, all these faces, I wanted to watch them leave, as if I could be a god and let them go. But the skin, skin haunts me, a human fabric that wafts and waves, the scent, a lavish bouquet conspiring to both lead me on and push me away.

I wish I could be detached but the desire that seeped into me this evening cannot be readily dispelled. The lights of cars in the gravel drive flicker through me. The vineyards are behind the darkness, the sky rains and the elaborate past comes back to me, taunting me like a song whose title I cannot recall but the verse is fresh, fiery and filled with another memory I will never access. The past is in the void, a wine we dimly remember but I retain it, my imagination and memory fighting for the truth because not everything we remember is what was.

And so it goes, here I am, writing and writing and the words I write only insult my longing to have what is eternally gone, retained in the fragments I crush and ferment in my sleepy mind.

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A Philosophical Passion for Wine

A finger of grapevine

and a beam of sunlight

point to the spot

where my heart is

Federico García Lorca - "Granada 1850"

 This morning I went to do some lab work for an upcoming physical. Some blood was taken but I had to fast  for at least twelve hours beforehand. Basically, all I could really have was water.

Now water is great, don't get me wrong. When you're lacking, when you've been sweating after a workout at the gym or been cooped up in a dry office, cubically contained, drinking too much coffee, water is perfect. 

But I have to say, with a smirk of genuine honesty, wine is always perfect. Last night, I would have had a glass or two but I had to follow my doctor's instructions. And you know, maybe I'm a little grumpy  today because I haven't had my wine. 

ADDICTION VS. PASSION

I often wonder about the nature of addiction and the idea of a surrogate. The alcoholic is told  to treat his  or her addiction like a disease. In recovery he or she must reflect on the reasons why they turned to alcohol. Is there a hole inside? Why do they choose whiskey or beer to fulfill them; what is or maybe better yet, who is replaced by the drinking? Is the alcoholic mourning a loss in childhood or the misery of a failed relationship? Instead of getting past the missed opportunity or healing the nameless wound, the drink is the surrogate, misleading the addict, letting them think they are healing their reality by escaping. The drink is the blinding distraction.

Certainly, there are other addictions: gambling, drugs, sex etc... 

I'm wondering, is wine my addiction? Where is the line between passion and addiction? Can such a line be safely drawn? Is passion a form of dependence? Can wine be a distraction, misleading the imbiber?

I can get through a day without wine. Sure. No problem. But can a musician or music lover get through a day without music and still be in a good mood? Listening to Beethoven's late piano sonatas or the softy, husky melancholy of a Ray Lamontagne song can, depending on your tastes, bring the spirit up after a long, wearied day. 

I love wine and music equally. Music is wine, wine is music. Music isn't an addiction, no but it can be a necessity for some of us. And as for wine, a glass of day is fine; great for health apparently.

For myself, I definitely look forward to a glass, probably more than others. I love the bouquet and flavours of different wines, - the teasing richness of a robust Rioja or the verdant but chilled charm of a Chenin from Vouvray. When I treat myself, I move past the Champagnes, past the Bordeaux and Burgundies to the Mosel and Rheinhessen Rieslings: I prefer Prüm to an overpriced bubbly or a mediocre Médoc (because you have to spend a lot to get something good in France's most famous wine regions). 

It's not an addiction. It is reverence. It's a means of creating beauty, letting it flood the moment.

SACRED VS. PROFANE
Even though the wine consumer doesn't produce the wine, doesn't grow the grapes, he or she is a creator of the moment. By taking a glass we are involved in a tradition that has gone on for thousands of years. To borrow from the late Mircea Eliade, famous mythologist and philosopher, we are  in some way participating in the hierophany, the sacred space that is the eternal realm of tradition and ritual.

The profane involves linear time and is opposite the sacred. Profane time is daily time, historical, made up of dates continuously succeeding each other, one moment dissolving the next, one event replacing the previous.  It is the time of work, bureaucracy, governments, backyards, bars - social, polical and otherwise. By re-enacting the gods, their myths, an individual in an archaic tribe could find himself stepping into the illo tempore, the time before.

This is why the Greeks and later the Christians associated the resurrection god with the vine. By drinking Dionysus or Christ, the worshiper took the god within. Both gods were born in unique and miraculous circumstances (Dionysus was sewn into Zeus's calf following his mother's death by lightning; Mary was a virgin) and both performed miracles. Both were sacrificed and experienced equally grueling deaths. 

The nature of the vine represents the sacred nature of life.

THE FLEETING AND THE DESIRE
Life is born. It is nothing short of a miracle that in the vastness of the universe, this Earth exists and supports life. Trees are green in the summer, mountains rise, oceans fall against their shore lines, wildlife floods the wilderness, in the air, on the ground and in the sea. 

But life is not long and death haunts all our horizons. The vine produces beautiful fruit just as we produce children, works of art, accomplishing various daily tasks like gardening, carpentry - even conversation and the relationships founded on them are a production of our hidden divinity. 

When we die the vine is like us and we are like the vine. We have struggled to bring something out of the nothing, bringing purpose to the naked canvas of existence. We have our religions, our myths, our deities, desires, duties, morals and responsibilities but they are all created by us. Our dying is our dormancy. Dionysus and Christ both die but they are resurrected. 

We drink this hope that we too won't end with our last breaths. We drink a glass of wine because it is more than just a beverage. Hope is beauty and we desire it. 

There are so many things we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, touch with our hands, smell with our noises but taste is by far the most intimate. The Mona Lisa smiles at us but we are distant from her. The scent of the flower belongs in the liminal realm of space and petals while the music of Beethoven haunts our ears. Wine flows in us, it meets us. It is intimate like a lover's long awaited kiss. This is the intoxication.

