Food and Wine Pairing

Last night I taught a food and wine pairing class at Out of Site Wines.  These are my notes; I was pretty happy with the theme of stepping out from time honored rules and looking at molecular gastronomy.

Food and Wine Pairing

Thursday May 8, 2014

Presented by:

Nick Stengel

Nick’s tips for food and wine pairing

Drink what you like

Very few of the possible food and wine combinations out there are disastrous (Cabernet Sauvignon and ice cream springs to mind). So if a creamy buttery Chardonnay is going to classically pair with Roasted Chicken, and you don’t like Chardonnay, you're not going to like that match - pick something you like, maybe a Riesling or a Gamay.

Be aware of your Vinotype

Go to myvinotype.com and take the brief test that will suggest how sensitive your palate is to things like tannins, sugar, and alcohol. Then refer to the tip above and drink what you like. If alcohol burns your palate and you like wines with a little sweetness, then a bone dry Mencia that I might love with seared tuna isn’t going to be a sucessful match for you. Try it with a Santa Barbara Pinot Noir that has slightly lower alcohol and sweet fruit.

Treat your wine as though it were a sauce or a spice

Chefs don’t consider pairing to be simple like “fish with white wine.” For example, a roasted Halibut served with a ragout of fava beans and morels in a white butter sauce is a completely different dish than porcini dusted Halibut with roasted fingerling potatoes and a horseradish beet sauce. Most of the time, the protein on your plate can go a hundred different ways and it is the dish as a whole that must be considered.

Experiment!

This is supposed to be enjoyable, and what could be more fun than gathering in a kitchen to play with a recipe and several bottles of wine? I played for a long time with a scallop dish I was working on where I wanted to match the sweetness of the shellfish with an off-dry Gewurztraminer. It took several tries before I thought of adding a tart tatin of fennel that had been braised in stock, orange juice, honey, star anise, and sauternes. Play with your food!

Chameleon wines do exist

When I was working as a sommelier, I learned that matching a wine to a dish was pretty easy. Much more difficult was a table of 4 or 6 people who were looking to order a bottle that would go with 4 or 6 different dishes. For those situations, I have learned to lean on some wines that go with almost anything:

• Riesling
• Alsatian Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris
• Chianti
• Oregon Pinot Noir and village level Burgundy
• Côtes du Rhône
• Sancerre
• Unoaked Chardonnay
• Grüner Veltliner
• Blaufrankisch
• Gamay

As you can see, most of these wines are bright and somewhat acidic and the reds are lighter in weight and alcohol. The heavier and more complex the wine, the fewer options you have for pairing. A 15% abv Saint Emilion Grand Cru only pairs with heavy meat based or mushroom dishes, for example.

Foods that taste cold love Sauvignon Blanc

The chemicals found in mint and other cold foods are also found in Sauvignon Blanc

Chemicals involved:

• anethole - green anise, star anise, basil, celery, chervil, fennel
• R Carvone - mint
• S Carvone - caraway
• eugenol - Thai basil, basil, cloves
• apigenin - parsley
• menthol - basil, coriander, fennel, mint, some root vegetables

Wines with cold flavors:

• Albariño - Rias Baixas, Spain
• Chardonnay - Cold Climate like South Africa or Chablis
• Godello - Valdepeñas, Spain
• Grüner Veltliner - Austria
• Sauvignon Blanc
• Verdejo - Rueda, Spain
• Vermentino - Sardinia
• Syrah - Cold Climate from South Africa or Northern Rhone

Fat does not tame the sensation of tannins. Salt does.

Most people equate steak with big reds because the maillard reactions that are created while toasting the inside of a barrel are the same melanoids that are found in a well seared steak, including caramel, cocoa, toast, and vanillins. of course, with big oak comes big tannins, and that actually does not go with steak in any way. It was common knowledge that fat blunts the experience of tannin, but in reality it’s not true. It’s salt, and only because of molecular gastronomy do we finally know this.  The lie stood for hundreds of years because the French have never served anything without a lot of salt. What did the French Chef say to the American Chef?

Aside - You have to get Taste Buds and Molecules by Francois Chartier if you are a food and wine geek. Every page has brilliant thoughts and ideas that we are only scratching the surface of. For example, he just tosses out the fact that pure caramel fragrance is almost identical chemically to that of walnut. That one sentence is an entire cookbook worth of exploration.  Another tidbit is thymol is a principle flavor component of lamb. Priceless stuff.

