wine sooth

Network.

I recently parted paths with a college friend. We had grown in different directions, become different people who valued different things. Time spent apart and out of touch made our personal and philosophical paths diverge ever more and the differences were painfully obvious when we occasionally spoke or met.

After college, we had gone our separate ways. I went to medical school and he became an I.T. guru and web designer and later developed his own e-commerce business. Numbers, and the bigger the better, seemed to take center stage in his thinking. I don’t blame him. E-commerce is a tough business and you have to be fierce to survive. (more…)

You have to show your work.

The wine bloggosphere is revisiting the “wine-scoring-is-bad” theme lately. Even the OWC has seen an intense debate over the meaning (or meaninglessness) of numerical wine rating - in which I was very active.

The main arguments in the anti-numbers and anti-objectivity debate are: 1) the 100-point system is meaningless and gives a false sense of accuracy, 2) wine is so subjective that one cannot establish a standardized numerical system and 3) wine is an aesthetic thing, and as a work of art, its quality cannot be captured with a number.

While I do not categorically disagree with all of these three arguments (I disagree with some more than I do with others), there are profound misconceptions underlying the thinking that drives those three arguments. (more…)

Giuseppe Battaglini in his tasting room.

Somewhere along the course of the evolution of our country’s wine culture, the notion that zinfandel does not age took root in the collective thinking. Every myth and legend has a seed of truth. So I suppose the direction a majority of zinfandel producers took in styling their wines contributed to the origins of this notion. But like wine made from any other variety, a zinfandel wine has to have the right stuff to allow it to last through the years and evolve into something complex and pleasing.

I must admit that much of what has typified many zinfandels available in retail had not only reinforced the notion that these wines won’t age but it also kept me from being a fan. Things began to change for me over the years as I pushed myself to not cling to assumptions.

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Wine Bong

Wine changes. A bottle of wine displays different characteristics with changes in its own temperature as well as with those of the environment. Decanting changes a wine as well. Much of how a wine smells and tastes is a result of the wine serving ritual and drinking environment.

Steve Heimoff wrote about “tasting room bias” some time ago. I commented that much of that can be attributed to the differences in humidity, temperature and barometric pressure differences between the tasting room and his apartment.

Additionally, in the tasting room, a bottle is tipped numerous times before it goes empty. This oxygenates the wine and achieves the same effect as extended decanting. In my own tasting and assessment of wines I have noticed that a wine will display very different characteristics if I taste it in an air-conditioned room versus outside, on my patio. (more…)

Wine and Food

Out of an exchange with Tyler Colman of drvino.com comes an idea that may help us all gain a better understanding of food and wine pairings. The idea is simple: every third Friday of every month, a recipe will be offered for bloggers to try with a wine of their choice. The task for individual bloggers will be to describe how the wine of their choice pairs and interacts with the dish of the month.

I will propose a simple recipe and all willing bloggers will pick the wine they think will do best with the dish. Participants are welcome to try more than one wine with the dish. The only thing I ask is that participating bloggers think about the interaction of flavors, aromas and textures of the food and wine. The idea here is to seek out pairings that create great synergy. (more…)

Balance

With a lot going on in my personal life this week, and in the coming few weeks, I am struggling daily for balance between my obligations and and aspirations. It is in thinking about that quest for balance in my overloaded schedule that I was reminded of the fact that one of the things we value most about wine is balance. But that is not always achieved.

Balance seems to be at an even greater premium when talking about wine-related research and the health benefits of wine. It seems that any sort of cautionary commentary about the benefits of resveratrol or about moderation and responsibility in alcohol consumption is invariably perceived as “preachy” or judgmental. (more…)

Young Anna Nicole Smith.

In a post on his blog, New York Times wine critic Eric Asimov says: “…too many American pinot noirs are simply too big, not so much in alcohol but in body and sweetness“.

Along with others, I have said that the trend of increasing ripeness in Claifornia wine has become a runaway train. But it’s not just ripeness and sweetness that are of issue to Asimov (and those of like mind). These wines go beyond rich, corpulent, full-bodied or bold. Some of these pinots are grotesque monstrosities. This is no coincidence or a product of the climate. It is a conscious and deliberate decision on the part of producers. Besides farming practices and harvesting decisions, cellar practices are employed by winemakers seeking to appeal to (or appease) the mainstream preferences. (more…)