Wine is our consolation. At the end of our profane hours, when we need to step back from the parade, the often hopeless journey that is life, wine brings us a comfort. Sipping a wine is either done in silence or with others. Just as we can enjoy our solitude, sitting with a book we can drink wine in whatever company so long as it is kind. When we can't have what we want, when the one we love is not going to love us or the passing face is not going to stop on the street, their beauty leaving the moment broken in two, wine is there to sew up the wake of the unfulfilled. 

This is what wine represents to me but maybe to others. This is my passion and this is how I feel.

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Wine - A Means to Beauty?

I've been thinking about a previous blog I wrote where I argued that wine wasn't art. On one level, I think it is true. We have Da Vinci, Beethoven, Dickens, Proust, Bach etc... I would call these individuals artists because they work in a realm where the private becomes universal, the personal is a vehicle to connection. We can still listen to Beethoven's Symphonies, we can go to an art gallery and see Da Vinci or Raphael or Delacroix and the hundreds of other essential artists of the past. We can still read Dickens and Proust. 

Wine is by far more transient when compared to works of art. If we've heard of famous vintages from famous growers, winemakers, chateaux, the experience is not primary. We don't drink the idea of wine. The memory of a great bottle may be similar to the memory of a wonderful performance or a lovely poem we once read, the only and major difference is we can in many ways return to that poem or see that play again or hear a recording of a great concert.

Wine by this rationale is a more temporal form of Beauty. There are no doubt many technical aspects, from viticulture to vinification, there is a realm of science, decision and accident in every step.

Perhaps we can't call wine art with a capital 'A'. But there is something else here.

ART AND WINE IN THE MIRROR

What is difficult about Art is that at the very core of Art, there is no true absolute, no definable truth. Art is continually open to interpretation. What it is, its function, its boundaries, the definition continually changes, it is fluid, in flux. 

Wine is also in a state of in flux. The wine of previous centuries is different than the wine of today. What the Greeks and Romans consumed, I would hazard a guess that they would not appeal to modern drinkers. 

Wine also changes depending on year, country, appellation, grower, winemakers. Just the way that  the Sistine Chapel is intrinsically connected to the history of the Renaissance, Italian art, the work of a specific man with a particular approach, a given wine is a sacred result of numerous situations and circumstances. Wine is a special concoction, closer to alchemy than say spirits or beer.

So instead of seeing Wine as Art, that is with Wine belonging to the realm of Art, the way architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry all falls under the umbrella of Art, I believe Wine is its own world.

WINE UNTO ITSELF

We have Wine and under that umbrella is Still, Sparkling and Fortified. Within the sub-category of Still we have dry, medium-dry, sweet and so forth. Also, there is again the question of origin, time, influences, weather, soil, grower, winemaker, the market... 

Wine belongs then to its own beautiful world. It is interesting to note that it was the Greeks who first placed the sense of sight and hearing before the tactile senses of touch, smell and taste. Aristotle once wrote that it is these latter three senses that can get us into trouble.

Ironically, Plato, Aristotle's teacher believe Art was false and illusory. In Platonic thought, there is a world of the Ideas. Each Idea is eternal. In the world of objects, our world, our reality, we have a chair that is based on the Idea of the eternal chair, the unchanging, the absolute. When a painter painted a chair, he simply painted a copy of another copy. Art was removed from the Truth. 

WINE THEN AS A REPRESENTATION OF THE IDEAL?

Is this to say wine is closer to Beauty and Truth than Art? I don't know. If we use the Platonic model, then Wine is closer to the Idea of Wine, the ideal, eternal as opposed to a work of art. Again, we have numerous particular wines under a single definition of Wine. 

The fact that our approach and experience of wine is entirely within the sensory of my subjectivity, i.e. whereas I can listen to a piece of music with a friend, watch a movie alone or with others, and read the same book, what I taste and appreciate is particular to me - no one else shares my palate. 

The appeal of wine is being able to share conversations about it; the sensation of art is not nearly as digestible as wine.  Art is known for its remove, its being distant from the viewer. We can be emotionally moved by a sonata or a scene in a play; wine enters our body, our bloodstream. 


And of course, it invariably goes to our head and heart in a manner unlike but sometimes not unlike Art.



WINE - VARIETIES OF BEAUTY

But getting back to the matter of appreciation, what wine is to our palate is what music is to our ears, what a beautiful painting is to our eyes. I will still argue it is not Art but that it belongs to a world until itself. Within Art, we have thousands of variations. The same with Wine. In my mind, Wine cannot be judged by the standards of Art. The criteria for loving and appreciating Wine are similar to that of Art but they are related in that they find shelter in the realm of Beauty.


In Plato, there many ways of being introduced to Beauty via beautiful bodies, ideas until we arrive at Beauty altogether.


All in all, I think this is a better philosophical approach to Wine.

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Is Wine Art?

ARGUING WITH LEAH

Years ago I got into an argument with a colleague of mine. We were talking about art and wine while working in a wine store. At the time I was writing tasting notes for wine displays, using quotes from poets, philosophers and authors on wine. What sparked the conversation is my comment that even though wine is a cultural product and brings us pleasure it is not Art (with a capital 'A'). 

"What about the art of wine?" Leah, my cute, red-haired colleague asked in her perky voice.

I replied by saying that when we speak about the 'art of wine', we really mean the 'craftsmanship' behind making wine. 

"But wine is beautiful. It brings us pleasure."

I nodded. "Of course."

"And even though it isn't a 'Mona Lisa', people can appreciate it."

"But we don't drink the Mona Lisa."

"We take it in," she said emphatically.

"Yes, I see. But it isn't Art. We can pick up the sheet music of Bach or the poetry of Ovid. We will never find again the wine of ancient Rome or the wines Goethe consumed in the Rhine."

I can't remember what exactly she said after that. I think it heated it up from there. 

IS WINE ART WITH A CAPITAL 'A'? WELL...NO.