Barrel spices pair with baking spices

Cloves are the flower buds of an evergreen tree in the same family as eucalyptus, myrtle, and guava. They are grown in Zanzibar and Pemba. Very fresh, high quality cloves contain up to 20% volatile oils, of which 70-90% is eugenol.  Other things with a high eugenol content include thai basil, malted barley (scotch), pineapples, roast beef, cinnamon, strawberries, vanilla, potatoes, and of course, oak barrels.

Oak barrels also produce the same chemicals that make up nutmeg, cinnamon, mace, anise, and other baking spices. So play around with baking spices in your savory dishes that are meant to serve with oaky reds.  Just be sure to include salt, and go a little easy on the hot peppers.

Aside on spicy foods: Capsaicin, the chemical which is hot, is insoluble in water, but mixes very very well in alcohol, which with heighten the sensation of heat. So if you wanted to make a Jamaican Jerk dish with all of these baking spices, go with something low alcohol...like beer.

Grüner Veltliner is groovy

Good examples of Grüner Veltliner display typical white wine aromas and flavors of lemon and apple, but also some not-so-typical green bean, radish, and white pepper qualities. These are often associated with under-ripe wines and considered a flaw, but in Grüner, they are present at full ripeness. Andrew Myers, the sommelier of CityZen in Washington, DC, gave Grüner Veltliner unqualified praise. “It’s a great wine, and it’s incredibly versatile,” Myers noted. “There isn’t a vegetable that doesn’t love Grüner Veltliner. The really peppery Grüners can hold their own with meat dishes, and the big, loamy ones can handle seafood dishes with great aplomb.” There are currently 13 Grüner Veltliners on his CityZen wine list. Notoriously difficult to match foods like asparagus, artichokes, and bitter greens all bow down to Grüner.

Does wine taste funny with artichokes? According to Science Magazine, artichokes make everything taste funny, even water. cynarin and cholorogenic acid are the culprits, and Grüner doesn’t neutralize them, but it does taste just fine with that hint of sweet bitterness that they produce.

Interesting aside: Cynarin is chemically similar to another chemical called miraculin, produced by the Miracle Berry native to Latin America. Taking a Miracle Berry tablet (thinkgeek.com) is an LSD trip for your tongue - everything will taste sweet for a few hours. Red wine vinegar tastes like grape juice, goat cheese tastes like cheesecake, lemons taste like candy. I highly recommend gathering a table full of bitter things like coffee, popping a tab, and trying it once.

All cheese are not created equal

Fermentation is magic, and just as in fermented wine, cheese produces a dizzying array of chemicals with wildly different smell and taste sensations. To name just a few:

• peptides and fatty acids that give goat cheese its sharp peppery flavor
• methyl ketones that give blue cheese its distinctive tang
• amino acids that provide umami savor including putrescine that tastes of gamey meat and trimethylamine (not the kind from Breaking Bad) that smells slightly fishy.
• diacetyl that smells like buttered popcorn and a little floral and is found in barrel fermented Chardonnay
• cyclotene and maltol which smell like toast and are also found in wine barrels
• carotenoids that are found in all sorts of yellow, orange, and red foods but are also found in Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, and many Rosés.

And lots of others. I recommend playing around with pairings, but also consider Max McCalman’s books, especially Mastering Cheese.  He’s a genius.

In very general terms, here is a guide:

• Semi-firm and hard cheese pair well with Riesling, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Gewurztraminer, Manzanilla Sherry, and Muscat
• Cheese with bloomy rinds pairs well with Oaked Chardonnay, warm climate whites like Assyrtiko, and beer
• Blue cheese goes well with fino sherry, dessert wines of all kinds, and Oaked Chardonnay

THC for wine tasters?

I am writing this when I should be working on one of my assignments from the Institute of Masters of Wine.  They send occasional tasting assignments that require us to write essays on a wine we are not actually tasting, but should be so intimately familiar with, we don't need to taste it again.  I lost my nerve at the high and the low end of the spectrum, having only rarely tasted $100 Premier Cru Puligny-Montrachet from 2010 and inexpensive mass production Aussie Chardonnay.  So I went and bought some and now am waiting for it to chill before tackling the assignment.

Sooo...I'm just cruising the internet and the news and I came upon this article from the Smithsonian that puts forth some theories on the munchies.  I don't smoke pot or anything else because it's bad for tasting and my health (and I know the studies on pot say its not bad but smoke in lungs causes cancer!).  BUT, this article posits that the munchies are caused by THC (the active ingredient in pot) via a binding process in the Olfactory Bulb in the brain that intensifies the ability of the nose to smell AND reduces the effect of olfactory habituation, a phenomena whereby you get used to smells and stop smelling them.

