The Proof is in the Glass

ISO Tasting Glass

The International Organization for Standardization has designed and recommended a smallish (7-1/2 oz., 220 mL) tulip-shaped glass to be used for international taste testing. An excellent all-around wineglass, often sold at wineries.

I have a small tasting exercise* that I put together for a wine course I was teaching, and I try to force-fit it into tastings I’m leading. It involves pouring a sample into an ISO glass, tasting it, and then pouring the sample into other styles of wineglass. (I’m a devotee of quality wineglasses and firmly believe that the glass is an important factor.) This little comparative test proves – in a highly dramatic manner – that wineglass shape is critical.

Size, shape and material are all important in wineglass design. All three factors have to work. It’s possible for seemingly identical glasses to perform quite differently because of a small difference in any one of these element. Crystal is nice but not necessary, mostly because it tends to have thinner walls than plain glass. Size is strongly influenced by the type of wine: bigger wines tend to work better in larger glasses. However, the most important factor appears to be shape, and the tulip shape is the one to look for.

Tulip-shaped refers to the size and profile of the wineglass’s bowl. The bowl will be taller than it is wide, and the top will be narrower than the rest of the glass … picture a tulip that is just beginning to open. If you’re shopping for glasses spend a few dollars more and get a quality, name-brand glass -- preferably crystal --, that has a nice tulip shape. When dining out, also look for this shape, and if you have trouble finding a restaurant that provides decent glasses, consider taking along your own. Many people do.
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* We pit the ISO glass against four of the most commonly used restaurant wineglasses. All the glasses fared poorly compared to the ISO glass.

* from The Frugal Oenophile's Lexicon of Wine Tasting Terms

Wine/Life Balance

Harmonious

A wine with a well-balanced nose.

I was doing a book signing at a winery one afternoon when the owner came over to me to introduce me to a friend who had stopped by. Naturally we soon began to discuss the wines, and the guest asked me if I could recommend anything. I asked her if she liked riesling. She said yes, then turned to the owner and asked him what his riesling was like. He said it was “harmonious and well balanced”. I could see from the look on the woman’s face that this was not the sort of answer she was looking for. So I said “It’s really yummy.” With a broad smile she headed off to the tasting room with the winery owner in tow.

Harmonious is one of those wine words that gets used a lot but fails to convey any real information. As well, ‘harmonious and well balanced’ is redundant, since harmonious means well balanced! A wine can in fact be harmonious but not very good, or perhaps not even enjoyable. Balance and harmony are good, but are they a useful description of what we find in the bottle?

If we set the bar a bit higher, the situation worsens. According to the Oxford Canadian Dictionary, harmonious means “forming a pleasing or consistent whole.” Would anyone rush out to buy a wine that was described as ‘consistent’?

I prefer to write this one off as bafflegab and suggest instead that we look for more meaningful terms -- terms that will give people a sense of what the wine is actually like, words such as ‘yummy’ for example.

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A Name Game

Generic Name

A ‘jug wine’ bearing the name of one of the classic Old World wine regions.

For decades Canada and a few other new world wine regions have been producing and selling huge quantities of low-end wines that infringed on traditional and legally protected European wine names. In 2003 Canada and Europe signed an agreement that would see the end of generic wine names in Canada. What’s bothersome about this agreement is the 10-year horizon. Generic wines are made predominantly by huge wine conglomerates that regularly churn out new names and new labels for their low-end wines. So why do they need 10 years to switch the few names that are applied to some of the worst wines available?

You can still find these wines on store shelves, principally in Ontario, the US and Australia. Borrowed names include champagne, port, sherry, chablis, burgundy, ‘sauterne’, chianti, and a few others. Usually the only resemblance these wines have to their namesakes is colour. For example, California chablis is usually made from a very cheap grape whereas true chablis is 100% chardonnay. Canadian sauterne is an interesting interpretation. It’s a dry white wine whereas Bordeaux’s sauternes is a prized sweet wine. And aside from being low end, the wines are banged into shape using any winemaking technique that is legal -- including additives – and are the vinus equivalent of no-name bologna.

The one problem with phasing out the European wine names is that it leaves port- and sherry-style wines out in the cold. The name port, for example, is well understood and has been used to describe these wines for decades. Once it becomes illegal to use these names, fortified wine makers will have to get creative to find a new way to refer to these wines generally. (I know of a wine called ‘Starboard’ but that’s perhaps too esoteric.)
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The Long & Short of It

Finish

A complex sequence of flavours and aromas after swallowing or spitting. Wines are judged in part on the quality and duration of the finish. Sometimes called the farewell.

The full sensory impact of wine comes in three stages: attack, development and finish. We sip the wine and have our first impression. The wine then reveals more of its character on the ‘mid palate’, the development. Finally there is the finish -- those last few moments before the flavour and aroma impression fades completely.

The finish (close, farewell, etc.) is an important part of what a wine has to offer. A “short” wine has a finish that lasts a mere second or two. Beyond that, there’s nothing to savour. A great wine, on the other hand, can last for much longer: a minute or more. The French have a word for the length of the finish: caudalie, where one caudalie is equal to one second of length.