Recently I picked up the Art Instinct by Denis Dutton (a professor at the Univ. of Canterbury, New Zealand). Dutton's book is focused on providing a link between art and evolutionary science. The main argument is that our love of art and beauty is inborn in us. Our love of a landscape goes back to our roots when men and women wandered the earth is search of food and shelter. Our ideal landscape is green with trees and water, suggesting to our ancestors the presence of wildlife and food. 

Towards the end of the book he discusses the distinction between craft and art, quoting from R.G. Collingwood's The Principles of Art.

A craft is anything related to recipes, formulas, methods and routines. A craft is skilled work "for the purpose of creating a final product or designed artifact." The craftsman's "foreknowledge is required by the very idea of the craft." 

In the case of wine, it is a craft as opposed to Art. The winemaker knows that when he takes his harvest of Merlot, crushes the berries and allows them to ferment in vats, eventually he's going to end up with an alcoholic beverage. There is also the method of pruning vineyards, the recipe of a wine.

In the case of Leonardo da Vinci, he had never painted a "Mona Lisa" until he painted the "Mona Lisa". A winemaker has made wine before. The artist, yes has made art before but the works he creates are singular and particular. 

In Art, even though the finished work of art is the goal, the contents or the journey towards completion is filled with insecurity, wonder, creativity and other decisions. Wine, however follows a logical procession, from harvest to bottle. Even though the wine maker may choose to decide to blend his wine or let it remain in oak barrels for six months as opposed to three, these decisions are based on an idea of the outcome. The end result for an artist may that he intended to write a symphony and ended up with a tone poem; the poet may have wanted to write an elegy and instead wrote a sonnet; and the author started a story and ended up with an epic. 

In the case of vinifcation, the winemaker is setting out to make wine -  not juice, not jelly, not jam or pie. 

THE MAIN CRITERIA

I don't know if Leah could argue with that. I'm sure she could. Not only could she make me mad but when she got mad at something that bothered her, that she couldn't fight, those cute white cheeks of hers would get pink and her green eyes would engulf you in the prettiest flames. 

So if the "Craft Vs. Art" argument doesn't work, Leah, thankfully Dutton has my back (and even if he doesn't, getting smacked by you will be a pleasure).

In Chapter 3, 'What is Art' Dutton provides a criteria guideline for judging art. They are as follows:

1.) Direct Pleasure

2.) Skill and Virtuosity

3.) Style

4.) Novelty and Creativity

5.) Criticism

6.) Representation

7.) Special Focus

8.) Expressive Individuality

9.) Emotional Saturation

10.) Intellectual Challenge

11.) Art tradition and Institutions

12.) Imaginative Experience

For wine to be art, it would have to fulfill 90% of the above. 

Direct Pleasure - True wine brings pleasure unless you absolutely detest wine or it leaves you numb.

Skill and virtuosity - Wine takes skill to make but virtuosity... hmmm... We would describe a violinist who has mastered Bach's Partitas and Sonatas as a virtuoso (Joshua Bell). A winemaker as a virtuoso - that sounds a bit exaggerated to me (moreover, would you call him a magician?). 

Style - Wines do have styles but these styles are dependent on the grape, the country of origin and popular taste. The styles of wine preferred by Robert Parker are big and juicy. The styles of France tend to lean towards area of origin. Burgundy can be robust depending on the region but their style is that of Pinot Noir.

Novelty and creativity - There isn't really novelty in wine. It's been around a long time. It is more of a food with aesthetic attributes. This is novel but not unique as there are other foods with aesthetic aspects - i.e. sushi. As for Creativity, yes, to some extent but as I mentioned above, the decisions of a winemaker may be creative, they also happen to come from a craftsman's bag, a limited range of things one can do to wine (you shouldn't set it on fire or try to use it as paint).

Criticism - Yes, wine is routinely criticized. 

Representation - For art to be art, it must represent something. True music doesn't necessarily represent scenes in nature but music is closer to the abstract while wine is wine. A painting depicts people having a beautiful afternoon (Renoir's La Grande Jatte) but wine doesn't really depict anything but itself. It is what it is.

Special Focus, Expressive Individuality, Emotional Saturation and Intellectual Challenge - Art is individual, unique, unto itself and there is both an emotional content and cerebral aspect. Wine may challenge our senses and our recollection of certain scents and flavour but in no way does it fulfill the rest. While wine might be remind us of the wooden smell of a dock or your mother's blackberry jam, the emotional saturation of your experience relies on your singular memory and not an emotion intrinsic in the wine. 

Art Tradition and Institutions - There is no way we can physically judge the wine of five hundred, a thousand years ago, or of Ancient Rome let alone the Greece of Homer against the wines today.  We have description of wine from Pliny the Elder but that doesn't help us. Whereas we have the writings of Euripides and we can compare him to Eugene O'Neil, we can't take the Falernum of Rome and compare them to modern Bordeaux, Sautern and Burgundy, nor the wines of Campania. 

Imaginative Experience - While wine evokes flavours and scents, the imagination depends on us. Again, if we smell wood and think of a dock and a first kiss, that is us, not the wine. Within wine, there are no sunsets, no dreams of true love and no lovers. We tend to bring the wine to those experience that enhance our lives.

'DEM APPLES - WITH A TIP OF THE HAT TO MATT DAMON

So there is it, Leah. Wine doesn't really fit the criteria above. I'm right and you're wrong. Don't worry, you would have put up a good fight, I'm sure... that is if we got into the argument today. It's taken awhile and I've held no grudges. 

Silliness and teasing of Leah aside, this doesn't mean I don't de-value wine. Wine is an art within itself. Wine to me can bring aesthetic beauty to a moment. In Roger Scruton's Beauty, he discusses everyday beauty or the beauty found in our daily lives. Think of a hostess in her home preparing the table for a dinner party. Instead of using the bottle, Scruton observes, the hostess decides to use a carafe to pour the wine. The touch may not be on the level of artistic genius but it brings something new to her table.