Hmmm.

If there was a way to get this smelling advantage without reducing analytic abilities because I was high, I would try this.  I'll let the people with the lab rats work a while on thresholds and whatnot, but an MW student looks for every advantage!  Stay tuned and wish me luck on my assignment.

Catching Up

Happy New year to my eight dedicated readers of this blog!  This is a quick post to catch everyone up on my journey and a promise to post at least semi-frequently from this point forward.

I changed jobs and am now the manager of Out of Site Wines in Vienna, VA.  So I am no longer a chef and I am really enjoying both the challenges of learning the business and the increased work-life balance brough by no longer heading a kitchen.  I did apply, and have been accepted to study at the Institute of Masters of Wine.  The first seminar is in a week in Austria, and I am excited.  Meanwhile, I study and taste.  More to come!

A Penis Image Too Far?

Now folks, I am a fan of Moet Champagne and of Scarlett Johansson.  But I think that these adds might be edging too much from subconscious aspirational nudging to full on porn.  Your thoughts?

Biodynamic Book Report

I just finished an interesting read, Voodoo Vintners: Oregon's Astonishing Biodynamic Winegrowers, by Katherine Cole.  Biodynamic winemaking, sorry, grape growing,  is very trendy nowadays and quite controversial as many of its practices seem wierd and silly.  Cole's treatment is admirably open minded and I recommend it to anyone interested in just what the fuss is all about.

The practice, in my opinion, breaks down into two parts.  The first half is all about refusing chemical and biological fertilizers and insecticides while embracing older and more traditional methods of vineyard management.  An example of this is using natural compost as fertilizer.  Another really cool one is to keep an area near the vineyard as an "insectary" where one can see what is being attracted to the area and what they are eating.  Then one can plant cover crops they will like more than grapes, or encourage predators like bats and owls to control population growth.  Creating and working with an ecosystem rather than trying to destroy everything that isn't your crop is a solid idea that many have latched onto without embracing the more idiosyncratic ideas of biodynamics.

Healthy soils are the key here, and that makes sense.  However, the idea goes against lost of conventional wisdom that vines need poor soils to produce really great grapes.  If the vines struggle to survive, the saying goes, they will put more energy into grapes and less into producing wood and leaves.  This is where a focus on Oregon and Pinot Noir is perhaps a failing of Cole's book.  Pinot vines are naturally low in vigor, that is they tend not to produce much wood.  If one were to look at Angelo Gaja's vines in Barolo, by contrast, the case for biodynamics looks pretty thin.  The Nebbiolo vines that make up his $300 wines grow like weeds and he has to keep the soil in a constant state of nitrogen deficit just to control them!  Also, Oregon Pinot vineyards tend to be grown on thin soil hillsides that were once pine forest or hazelnut orchard, rather than say, the rich benchlands of the Napa Valley floor.  Where the soil is already good, composting and fertilizing is just silly.  Some great estates of Bordeaux, for example, spread manure once only every 14 years.


The second part of the book is a fun look at the crazy parts of biodynamics.  It's father, Rudy Steiner, was a mystic who believed in gnomes and spirits, among other things.  One important part of his teachings was based on homeopathy, where 

The low concentrations of homeopathic remedies, often lacking even a single molecule of the diluted substance, lead to an objection that has dogged homeopathy since the 19th century: how, then, can the substance have any effect? Modern advocates of homeopathy have suggested that "water has a memory"—that during mixing and succussion, the substance leaves an enduring effect on the water, perhaps a "vibration", and this produces an effect on the patient.  source: wiki.

So this is where Biodynamics takes a decidedly crystal-humming tone.  They mix homeopathic preps in tubs that are shaped like a pregnant woman's belly and erect sculpture-looking things to channel energy and who know, attract gnomes?  Drive gnomes away?

Does it produce a great grape?  Sometimes these wines are better than others in their class.  I've sure tasted some awesome biodynamic wines, and in my personal opinion that can be attributed to close management of ecosystems rather than mystics.  It's sauce for the recipe, that's for sure, and a fun read.

