Tasting in the rain

Rain.

The recent El Niño-spawned rainstorms hitting the Los Angeles area have caused me to suspend my wine evaluation. I do not review wines during rainy weather. I’m very particular about my wine tasting environment. The environmental factors of interest to me are: temperature, humidity, barometric pressure and ambient aromas.

While much emphasis is placed on the serving temperature of the wine itself, the temperature, humidity and barometric pressure of the tasting environment impact the way a particular wine shows by affecting the way its aromatic compounds volatilize (emerge out of the wine). Read More

Wine headache

Wine headache.

Today on PalatePress.com: “Not tonight, I have a wine headache…”

I enjoy working with Tom Mansell. We seem to consistently be paired up as author (Tom) and editor (me) for PalatePress.com articles. Perhaps its because our two heads, put together are able to achieve articles we can be proud of.

This time around, Tom tackles the issue of wine headache and the underlying causes. We take a critical look at some of the dogmatic notions about the origins of wine headaches. In writing the article, Tom looked at the ingredients in wine which are candidates for causing headaches and then examined the existing scientific literature on each.

It’s a good read, if I may say so myself. Don’t be intimidated by the subject matter. If you can assimilate wine knowledge, you will be able to understand this piece.

Menu for Hope 6. Win great glassware and great wines.

Sixth annual Menu for Hope

This year has been hard on many of us, but there are many who have a tough year every year. As these coming holidays are a traditional time of giving and generosity, so now, for the sixth consecutive year, food and wine bloggers have organized to make a difference in the lives of people they don’t even know. This effort is called Menu for Hope.

This annual fund raising effort traditionally benefits the UN World Food Programme. The Sixth Annual Menu for Hope will benefit a new WFP program, called Purchase for Progress (P4P), which supports smallholder and low-income farmers. P4P helps farmers improve their farming practices and then allows them to sell their crops to WFP’s global operation.

The farmers win on two obvious fronts. You can win as well. Read More

There is a point to this.

Please take a look at the image below. Then answer the question below.

(Click on image to enlarge)

Now select the option that best represents your feelings (click here if the poll does not show up):

Check back in a few days as I’ll have something to say.

Basics of “palate” training

Keying Up - the Court Jester.

I am a strong proponent of the idea that education is the best way to empower people as wine consumers. That certainly is a challenging task, which is why so many take the lower-resistance path of “democratizing” or “de-mystifying” wine.

These approaches often end up oversimplifying the subject as to not challenge anyone. Many approaches end up telling people that there is really no consensus about wine character and thus there is no way to organize and assimilate information which would quality benchmark for wine.

Combine this with the idea that wine writing must somehow be entertaining and you either end up with material straight out of Idiocracy, or find yourself putting more of your efforts into the shtick rather than the message.

Nevertheless, all approaches seem to endorse some notion of training one’s “palate”. Now, it’s been a while since I graduated from med school, but I’m pretty sure that the palate is not an organ of olfactory or gustatory sensation. Read More

Giving away the store

Trade secrets.

Recently, I had a conversation with Bruce Bryant, Ph.D. (Senior Research Associate at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, PA) as part of my research for a series called “What wine pairs with red herring” (published on PalatePress.com). During that conversation, Dr Bryant reaffirmed a fundamental idea I have repeated (but which has been rejected by internet wine “gurus”): tasting ability is a function of language. Naming something makes it stick out in your memory, makes you able to identify it repeatedly and consistently. This is not at all unlike learning music theory (very few musicians have perfect pitch while most have learned relative pitch and yet there are many excellent musicians in the world). Read More

Getting to the root of the matter

Getting to the root of the matter.

Three weeks ago, I finally removed a failing vine and replaced it with one of the back-up vines. Last week, I wrote about my attempts to determine if the stunted canopy growth of the failed vine was from scion or rootstock. What I didn’t talk about, not in much detail anyway, was what I found below ground.

Not only was the root system of the failed vine undeveloped, but there was a robust root (reminiscent of that on the healthy replacement vine) running through the spot where the failed vine stood.

Read More