Wine is part of the everyday beauty of our lives. We drink wine to see the world differently, to feel a reverence we may not feel while completely sober. This is not to say that being drunk is preferable but just as we eat chocolate to feel a richness in our bodies, wine is that nectar that loosens us. Just as young men eager to talk with young women at the bar drink beer to get 'Dutch courage', wine is that sometimes solemn, sometimes poignant addition to conversation. Everything in a balance.

So no, wine isn't Art (capital 'A'). But wine is definitely beautiful and essential to the beauty of life. The craft and art of wine brings us closer to something special, a je ne said quoi in a given moment. In many ways I think it helps shape our understanding of beauty.

Mind you, if I had a decision to see the art in a modern art gallery (I think of  Manzoni's Merda d'artista or 'shit of the artist' - and it literally is just a piece of shit... I'm not joking), I'd prefer a glass of wine. Modern art is typically no longer beautiful while wine remains so. That's something to be said, eh, Leah?

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The Hangover - New Years, Veisalgia and Toskà

Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink

Isaiah 5:11.

The sun is shining in a new year and on a new decade. But for most of us around the world, especially the morning after a New Years party, there is only sleep and grief.

VEISALGIA

According to Medterms.com, the 'sober' medical term for hangover is veisalgia. The word is a combination of the Norwegian kveis meaning 'uneasiness after debauchery' and the Greek algia, 'pain'.

The word nostalgia also comes from the Greek, nost(os) meaning to return home.

In a sense, veisalgia and nostalgia are related. There is the hangover and the "return home" after a party but also when you think of a New Year, the new beginning, it's also a return.

HANGOVER

The word 'hangover' has 19th century origins in the United States. The idea that a piece of business had been left unresolved, that it 'hung over' became paired with the pain of alcohol withdrawal in 1904.

The hangover is also called the "Spanish Headache". (In Spanish...resaca.)

In France, we have gueule de bois or wood mouth (which makes sense when we think of our dry mouths in the morning).

In Germany, a hangover is referred to as ein Kater or 'Tomcat'. In this sense, we have to recover like an alley cat who's been out all night. The remedy for a Tomcat: ein Katerfrühstück, or a breakfast of pickled herring to cure us of our katzenjammer (i.e. shrieking meow of cats in pain), the severe headache of a hangover.

Postumi della sbornia is the Italian phrase - or "aftermath of drunkenness" (it sounds more dramatic and serious - almost operatic).

In Polish we have kociokwik and похмелье is the Russian (pronounced pakhmel-YEH).

TOSKÀ

Speaking of Russian, one of my favourites words (that I know so far) is toskà (pronounced tahs-KAH).

What does it mean? Well... it means a great deal but there isn't an easy way to translate it. 

Vladimir Nabokov explains: "No single word in English renders all the shades of toskà. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody or something specific, nostalgia, lovesickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom..."

Toskà haunts the first day of the New Year. If we think of a New Year in relation to Old, the old has passed, it is gone. There is toskà (a dull ache) for 2009. There is also toskà for certain memories, moments we had. But we have also outgrown the year, have become bored with it. 

There is also toskà for the New Year, a spiritual longing for peace in the world (a dream), for our lives to make sense, to have what we want, to want what we have, to appreciate those around us. Maybe we long to return to some place or there is a lovesickness for something we don't know but it's there, an undercurrent, a moment on the horizon. 

In our culture we celebrate the New, what is 'fresh, original'. Our latest technology renders previous gadgets and inventions nearly obsolete. But somehow, despite our Ipods, vinyl is still available.

And in the world of wine, vintages of yesteryear are closer to perfection. Despite how I feel, I'm going to open a bottle of German Riesling from 2002. In 2002 I was deeply sick, but now I'm doing alright. So far so good.

I wish everyone a happy New Year. May all your recoveries be joyous - even if you don't want pickled herring for breakfast.

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A Glass of Riesling and Time

In the novel, In Search of Lost Time, after the narrator Marcel soaks his Madeleine cake into a cup of tea, he takes a sip. He doesn’t expect anything from his day but suddenly, tasting the tea blended with the crumbs of the cake, his mind brings forth a volume of intellectual and emotional sensations. “And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disaster innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation had the effect, which love has, of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was me.”

And from this sip and another, the narrator embarks on an entire journey of memories: houses, an aunt in the country, streets he ran errands upon, Monsieur Swan, the Square where he ate lunch, country lanes his family walked - the entire village of his childhood. All is brought to life.

There is such a strong link between our senses and our memories - to time itself. Sometimes I find myself smelling the wet dust before a storm and I see myself in my father’s garage, awaiting a thunder storm. A few month ago, I dropped my head down to take in the aromas of an Okanagan Pinot Noir and suddenly, I’m 11 years old, at the end of a fishing dock on Rice Lake, outside Peterborough, Ontario. I could even see the rose-tinted sunset in the glass and then closing my eyes, the violet waters. It was evening; I’d stared so long at the water drifting and became so captivated, I fell in (to the comic surprise of my parents looking on).

Perhaps this explains our relationship with wine. Like wine, we are exposed to not only the elements, the seasons, but to the hours and years. We are tenuously connected to time. Vintages mean the world to many expert wine buyers. For wine producers, the time to pick the grapes is key. If they wait too long, they risk harvest rains, if they pick too early, under-ripe grapes. Time is a factor.

And then there is the time of fermentation, racking (separating the wine from sediment), the time spent in oak and bottles. The time shipped, the time in the wine store, the time of anticipation before opening a bottle, the time we enjoy it with friends and family, and the time we pause and wonder at the different aromas that in turn ask us to search and return to our sensory memories for the corresponding scents and tastes. Wine challenges us to remember, to think, to name, because the aura of these flavours cannot go on namelessly.