Lumos Wine Company

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to talk with Dai Crisp, owner of Lumos Wine Company.  Lumos is a relative newcomer to the winemaking scene in Oregon's Willamette Valley, but is making some excellent Pinot Gris, Gewurtz, and Pinot Noir.  Mr. Crisp formerly worked at Temperance Hill and Croft.  They have a small estate vineyard (Wren), but continue to source a lot of their fruit from Temperance Hill.

It was kind of a random meeting, I just happened to be in the restaurant when he and the wholesaler stopped by to chat up our sommelier.  But he was a very engaging guy, a real geek of the kind I get along with very well.  We talked pinot mutations, valve and propeller pumps that won't oxidize grape must, what happens to vineyards if the winter is too mild - serious geek.

The wines were pretty good too.  His base level 2008 pinot was rich and elegant at the same time, and I didn't hate either of his Pinot Gris selections, one done all in tank and another with some neutral oak treatment.  I mention the Pinot Gris thing...I don't hate it, but I haven't had much that was noteworthy.  Ever.  If I had the choice, I would just as soon pick another Alsace variety in most cases.  Stay tuned, however, I am planning a big tasting to retrain my palate on the issue.

Sucking up to my teacher

About a month ago, I was privileged to be a judge at the Virginia Governor's Cup wine competition.  Now that the winners have been announced, I wanted to take a post to describe the tasting sheet we used.  It was designed by Jay Youmans, MW, my teacher for the WSET Diploma process.  At the risk of being a suckup, I liked it.

Tasting wine in a competition process is unique and very different from tasting in your living room, or even blind tasting under test conditions.  You have six wines in front of you that are probably the same grape, same region, and same vintage.  The basic taste is the same, for example, all merlot.  The tasting sheet doesn't ask to spend time going back and forth between a black raspberry and a blackberry descriptor.  It says, "yes, it's black fruit, let's move on."  The sheet is not about recognizing a wine, but evaluating it.  Are the flavors ripe?  What are the qualities of the tannins?  How much color got extracted?  We are expected to judge each wine individually, but when you are done, you get a really excellent look at what was possible with that bunch of fruit, and how close each individual winemaker got to that Platonic ideal.

So I encourage everyone to try this technique as a way to really jump forward in your trasting.  Get a bunch of wines, at least 6, from the same place and vintage.  Try to vary your purchases by price point, if you can. Have somebody else bag them and be critical!

A very brief review of a good book I jest finished, The Art and Business of Champagne, by Dan Ginsberg. Ginsberg was the only American ever to head up a Champagne house, and as a businessman in his own right, wrote a unique and excellent text on the wine. It was opinionated and passionate and well written. The descriptions of each village were excellent to the serious student of wine, but I doubt anyone needed vintage reports going back to the early 1900s.

Due Diligence

The blogosphere is atwitter about a recent case of possible fraud at Spectrum Auctions in London with Vanquish Wine Ltd..  The facts as I gather, are these: 13 lots of Domaine Romanee Conti were pulled on the eve of the auction because label irregularities had been alleged.  The problems were spotted by attorney Don Cornwell, a noted Burgundy collector and appear to have been consigned, through an intermediary, by  Rudy Kurniawan, who has been involved in the auction of several suspicious lots in years past (1, 2, 3). 

Most of the blog entries and news reports I have read focus on Mr. Kurniawan, with historical asides to the Harvey Rodenstock fiasco where an entire cottage industry of fake bottle production and sales destroyed many a reputation and jarred the faith we might like to have in the auction house industry.

The best post I read also brought me a story I had not heard before.  Mike Steinberger writes the WineDiarist, and he reports that in 2008,  bottles of Domaine Ponsot’s Clos St-Denis from 1945, 1949, 1959, 1962, 1966, and 1971 were pulled from auction because the night before, the Domaine's owner flew in to remind them that they didn't begin making Clos St-Denis until 1982!  Mr. Steinberger's takeaway from the most recent DRC flap is that interested parties on the internet keep auction houses honest. 

My takeaway is what the hell do those auction employees do for a living?  We aren't discussing the results of mass spectrometer readings or carbon dating of glass here, just looking at a few websites to find out a wine actually exists!  WTF?  "Hrm, lesee Chateu FirstGrowth, medium neck fill, cork a quarter-inch shorter than it should be, label written in what appears to be crayon...sounds good!"  If you guys want to earn your percentage, you might want to do just a little work.  It reminds me of people buying bonds after only looking at their Moody's rating.  ...and you know how many years of recession can be linked to that!