The finish consists of both length: how long it lasts, and after taste: the quality of the impression. Sometimes a wine’s character is only fully revealed in the aftertaste. Bitterness and ‘corkiness’, for example, can sometimes be sensed in the finish even though it was not evident in the mid-palate. But we much prefer the other scenario, when the aftertastes is as good or better than what came before. And if it lasts a long time, well that’s about as good as it gets. One caudalie, two caudalie, three caudalie...
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* from The Frugal Oenophile's Lexicon of Wine Tasting Terms

A Fountain of Youth?

Égrappage *

Partial or complete removal of grape stalks prior to fermentation, usually by machine. Results in reduced tannins, making for softer, earlier maturing, fruitier red wines. Always done for white wines. Some stems may be left in to keep the ‘marc’ loose during pressing.

The long-held belief that all wine should be aged for long periods hearkens back to when winegrapes were pressed in whole bunches -- stems, seeds and all. The classic image of Oporto’s “black feet” stomping grapes doesn’t show that the stems are being stomped just as aggressively as the grapes. And the same with primitive pressing technology: the stems were included with the grape mash. Often the result was wines that had very high tannin content. In fact, many old style wines were so tannic that they were hard to tolerate until some of the tannins had softened from cellar ageing -- possibly for many years.

A fairly modern improvement in grape processing is the crusher/destemmer. This machine crushes the grape bunches to release the juice, and then strips away the stems, leaving fermentable juice that is relatively stem free. As a red wine macerates and ferments, it extracts tannin from the stems and skins, and from the pits to some degree (although these too are often removed). When the stems are removed before fermentation, the wines emerge less tannic, softer, and earlier maturing. A classic example is Brunello. Traditionally these wines took 10 to 20 years to soften to drinkability, but with more modern techniques -- including égrappage -- the wines can be ready to open well before their tenth birthday. (I have had Brunello as young as 5 years that was perfectly balanced and drinkable.)

Égrappage gives the winemaker another area of control over the wine: Remove all the stems for an early-drinking, fruit forward wine; leave in a small percentage of stems for added structure and longevity; or maximize stem content to create a traditional cellar monster. 

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* from The Frugal Oenophile's Lexicon of Wine Tasting Terms

All That Sparkles

Diamonds/Gravel *

Harmless tartrate crystals from tartaric acid that precipitate out of finished wine, especially when chilled. Can be a good sign, showing that the wine has not been over processed.

Acids are an important component of all wines. They provide structure (backbone), contribute to a wine’s impression of freshness, and help make wine food friendly. There are roughly a half dozen different acids to be found in wine, but tartaric acid is by far the most plentiful.

Winemakers put a lot of effort into managing acid, beginning in the vineyard where getting the sugar/acid balance just right is a primary goal. Depending on local rules, the winemaker may ‘adjust’ acid before starting fermentation. All through its stay at the winery, the wine’s acid will be monitored. One trick winemakers use to lower acidity is to ‘cold stabilize’ the wine prior to bottling. This entails refrigerating the wine to just above freezing for up to a week, which forces the tartaric acid to form crystals, softening the wine. (Incidentally, the crystals are later scraped from the tank and sold as a basic ingredient in baking powder.)

You may have seen these tartrate crystals in a bottle or glass, or on the cork. (These can look like bits of glass.) This actually is a good sign. It means the winemaker has not processed the dickens out of the wine and that it had ample acidity when bottled. Diamonds, like all sediment, is a good thing, although getting a mouthful of it is rather off-putting. If you see a lot of crystals in the bottle, pour very gently or -- better -- decant the wine off the sediment and enjoy!
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* from The Frugal Oenophile's Lexicon of Wine Tasting Terms

A Vine Distinction

Clone *

Winegrape vines are propagated from cuttings; therefore, each plant is a “clone” of its parent. Varieties can also mutate into a number of clonal variations over time. Most vineyards are planted with a selected variety of clones of the same grape.

There are an estimated 10,000 varieties of winegrape, with roughly 6,000 varieties currently used to make wine. Yet despite this wealth of choice, there are relatively few winegrapes in widespread use.

The winegrape vine is somewhat prone to mutation. One theory is that all grapevines (at least in Europe) are descended from a distant relative of the Muscat grape, which proliferated in the region of the Black Sea. Once humans decided to farm rather than roam, they began to cultivate. It was natural to save the seeds from the best examples to plant for next year. And as with carrots or wheat, this also applied to winegrapes. The grape’s propensity to mutate was both good news and bad news. A new version of the plant might create an even better wine than its parent plant. But if you can’t predict what the plant’s seed will produce, how do you recreate that special variety? The answer is to plant parts of the original plant rather than the seeds. In effect, you simply clone the desired plant.

There you have plant husbandry in a nutshell. Plant the sticks, not the seeds. That way you know that the resulting vine will produce exactly the same grapes as the parent plant ... mostly. There is still the issue of spontaneous mutation. That too has a silver lining. Take that interesting stick (mutations quite often show up as a single cane on a parent vine) and plant it. So when your pinot noir vine produces a cane filled with light blue grapes, plant that cane and call it “pinot gris”.