With time these flavours and characteristics develop just as we develop our own memories throughout the duration of our lives.

These thoughts come to me this evening. I take home a bottle of 1992 Riesling Spätlese from the Rheingau. I decide to make schnitzel, slicing up the pork loin, pounding it down, getting the panko crumbs ready, the seasoned flour – rosemary, thyme, basil and a dash of cinnamon. In the background I can hear Beethoven’s Sonata, no.30.

I find myself pouring a glass and staring long at the label, not expecting anything. 1992. I taste the honeyed-lemon, the kerosene apple and lush, viscous lemon.

The label fascinates me. It is obviously new, placed perhaps within the last few months. But the wine inside.

Where was I in 1992? What was I doing when these grapes were harvested?

I count back the years. I know I entered high school in 1994 (grade nine). So that meant, I was just entering Junior High Grade 7. The wine is a Spätlese so yes, this means the grapes were harvested later in the season, in mid-to-late October. I was born in October. What was I doing before my birthday? I seem to recall a girl named Erica with whom I walked home one evening. Her mother and mine had been friends once.

Memory shifts into memory. I see the autumn swathed streets, fallen leaves, Erica and me. It is the first time I ever walk a girl home. But she isn’t meant to be. At the Hallowe’en dance, a week later, she dances several times with another boy. But - no problem. There’s Sara waiting.

I sip the wine and continue to think about the past. For me, Riesling is the wine of harvest. It is the gold of autumn, the apples in their baskets, a sky scented with a far off smell of spices, a mineral soaked wind at a childhood brook. When I drink Riesling, I see only twilights of burnt leaves and suburban sidewalks muted with light afternoon rain.

Memory is the colour of gold.

At the dance, I hold Sara at arm’s length. It is the awkward dance of early adolescence

I pause, No, that doesn’t seem right. I couldn’t have been that young. It doesn’t make sense.

Shaking my head, recalculating the years, I suddenly realize I'm off a year, it wasn’t grade 7, it was grade 8. The remembrance shifts a year ahead. I’m in my parent’s rec room and it’s my birthday party. I am holding a girl named Lori in my arms. She sinks her head down on my shoulder. My eyes briefly water. The song “One” by U2 surrounds us in this brief interlude, flowing through us both as a hermetic guide and a ominous limit to our dance. Bono’s brooding, wincing vocals turn us and my other birthday guests clockwise.

It is not like with Sara (I can’t even remember the first song we danced to), in which I awkwardly held her hips, two flat hands against her sides while her limp hands rested on my shoulders, our heads averted; never once did we look into each other’s eyes. No, this is a dance I have lost myself into, the brief respite from my longing for Lori. I am still holding her.

How strange to find the year 1992 is still alive in a glass of wine. That such a liquid from grapes grown 17 years ago have found their way into my life and with it, the questions of those years. There’s nothing in my body from 1992. All the cells from that time have died. There are books in libraries published in 1992, but the pages aren’t alive.

What is?

Memories, yes, but even they change, become distorted, smoothed out because the details are hazed and we only want to remember the good – not the bullies, the tests, the crabby teachers.

Beethoven’s Piano Sonata re-enters the room. I know I should be finishing dinner

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Wine Politics - "What's the score?" Rating Wines

If you are new to the world of wine and find yourself in a wine shop or a liquor store, you might notice what we call in the industry, ‘shelf talkers’ - little tags that basically talk about the wine.

A few lines long, you might read, “soft, blackberry fruit, hints of smoke and earth” or “crisp, green lime flavours matched with charming nuances of apple” or something to that affect.

And there, right below the ‘purple prose’ (wine writing) you’ll see a few scores usually written in bold:

89 Points Wine Spectator
90 Points Robert Parker, The Wine Advocate
95 Points Steven Tanzer, International Wine Cellar
89 Points Wine Access

When it comes to a bottle of wine, it’s the price, those very numbers that are extracted from our wallets as bills and cents or digits in our bank account that matter (sometimes the alcohol content as well – Australian and California wines can get as high 16% abv). But for many wine aficionados, merchants, buyers and collectors, the points are everything and this can also affect the price.

ROBERT PARKER
We could blame it on Robert Parker. Back in the last century, about 1983, he predicted that the Bordeaux vintage of ’82 was a must-have for wine merchants and buyers. When his prediction paid off, everyone turned to The Wine Advocate. Inside the pages of this humble but confident magazine, wine buyers found only tasting notes and scores. There wasn’t a hint of advertising. Still is. The periodical is as bare as a philosophical quarterly or a university medical journal.

When Parker started out, he wanted to be the consumer’s guide to wine; no frills, no fuss. Reading through American and British magazines and newspapers, he grew sick and tired of wine journalists who had been wined and dined by agencies and wineries. (Apparently there was one critic who every time he visited a winery, left the trunk of his car open in the event that when he came back, there would be cases waiting for him.) Their reviews were a matter of ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’.

Parker believed in a democratic approach. (The 1970s was the time of Ralph Nader and consumer advocacy.) Parker was passionate and knew enough about his own tastes to recommend a wine and be honest. Having been to France, he was, perhaps, no different than other wine critics. (In the 1960s and 1970s, wine journalism was in its infancy. Many writers had little or no training. When Jancis Robinson started out, she had been working in the travel business and like many, took courses here and there while writing wine articles over the years.)