From my own collecting persepective, I worry about small ticket items that I might buy from internet houses.  If firms cannot be trusted to check into bottles worth $5000, do you think they're gonna bother with my $100 lots?  Food for thought, people.  Let's be careful out there.

A Shout Out to K Vintners

I've often blogged about frequent disconnections between pricing and demand or pricing and quality.  This is one of those entries, but in a rather different way.  Charles Smith aka K Vintners is one of the superstars of the New World winemaking scene.  Indigenous yeasts, yields below 2 ton/acre, whole cluster fermentation, huge extraction, high pH...foot crushing for God's sake!  His wines are the real deal, from their inexpensive line of Charles Smith wines to their top cuvees.

Royal City is the product of the best fruit of the Stoneridge vineyard in Walla Walla, only about 4 barrels are made.  In the past four years, this fruit has received four 99 point ratings and one 98 from Robert Parker.  Now, we can quibble all day about rating systems and Parker's palate, but any way you slice it, that's a solid fantastic track record.

Last week I tried a bottle of the 2006.
A brooding monster of blueberries, blackberries, chocolate, spices, pepper, and tar. The more I smell and taste, the more descriptors I get - black olive, petrol, bacon fat, black cherries... The tannins are round and ripe, but huge. They combine with the acid to form a structure that handles all this fruit and flavor and manages to find elegance and awesome length. Wow.

Now to pricing.  First Growth Bordeaux don't get those kind of ratings and they cost $1000.  Charles Smith only costs $100, and he hasn't raised his price ever.  Mr. Smith, it's okay to make some money.  You've got the goods, it's okay.  Last month, I got my offer email and Royal City was listed at $120, but only a few hours later, another email notice reset the price back to $100.  I don't really want to pay more, but dude, it's worth it.  We won't complain.

A Tequilla Interlude

Picture a group of marketers sitting around a table.

"I think we've gone as far as we can with pretty glass bottles for justifying expensive tequilla."

"Yea, those vodka guys have it so easy.  Every 3 months they come out with a new flavor to maintain their buzz.  Imagine, marshmallow vodka!"

"So what we need is a new product line extension."

"Tequiza didn't work out so well."

"And all those alcopops don't actually use tequilla, they use flavored malt beverage.  I miss Zima"

"Stay on topic.  Okay, consider this, the money is in drinks people can use to make cocktails at trendy clubs, and for us that means young blanco tequilla.  But the better profits are in the more prestigious aged lines."

"So what we need is a blanco we can charge anjeo money for."

"Yes.  In a nice bottle."

"What if we took anejo and filtered out all the aged taste qualities..."

"Wait, wait!  We can use crappy tequilla that technically qualifies as aged but sucks, 'cause we're gonna filter out all the character anyway!"

"That is so fucking money."


Ladies and gentlemen, I haven't tasted this.  I am speaking out of ignorance.  But can't you just picture it?

Don Julio Anejo Claro.  So embarrassing it isn't even listed on the Don Julio Website.

How to Open Champagne with a Saber

Don't try this with your Kramer knife, or with Champagne you don't mind losing several ounces of, but opening a sparkling wine with a saber is a spectacular way to celebrate an occasion.  Follow these easy steps:

1. Get a big heavy knife.
2. Go outside with friends and clear an area for the cork and wine to fly.
3. Carefully remove the foil and cage, always pointing the cork away from you.
4. Hold the bottle like this:

5. Run the knife down the neck of the bottle and give the lip of the bottle a hard smack with the BACK edge of the knife.

If you do it strongly enough, the whole top of the bottle will pop off clean, and fly about 5 or 6 feet and you can bask in the amazement and appreciation of all.

Note: Gosset has a neck that just BEGS to be sabered, but it's just too nice to loose that little bit.  And don't use a $1000 knife like the Korin pictured above.  I know, you are only using the back, but still...

Enjoy!

What makes a good wine label?

What makes a good wine label?  I don't know.

My next WSET diploma assignment is to write a paper about what makes good wine packaging, which can include labels, back labels, and other packaging like non-bottle containers.  I've been doing a good amount of reading in the marketing literature, and I'm still confused.  This is a seriously soft science.  If you thought tasting wine comprised lots of variables, try selling wine! 

Marketing professionals claim that the wine market is split into at least two and maybe as many as five segments that are looking for different things.  At lower levels, there are commodity consumers that are highly price sensitive.  Labeling matters less to this group as they are looking across a fairly narrow range of products for which they have some knowledge.  If it's Gallo or Vendage or Charles Shaw, they are largely interchangeable, thus packaging and price is far more important.

