Do You Taste What I Taste?

 

Plum, leather, vanilla, lavender, hay, dirt, mushroom, barnyard funk, pencil shavings, black cherry, red cherry… The descriptors used to explain the tastes and smells of wine are as vast as the number of wine grapes grown. Opening a new bottle of wine is like opening a box of chocolates, you just never know what you are going to get. Will you be greeted with an abundance of fruit, the creaminess of caramel, or the earthiness of mushrooms and leaves? Sometimes, deciphering wine notes is as easy as the apple pie the wine tastes like. Other times, you have a note that is literally on the tip of your tongue, but you just can’t quite place what it is. I recently went through a perplexing bottle that got me thinking about all of these wine notes, and the headaches they occasionally bring.

               Upon opening a new bottle the other day, after much sniffing, swirling and gargling, I was having a hard time deducing one of the primary fruit notes. Was it plum? Was it huckleberry? Was is currant, and if so, was it red or black currant? Wanting an answer, and wanting it now, I pulled out my trusty wine aroma kit and became Wine Nancy Drew, looking to solve The Case of the Fruity Aroma in the Bordeaux Bottle. I got to sniffing out the clues, and after feeling a bit light-headed from the inhaling of too many little aroma bottles, it finally took me absentmindedly putting on a huckleberry lip balm to realize that I was in fact tasting and smelling huckleberry in my wine. Feeling rather proud of myself, I listed it in my notes and filed the bottle away as case solved.

The smugness of solving the mystery lasted until I found myself enjoying a glass of my beloved Deep Core Cab from Silver Strike Winery in Tombstone, AZ. Having consumed more than enough bottles of this Arizona beauty, I no longer feel the need to take notes on it, and I just sip and savor. As the tastes of fig, creamy chocolate and a chalkiness that conjure up images of the desert sands rolled around my tongue, I was hit with the realization that the notes of this wine had come to me quickly and without a struggle. There was no stress or over analyzing, they were just there. I knew what I was tasting, and I knew I liked what I was tasting. At that moment it dawned on me, am I putting too much pressure on myself to describe wines the way in which I think the experts would?

  As my love of wine grew, and I got a job at a winery, I wanted to learn more. I enjoyed the industry, and I wanted to make sure the information I was giving to customers was as accurate as it could be in this ever-changing wine world. To help further educate myself, I began signing up for classes. The first two I took were levels one and two from the Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET). I learned so much from these programs from basic wine making steps, to what factors make up a wine’s terroir, to how to properly and silently open a champagne bottle – the struggle is still real for me on this one and the “pop” scares me so bad I beg my husband to open all champagne bottles. No joke. Anyways… We also spent a large portion of each level looking at the characteristics of some of the more popular wine types.

Based on where and the climate in which a grape is grown, typical structures, smells, tastes, acidity and tannin levels can indicate to wine experts what wine they are drinking. Many of these wine superheroes can get it down to the year and winery without a glance at the label. It’s quite amazing. Though my nose and tongue will never get to these exceptional levels, what I personally liked about this portion of the class was that it helped me to tease out what I was tasting. As a wine beginner, it can be overwhelming when you are surrounded by a group of people firing off notes like they are holding a flavor profile machine gun. But, thanks to these classes, if I had a cabernet sauvignon in hand, I knew that some of the more common fruit notes of this wine are black currant and plum, so I could narrow down the fruit I was tasting with a bit more ease.

As I learned more and became more experienced, my confidence level in understanding the various varieties grew, as did my ability to know when I was served the wrong wine at a restaurant, which happens more often than you would think. But, it also had a downfall. Going back to the cab sauv example, I would have the hardest time allowing myself to think outside of the common notes box and realize that I was in fact tasting blueberry, even though the more common notes are currant and plum. Along with that, I started researching what certain things taste and smell like that I had never had before because I knew that was a common note in a particular wine. I started to look for what the wine should be, instead of just experiencing it in my own way.

Each wine is unique. There are so many factors that go into making a wine, and each bottle has its own story to tell. This is what I forgot when I became obsessed with trying to pick out the “right” note. Just because it is a cabernet doesn’t mean it has to have a currant note. That may be typical, but it does not mean that every cab from every winery will taste the same. Along with that, when you throw in the fact that we all have our own unique palates, that the fruits and spices typical in one part of the world are basically unheard of in another, things get shaken up even more. This really hit me when I picked up one of the wine magazines I frequently read. Each issue, three judges will analyze a wine type from a particular region. They will discuss their general findings of the vintage and select their top one or two bottles they tried, each giving their own take on it. What really fascinated me this time around was how much the tasting notes varied. The judges each tasted one or two of the same things, but then every other note listed was different. It blew my mind; they were all experts and were tasting different things. What does this mean?

It means we should all be true to our palates when tasting wine. One of my favorite wineries had a pinot grigio on their menu for a long time, and one of the primary notes they listed was white gummy bear. This may not be a WSET approved wine note, but I bet you right now you all have a clear idea of what the person who wrote that description was tasting. And, that’s the point. Wine should be described in terms that make sense to the individual who is drinking it. If you taste barbecue sauce and campfire, list it. If it smells like a spring day to you, describe it as such. If it tastes just like the caramel latte you drank that morning, say so. Getting so bogged down by appropriate descriptors starts to take the joy out of wine, which is the biggest tragedy of all. The best part of wine is the happiness it brings, and when we try to force a description or appropriately label the color or tannins, the magic of the wine is lost. Yes, it is good and helpful to understand wine terms and definitions, but the most important thing is to simply sit back and enjoy the wine.

And, that is what I plan to do. I am incredibly grateful to know what a particular grape should taste like, and I will use this as an aid in my analysis. However, my primary focus from now on will be to taste the wine in my own way, in a way that makes sense to me. My goal is to find my personal wine voice. Cheers to each and every one of you finding yours.