THE SCORING
Featured on page 2 of the first issue, one could find Parker’s rating system. A wine rated below 64 was “to be avoided”; a 60-64 rating had “noticeable flaws”; 65-74 meant the wines was “average”; 75-79 you could expect “above average”; 80-89 meant you had a “very good wine”; 90-95 was “outstanding” and 96-100, “extraordinary” (The Emperor of Wine)

Rating a wine was not new. In 1855 the French classified their Médoc (an important sub-region of Bordeaux) in response to a request from Napoleon III’s Paris Expo of the same year. Organized into five tiers or growths, these 61 chateaux have remained lodged into the upper class minds of wine drinkers for over 125 years. They have also remained unchanged. (There was an adjustment in the twentieth century. Baron Philippe de Rothschild had simply refused to be a second growth in this glamorized popularity contest and demanded to be first. After petitioning for most of his life, his wish was granted in 1973 and he died happily in 1988 – who says nothing changes after high school?) Graves established a ranking system in 1953 followed by St.-Emilion in 1955 but they have nowhere near the cache that the 1855 system has.

Like the Médoc classification system (or ‘caste’ system notes Edward Hyam in the dated but still quite useful book on French wine country, Vin – “for in a class system it is possible for the lower classes to work their way into the higher”), Robert Parker’s scoring was the first and has continued to be the most important. Just as we think Coke before Pepsi, Parker’s ratings are foremost in the minds of wine buyers. After Parker, came Wine Spectator. Marvin Shanken paid $40,000 for the failing San Diego-based tabloid and turned it into the consumer giant it is today, adopting the 100-point rating system in 1985. (A famous exchange between Parker and Shanken. “What do you think of me stealing your 100-point system?” Parker: “What difference does it make? You give everything 90 points anyway.” Shanken: “We’re going to put you out of business” and of course that never happened. [The Emperor of Taste])

The trouble with Parker is that he became the very thing he fought against. He didn’t believe in the Classification of 1855. If he felt a wine was poor, he said so. He called the 1973 Bordeaux vintage ‘terrible’.

Following his major prediction of ’83, Parker became the critic that made a fledgling winery overnight. If Parker scored your wine 90+, expect hundreds of phone calls and faxes the next morning.

Slowly, over the years, cult wineries, such as Screaming Eagle ‘blossomed’ out of Parker’s modern day rating system. In 1997 the said winery of Napa Valley received a 100-points for their Cabernet Sauvignon. The wine was initially priced at $125.00. At an auction that same year following the rating, the wine sold for $2500. So, in a sense, like the Classification system of 1855, Parker has become an icon of the wealthy wine drinking crowd, many of whom are slavish followers of his.

WINE SCORING TODAY
Robert Parker is more of a legend than a man. But he is also very American with very-American taste. Following the wines he rates, you can see a preference for bold, meaty, full-bodied wine. Just as the majority of the American viewing public wants sex and violence, dumbed-down television like American Idol and blockbuster movies following the Jerry Bruckheimer-Michael Bay formula (which is just blow everything up – really…), Parker’s wine are for those who could care less about subtlety.

This is the great tragedy of the wine world. The intentions were good, no one ever plans to change the world (although Gary Vaynerchuk of winelibrary.com claims he is and I admire his fascination for variety and hesitation on scoring) and no one plans to become a satire of their own success. Over the years, the wines that received the highest points received the biggest returns. Scores are everything. Wineries took notice and the result has been a great gluttonous surge of mainstream wine, all of them sharing the same tendency to be robust and full-bodied.

THE FLAWS OF SCORING WINE
Have you ever considered walking into an art gallery and scoring a painting or a sculpture? No, not really, right?

But we do rate movies, we give them a thumbs up or down, four stars, three stars, we award them Oscars and Golden Globes. The same with CDs. They have a rating system that isn’t perfect, but usually the reviewer has had some experience with the genre of music they are rating. The same with the movie critic. Many have gone to school, watched countless films, know the clichés, understand the symbolism.

We can sit down with friends and watch a film. We will see the same images on the screen but our perceptions might vary, some of us focusing on different characters and recalling different scenes. We can go back to that film time and time again, just as we can listen and re-listen to a CD, judging the merits of a particular artist’s use of words and overall musical talents.

Wine is different and so is the wine world. Existing somewhere between categories of art and the film industry, relying half on the elements and half on human beings, it is a matter of what I would like to call ‘calculated guess-work’ based on experience. There is a science to it, of course, but we cannot control the winds, the sun and the rain, can we?

From wine makers to critics, every wine is unique just as every palate is subjective and personal. Whereas what we see and hear can often be agreed upon, what we taste and smell is another matter. We can pick up a novel and re-read a passage that has layers of symbols yet how do we know while drinking a certain wine we are picking up the same flavours, the same nuances as our neighbor? We can direct others to certain aromas but how certain are we? It is a mystery at times.

The rating system is flawed because few critics can agree on wine. While Parker might rate a Rioja 90 points, Stephen Tanzer might give 87. In Australia, James Halliday might give an Eden Valley Riesling 90 points whereas a fellow wine critic might shake his head and go 85 points. Shots in the dark. There is no consistency. (With something as simple as a table, I’m sure we can all agree on the measurements plus or minus a fraction of an inch or metre…)

Points are often the substitute for description but shouldn’t be. Kermit Lynch, a famous California wine importer in his book, Adventures on the Wine Route balks at the idea of judging and scoring a wine. “Those big rock-‘em-sock-‘em blockbusters perform one function admirably – they win tastings…. Usually such wines give their all in the first whiff and sip…”

Lynch compares two wines, a Château Margaux (considered the finest of Médoc wines in Bordeaux) and a moderately-priced rosé wine from Bandol in the South of France. Which is better? Lynch urges the reader to compare them side by side and award points. The Margaux would most likely win. Now take those two wines to dinner and serve them both with boiled artichoke and rate them once more. “The Margaux is bitter and metallic-tasting, whereas the Bandol rosé stands up and dances like Baryshnikov.”

Lynch’s argument is comically apt when he writes that when “a woman chooses a hat, she does not put it on a goat’s head to judge it”. It’s our palates, he basically says and even if we are beginners, we should be able to rely on our own tastes. Why should we value the ratings of critics who can’t agree on a bunch of numbers they have arbitrarily awarded a wine – a scoring system, I forgot to mention, based on the American high school grade system.