At the highest price bands, labels aren't very important either.  For example, if a consumer is about to shell out $250 for a bottle of Cayuse Bionic Frog, the odds are excellent that they know a lot about it and could care less what the label looks like.  They care more about the wine itself, its scarcity and cult status, awards won, etc.

It's in the middle, I think, labels become really important.  Consumers in the middle band are not particularly brand loyal.  They love trying new wines and having new experiences, and when they look at the wall o' wine, it's the label that often makes the sale.

Here are some labels that have won recent awards.

But really, there is no formula.  Simple or complex, colorful or monochrome, graphic or text based, etc. even award winning labels can run the gamut.  I remember when I was a wine novice, being bewildered by the range.  I used to frequent a grocery store in a section of DC where lots of embassy and consular families lived.  I would follow a foreign-looking shopper around and just get whatever bottle they bought.  Catching the eye of the middle price-band consumer, and making the sale of an unknown amidst that giant intimidating wall of wine, is the goal of a huge industry constantly asking - what makes a great label?

I can find only one contribution to the discussion, and it comes from studies of blind tasting.  According to numerous studies, consumers are very suggestable.  If you tell a person you taste smoke and cherries in a wine, they will often find those flavors too.  If you tell a person that Parker rated a wine very highly, they will enjoy it more than if you told them it got a low score.  I'll be doing reviews of several studies in future posts, but for now take my word for it.  fMRI machines confirm that if a person thinks the wine is good, the pleasure centers of their brain will light up during tasting.  This is some hard damn science.

Thus, my theory on wine labels is that if they can manage to convey the idea that wine in the bottle is good, it is a successful label and it will help sell bottles as well as spur repeat sales.

So how can I quantify that?  Dunno.  Yet.

Judging in a wine competition

A few weeks ago, I was asked to be a judge in a state level wine competition.  Of course, I said yes because it sounds like a lot of fun and might be great networking.  On the downside, it is really difficult to be critical of a huge volume of wine.  It's just physically difficult.

Once a friend who owns a wine shop called me with a rare opportunity.  A big time wine critic was coming to his store to taste through a portfolio of Australian wine, and the shop owner was inviting his friends over to taste afterward.  There were over 200 full throttle high-alcohol Australian wines, and towards the end, I could only taste iron and copper.  Why?  Because all the skin had been ripped off my gums and mouth and I was tasting blood!

I am told that the same problem happens at wine competitions.  There are just so many wines to taste that you get drunk even while spitting.  Your palate gets blown out and you end up giving top marks to anything you can still actually taste at the end, usually really high-alcohol fruit bombs.  Well constructed wines with finesse or medium body need not apply.

In my research on how to be a good judge, I've not been encouraged.  Robert Hodgson published two papers in the Journal of Wine Economics in 2009 that are instructive.  Both were written using what sounds like the coolest dataset ever, a set of tasting grades from a competition where researchers had slipped duplicate wines into the lists to see if the judges would be consistent with their rankings.

The first paper is a methodological mess (see my blog post about why you cannot perform mathematical calculations on non-number data -- adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing).  The author took rankings, turned them into arbitrary numbers, and then performed odd math to see if critics could taste the exact same wines and award the same grades. 

Okay, let me take a second to say how statistically ridiculous this method is, and an how amazed I am that it got past peer review.  If someone is asking people to rate their interests on a scale of one to five, and I like cotton candy 5 and liver 1, there is no reason to think I'll like liver flavored candy a 3.  It makes no sense.

Despite the egregious abuse of math, it's pretty obvious by Hodgson's description of the data that the judges stink, at a major competition, with judges from the industry.  I cannot say that there is any statistical validity to his conclusion, but there is lots of reason to be concerned.

The second paper makes me much happier as a statistician and much more nervous as a competition judge.  Here, Hodgson uses a test called Cohen's Kappa, which is really cool because it looks at if the judge scored the same wine the same way, but also gives partial credit if he or she got close.  This statistic showed that only 30 percent of judges could rate wine consistently.  Many more judge fairly randomly.  Hrm...

So I'm worried about doing a poor job, but then I'd be in good company.  When I think about the wineries submitting samples, however, I feel a little better.  For them, a competition is a no-lose proposition - they either get a medal to display in their tasting room, or they get nothing.  There is no negative for a poor rating, only praise if they get it.  So I'll just try to be contentious, and remember the advice in the excellent Fermentation Blog.