I agree with Lynch that a wine should be judged in the environment in which it is tasted and that environment includes the company you keep, the food you eat and quite simply on one’s mood.

The other flaw of rating a wine is that many times a wine will be tasted and scored in sequence of other wines. Have you ever tried to watch two movies in a row? Did you find you paid more attention to the first as opposed to the second?

There is also bottle variation (see Vino Variations June 2009) as much as the temperature of wine served, the time of day, the time when the bottle was opened. Who is to say that a certain wine should be opened this year as opposed to next? Or that one? Can one bottle represent the entire vintage? Should the wine be decanted? How do you score a wine when you’re only guessing when is the right time to taste it?

RATINGS: HERE TO STAY?
The scoring system is little more than an over-inflated tool. Some might call it a necessary evil. I find it foolish. There are many flaws and many egos. As much as it forewarns consumers and gives them some idea of quality, it keeps us from branching out and exploring the un-scored wines or the less than 90 pointers. By creating a comfort zone and drinking the high scoring wine, we force the market to appease us and therefore mainstream becomes our only means of drinking wine (just as we keep coming back to boring Bruckheimer-Bay-like films). We’re not going to eat steak everyday so why do we need beefy big wines with higher alcohol (and a lot of wineries, especially in France have made their wines with higher alcohol content, often as a result of adding sugar to increase the percentage)?

I have to admit, I admire the Canadian magazine Vines for using the star system which is much closer to what I learned through Wine Studies Education Trust. Through my course work, we learned to judge wines based on appearance, nose and palate, all contributing to a final assessment. Was the wine Poor? Acceptable? Good? Outstanding or Extraordinary?

But again, we tasted the wine for the sake of tasting it, not truly enjoying it with a meal. If everyone is unique, if all wines are unique, then why do we need high scoring wines to appear at our table in a world of diversity? The mainstream is an excuse not to think and explore – we undermine our own preferences. Popularity contests have nothing to do with taste and individuality.

I don’t think I’d trust a goat to wear my hat.

Bibliography
Hyams, Edward, Vin: The Wine Country of France, Newnes, London, 1959.
Lynch, Kermit, Adventures on the Wine Route. Farrar Straus Geroux, New York, 1988.
McCoy, Elin, The Emperor of Wine: The Rise of Robert M.Parker, Jr., and the Reign of American Taste, Harper Perennial, New York, 2005.
Robinson, Jancis, Tasting Pleasure. Penguin Press, New York, 1999.
Robinson, Jancis, The Oxford Companion to Wine. Oxford, London, 2003.

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Vino Variations

“There are few agricultural crops whose products are subtly diverse as those of the grape vine, Vitis vinifera. … from global variations between wines in different continents, to the local difference between adjacent vineyards…” – Tim Unwin, Wine and the Vine

Tim Unwin has a point. Wine is diverse but that’s the pleasure of discovering its beauty and complexity.

Pick up a tomato at the grocery store. Hold it in your hand, and see the different shades of red, the different shapes and varieties like Roma, Beefsteak and Vine-grown. But inside, no matter the variety, we know it will still taste like a tomato. By any other name….

Pick up a bottle of wine – you can never be a hundred percent sure. What has gone on behind the scenes to make the wine? What kind of soil were the grapes grown in (some soils can give a wine a flinty character as in Pouilly-Fumé), what was the climate like (cooler for whites – Germany and New Zealand, warmer for reds – Australia and California) and the weather variations during the year (heavy rain at harvest dilutes the grapes and makes the resulting wine thin)?

But that is just the vineyard side. What about the winery? How were the grapes pressed? When – early in the harvest or late? If late, the wine might be richer.

Then there are the techniques used in the winery from steel fermentation (fermenting the wine in temperature controlled containers), carbonic maceration (just throwing the red grapes in, not pressing them, letting them ferment), and the different yeast strains to assist in the process (different strains can bring out different flavours in the wine). A bottle of wine, unlike the growth of a tomato, is really the result of thousands of decisions made, some creative, some economic, some innovative, others arbritary.

PLACE IS A FACTOR TO CONSIDER

I suppose this is the reason why I don’t have a favourite bottle. I want to try everything from everywhere. You can spend an entire lifetime learning about wine and still discover something new every time you open a bottle.

My brother and I were talking about this one evening when he tried to determine whether I had a favourite wine. He noticed I was always bringing home something different.

We talked about his friends, Yellowtail buyers who go to the liquor store with the Kangaroo-logo in mind. The familiar is comforting; you can’t blame them when it comes to wine. Wine can be not only diverse but incredibly confusing.

For instance, take a variety like Cabernet Sauvignon. Cabernet is universal in the world of wine. It is planted just about everywhere wine-bearing grapes are found (well, maybe not Germany, it’s a bit cold there and Cabernet needs a warmer climate to mature and ripen). It’s very much at home is Bordeaux, France but there is also California Cabernet, Chilean Cabernet, Australian Cabernet, Canadian Cabernet. There is even Bulgarian Cabernet Sauvignon. Which one to choose?

Good question to ask but not so easy to answer. Consider that the same grape would most likely make the same kind of wine around the world. And it usually does. Cabernet is high in tannins (the constituent of a red wine that has a mouth-drying effect) and usually associated with a blackcurrant flavour.

There are country variations. Chilean Cabernets often possess bell-pepper and cedar wood notes. In France, Cabernet Sauvignon from Bordeaux will be blended with Merlot, Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc so with blackcurrant notes, you’ll get pencil shavings and maybe cocoa (from the Merlot). In Australia, especially in Coonawarra, you’ll often find hints of mint and eucalyptus, sometimes menthol.