• Concentrate.
• Be aware that my personal tastes may not reflect great wine (an oaky Chardonnay can be excellent even if it isn't to my taste).
• Go back and review Wine Faults by John Hudelson.
• Stay hydrated and keep spitting.

Wish me luck!

Tong and Minerality

So there's this quarterly magazine for serious geeks called Tong.  It's published in Belgium and to get it in America it costs like $150.  It's not glossy, there are no ads, most if not all of the authors are either MWs or are really famous...lots of words.  Each issue is grouped around a particular theme, like Bordeaux, Chardonnay, or Oak.  Pretty geeky.  I love it, but I wish someone I knew got it and would loan it to me because it's just really really expensive.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there.  Tong just came out with a book that they call a general text on Wine.  It's called, "Wine."  Being a total snob and shocked at the value of the dollar against the Euro, I wasn't going to order it until they emailed this excerpt that dovetailed completely with what I am studying in my WSET classes, namely soil nutrients and anaerobic fermentation.  It's fairly provocative for an intro text:

(An excerpt from our book "WINE", p66) The word “minerality” often crops up in tasting notes, especially when describing white wine. This often implies that there should be a direct link between the minerality of soil and wine. The generally accepted notion assumes the higher the mineral content of the soil, the more intense the mineral flavour in wine. This is nonsense. Most minerals do not have a flavour and at most a slightly salty taste. Their presence in wine is minute and they go organoleptically unnoticed amongst fruit flavour, tannin, acidity and alcohol. Scientific trials have shown that there is no direct relationship between soil composition and the flavour of wine. Minerals are essential plant nutrients necessary for growth, photosynthesis, etc. The most important minerals are nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulphur and iron. A surplus of minerals in the soil causes vigorous growth of the vine and excessive yields that result in a thin and flat wine. Therefore the theory that more soil minerals make a more complex wine is obsolete. “Mineralic” wines are mostly grown on stony soils which tend to be poor because they contain little nutrient-rich humus. Vines on stony soils have to fight for survival and the grapes, just like the vines, accumulate few minerals, especially very little nitrogen. This can cause problems during fermentation as yeasts require nitrogen to convert sugar into alcohol. If there is insufficient nitrogen in the grapes, yeasts will split sulphur-containing amino acids to access nitrogen. This can cause the formation of volatile sulphur compounds which can come across as “mineralic” in wine. This does not point to a sulphur-rich soil but explains the indirect link between soil and wine flavour.

------

I can buy this from the point of simplified chemistry.  All that stuff about nitrogen starvation during fermentation is well covered in several of my textbooks.  But it does beg a huge question, which is "what the hell good is site selection?"  Why is wine from one block always a little tighter than wine from the one next to it?  A little richer, a little leaner, a little more flinty?  Why can some critics make astonishingly accurate blind identifications of soil types? 

Perhaps it is because primary fermentation is only part of the story of wine.  We are talking about hundreds of different chemical reactions and thousands of esters, volitile compounds, and byproducts.  I suspect there is more to this story.

Chenin Blanc Tasting

Still more appologies to my faithful six subscribers for my dearth of posting. Life, work, and a very sick dog got in the way. I haven't even been tasting much in the last little bit. Except, that is, for a huge Chenin Blanc event I had at my house last weekend. I'll post my tasting notes in a few days. Meanwhile, here was the setup.

Chenin Blanc is the boneless, skinless chicken breast of the wine world.  Its fairly neutral palate of flavors readily shows differences in terroir and winemaking technique.  For the WSET Diploma student, this lack of native profile means that each region and style must be learned and memorized by itself, which is a time consuming proposition and somewhat frustrating.  Also, the damn vine is very vigorous and if it grows too large too fast, the grapes lose acidity and start to taste like Chardonnay, which is a whole other thing...I could go on...sigh.  So this is our attempt to get one of everything together in one room and nail this sucker down!

Flight 1 -- USA
Chenin is considered a blending grape in most US appellations, with varietal bottlings only in very good years.  The big exception is Clarksburg, located in the Sacramento Valley of California.  Clarksburg is home to Bogle Winery, and while most of it’s wine is sold in bulk to other producers, it has been trying to make a name for itself lately as a cool climate region.  

2008 Williams Selyem Chenin Blanc Limestone Ridge Vista Verde Vineyard, Sonoma Coast, CA
2008 Dry Creek Vineyard Dry Chenin Blanc, Clarksburg, CA
2009 Dry Creek Vineyard Dry Chenin Blanc Wilson Ranch, Clarksburg, CA
2007 Vinum Cellars Chenin Blanc CNW, Clarksburg, CA
2009 L'Ecole No. 41 Chenin Blanc Walla Voila, Walla Walla, WA
2010 Field Recordings Jurassic Park Vineyard, Santa Ynez Valley, CA


Flight 2 -- Anjou, Loire, France
You get a little of everything in Anjou, from Malbec to Gamay, Chenin to Chardonnay.  But instead of thinking of the region as a hopeless jumble of mediocrity, look a little deeper to find some of the best examples of dry and sweet chenin.  Savennières, for example is home to Nicolas Joly, warrior monk and voodoo viticulturalist, producing some of the most complex and mineral wine of any grape.  In Bonnezeaux, the minimum sugar requirements are higher than Sauternes!  The wines of Quarts-du-Chaume are usually made using the technique of letting the grapes raisin on the vines.  The region is so good they have petitioned the INAO to become the first Grand Cru vineyard outside Burgundy!  

2009 Domaine des Roches Neuves (Thierry Germain) Saumur L'Insolite
2009 Château d'Epiré Savennières Cuvée Spéciale
2003 Nicolas Joly Savennières Roche aux Moines Clos de la Bergerie
2003 Nicolas Joly Clos de la Coulée de Serrant


Flight 3 -- Touraine, Loire, France
To those who remember our Cabernet Franc tasting, the region of Touraine conjures up nightmare visions of stemmy, thin, acidic  Bourgueil and Chinon.  Well not this time, buddy.  Touraine is home to Vouvray and Montlouis, which make the most widely known and popular style of Chenin on the market.  The conditions of the area make it one of the last to be harvested in all of France, making the wine very ripe indeed.

2008 François Chidaine Montlouis-sur-Loire Clos du Breuil
2008 François Chidaine Montlouis-sur-Loire Les Tuffeaux
2008 François Pinon Vouvray Silex Noir
2008 François Chidaine Vouvray Le Bouchet
2008 Foreau Vouvray Demi-Sec
2009 Domaine Coteau de la Biche Vouvray Sec


Flight 4 -- South Africa
First planted in the mid 17th Century, there is more Chenin Blanc in South Africa than in all of France.  In the global south, Chenin takes on a much richer and fruitier profile.  One often finds tropical flavors and aromas too.  Whether that is because of terroir or lower fermentation temperatures is a matter of debate.  Unfortunately for the WSET student, lots of SA wine goes to England where they write the tests, and not so much here. For example, I was unable to find even one example of wine from the Breede River Valley, which lies behind the costal range and is very important.  Road Trip?

2010 Essay Chenin Blanc
2009 Badenhorst Family Wines Chenin Blanc Secateurs - Swartland
2009 Mulderbosch Chenin Blanc Steen op Hout - Stellenbosch
2010 Beaumont Wines Chenin Blanc - Walker Bay
2009 Faraway Farm Chenin Blanc Bosmans Crossing - Western Cape


Flight 5 -- Other Regions
When you see the wines here, you’ll understand why we needed a misc. category.

2006 Mianville Jasnières Chant de Vigne - Upper Loire
2009 Sula Chenin Blanc - Nashik, India
N.V. L. A. Cetto Chenin Blanc Valle de Guadalupe, Baja California, Mexico


Flight 6 -- Sparkling Touraine
With weather patterns in the Loire so variable, machine harvesting is often impossible.  Instead, pickers make as many as six passes through the vineyard, selecting ripe bunches.  This is one explanation for the variety to sweetness levels found in the finished wine.  Often the first couple of passes are really nasty for table wine, but make an excellent sparkler.

N.V. Jean-Claude Bougrier Vouvray Brut
N.V. François Chidaine Montlouis-sur-Loire Brut


Flight 7 -- Old, Rare, Sticky
‘Nuff said?

1997 René Renou Bonnezeaux Cuvée Zenith
2004 Domaine des Baumard Coteaux du Layon Clos de Sainte Catherine
1985 Moulin Touchais Coteaux du Layon
1997 Domaine Jo Pithon Coteaux du Layon Chaume
2009 Huët Vouvray Moelleux 1ère Trie Le Mont
2008 Terra Blanca Arch Terrace Cherry Hill Vineyard Late Harvest Chenin Blanc, Yakima Valley, WA