California Cabernet can be full-bodied, with ripe notes of dried sage, dust and rich dark fruit but this also depends on the price. (I know, I know, there are so many ‘buts’ in buying wine.) A cheap California Cabernet will most likely come from vineyards with high yields; that is, a lot of grape berries on the vine. Bulk wines are produced from high-yielding vineyards. The more grapes from a grape bunch, the more likely the pressed juice will be thin and lacking in nuance. A premium California Cabernet will have a bigger price tag because the vineyard will have lower yields as growers will prune back excess grapes. The vine, pruned back, will concentrate on the remaining grapes, imparting the most flavour and complexity.

Buying a bottle of wine isn’t easy. It’s truly about experimenting, choosing three to four Cabernet Sauvignons from three to four different countries, then making a comparison. The next step is to choose Cabernet Sauvignons from the same country and compare again. If you really want the challenge, buy a few Cabernet Sauvignon from the same region, i.e. Napa Valley or Maipo in Chile.

PRÊT-Â-BOIRE vs. AGE-WORTHY WINES

And then there’s the question about aging. Not only will you find a variety of vintages at the wine store but keep in mind that Southern Hemisphere wines from South America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand all have their harvests between February and May. A 2007 New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc will be six months older than a French, American and Canadian Sauvignon Blanc of the same year. The vintage date is always the year of harvest.

Other brand wines or what I call prêt-à-boire, (ready to drink) and prêt-à-porter (ready to carry), will not substantially improve over time. Some maybe wines will get better after two to three years, four at the most. (In the Oxford Companion to Wine, under AGEING, there is a substantial list of wines that are not known to improve after a long time in bottle. Not surprisingly, boxed wine or bag-in-the-box.)

Basically Yellowtail, like any number of huge wineries – i.e. the size of oil-refineries - are known to be consistent by giving the customer the same kind of product year after year like a hamburger franchise. The Pinot Grigio 2007 and the Chardonnay 2007 from either Lindemann’s or Yellowtail will be the same in 2008 and 2009. These wines are meant to be ‘popped and poured’ as James Laube, an editor at Wine Spectator said about modern wines.

While the French depend on vintage, a good or bad year making or breaking the quality of a wine, the Australians select and blend their wines from any number of vineyards, many of them located in the South Eastern states: Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia. If the Aussies had a great year in three locations and bad in two, they’ll choose the grapes from the best sites and blend them.

In France, if you are making Rhone wines in the Côte-Rôtie and a hail storm falls on your crop before the harvest, you’re basically screwed.

So really, the big-guns are in it for the money and the last thing they want is surprises. They want to give the customer a product that delivers and satisfies expectations. They’ve created a brand everyone can depend upon.

The wines that can age are often at a premium. But by premium, it doesn’t mean they have to be hugely expensive. I went to a blind wine-tasting in early 2009. The man who provided the wine, a collector, assured us they were top quality. I assumed they were all expensive, from $50.00 and up. But for many this wasn’t the case. When the bottles were taken out of their paper bags, we found a welcome assortment of fascinating wines. We had tasted some high-end French, Italian and Spanish wines but also some moderately priced ones, as well. One of the wines that wowed me was a mid-priced blend from D’Arenberg, a 1998 D’Arby’s Original Shiraz Grenache. Ten years had softened the wine. I still tasted the brown sugar but new wonders arose. There was a layer of exotic spices in the wine’s aged flavour profile, from the mint to the pepper onward into cedar, mineral and a dusty mulberry. I had sampled the 2006 Vintage the previous year, recalling a robust, full-bodied fruit bomb. But to see what the wine could do down the road was eyebrow-lifting.

But since D’Arenberg is a trustworthy name, I wasn’t surprised. Still, I was taken aback, not expecting a mid-priced Australian wine to impress me.

OVER THE HILL

But there is another story I need to tell. I worked in a retail wine store in North Vancouver, British Columbia. We marketed an excellent, Old Vines Garnacha from Calatayud in North Central Spain, highly rated and recommended by the American wine critic, Robert Parker. Yet it wasn’t expensive. A 2004 offering, for about $14.00 CAD, this wine never seemed to run out. Every time a case appeared with the order, I wondered if the new vintage had finally arrived. But the supply never seemed to ‘dry up’. We went through dozens upon dozes of cases of this Spanish wine. It was wonderful in 2008, ready to drink, displaying notes of black liquorice, black fruit with heady spices of earth and anise.

The following year, when the store purchased enough wine to create a display in the 90 POINTS section (the point system devised by Robert Parker and adopted by many critics; 90 points is the equivalent of an ‘A’ on a report card), the Garnacha was found to be over-the-hill. Many bottles were bought and many returned, the two most common complaints: ‘off-smelling’ and ‘corked’.

What had happened? We thought the wine was top-rated and a great value. My colleague and I decided to check the Robert Parker’s website. We found the wine review and read Parker’s note – drink between 2004-2008. The wine had hit its peak. I used to think wine predictions were just devices of wine critics, but Parker had been dead-on.

SAME WINE, SAME LABEL… BUT…

But there are variations in vintage, too. A wine consultant once told me he organized a wine-tasting for a large group of friends. The hosts bought two cases of the same wine. Being the expert, he was asked to check the wines, to make sure they weren’t off or corked. He went through twenty-four bottles, finding that there were some variations even though the wines were supposedly the same. Most of them were alike but there were four or five that were different, unique, unlike the rest though they weren’t corked, no foul smells.

It takes time and a bit of memory work to figure out some of the main variations in wine, from country differences to the differences in wines available – i.e. an Aussie Brand wine to a small French winery. Variations can be surprising; there is so much to explore. Keep an open mind when it comes to ‘tackling’ wine and you will never be bored.

Bibliography
Robinson, Jancis, The Oxford Companion to Wine. Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 2003.
Unwin, Tim, Wine and the Vine: An Historical Geography of Viticulture and the Wine Trade. Routledge, London, 1991.

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