Sometimes a mutation will be almost the same as the original plant, but with some characteristic that is worth preserving. That cane, too, can be isolated and cloned. Pinot noir has an estimated 1000 clones, all of which produce a wine recognizable as pinot noir. In Ontario, winemakers are crazy about a clone called chardonnay musqué. The wine is chardonnay in every way, but it has a wonderful muscat element not found in typical chardonnays.
Part of the art and science of planting a vineyard is choosing which grapes and which clones of those grapes to plant. Often the vineyard will be planted with a few carefully selected clones of the basic vine, partly for some genetic diversity but more to achieve a certain type of wine.
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* from The Frugal Oenophile's Lexicon of Wine Tasting Terms

A Stirring Tale

Battonage

The act of stirring the lees in vat or barrel. Helps avoid production of hydrogen sulphide and facilitates absorption of wood tannins and lees flavours

There are two schools of thought on stirring wine. One is to stir often; the other is to not stir at all. The decision to stir or not stir a ‘working’ wine will encourage the development of certain characteristics. In the case of a red wine, the wine will be vigorously manipulated during its first week or so of fermentation to keep the skins and grape solids in contact with the juice. A white wine might also be stirred during this primary stage of fermentation to help distribute the growing yeast cells and to make sure they are exposed to the nutrients in the juice. Some winemakers will stir a working wine up to three times a day.

Once fermentation has pretty much finished, stirring takes on a different mission. The majority of wines are racked into clean vessels and left alone to mature in peace. Some purists even insist that disturbing the wine during this stage can bruise it (whatever that means). If a wine is undergoing malolactic fermentation, which is frequently done with red wines and with chardonnay, then stirring the lees will help foster the malolactic bacteria and bring out the desired soft ‘sur lie’ quality.

Lees are dead yeast cells, and mixing them into the wine helps integrate toasty and biscuity qualities into the wine. You’ll find this character in sur lie chardonnay, vinho verde, and quality sparkling wines, especially champagne. Sometimes the wine is bottled directly from the barrel, in which case the label may say “Bottled on lees”or “Unfiltered” and the wine may show a trace of fine sediment. The resulting wines generally show more character than those that have not undergone lee stirring.
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The Trouble with Angel’s

 

Angel’s Share

A quaint term that refers to the wine that goes missing from the barrel during ageing. Real world cause is evaporation through the pores and seams of the barrel. Can amount to a loss of 5% or more over a year of barrel ageing, which must be periodically topped up. Contributes to a wine’s concentration

For centuries, winemakers have turned to wooden barrels for the final ageing of their best wines. Usually made from oak, wine barrels are held together with nothing more than a few reinforcing rings -- no glue, no nails. Even the heads are sealed with simple strips of bulrush. The result is a barrel that is water-tight and very nearly air-tight. And it’s that “very nearly” part that’s important here. Microscopic spaces between the staves and the heads and around the bung hole allow a minute amount of evaporation. Over time, which ranges from a few months to several years, liquid evaporates through the various gaps in the barrel, to be replaced by air. This condenses the wine, making it richer while adding subtle amounts of oxygen. The loss -- the angel’s share -- can range from 5% of the volume to as much as 20% before the wine is ready to offer to the market. On the down side, that loss in volume must be regularly made up. While the ‘micro-oxygenation’ that barrels add is beneficial, too much will often yield an oxidized wine, so winemakers routinely top up the barrels with the same (or similar) wine kept in reserve. In the case of older or large barrels, it’s principally the angel’s share at work, since these barrels contribute little in the way of oak character. Either way, the finished wine is softer, more complex and more concentrated than its younger self.

 

"It's so easy when you know the language" - Martin Mull

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Elaboration

The act or process of producing, refining or improvement.
Also a term used to describe the entire winemaking process, from grape to bottle.

After a rather impressive start some 7-8 years ago, my newsletter went from a somewhat reliable publication to something that appeared with roughly the frequency of Halley’s Comet. To be honest, I simply ran out of things to write about. I don’t mind confessing that because I am not a work-a-day journalist with a gift for pulling topics out of thin air whatever the weather.

No, my newsletter was not journalism. It was a chronicling of my journey of discovery. Can we then conclude that I’ve discovered all there is to know about wine? Far from it. But I have run out of topics that require the all-consuming research that I’m inclined to do. Plus I am loath to fall into that habit of seasoned journalists of revisiting topics -- that does not interest me.

Thankfully I have hit upon an idea that I think I can warm up to. It appears that I am the definitive keeper of wine language (at least, in North America). My is still the most complete collection of wine terms available, so I’m going to run with that. My goal with the Lexicon was to provide dictionary-length definitions of the most common wine terms. Of course there’s more to any story, so what I’d like to do here is to occasionally pull out one of those wine terms and then elaborate on it. With nearly 650 terms in the Lexicon, I figure I’m good for about 12 years before I have to roll out a Volume II of the Lexicon. (Just kidding: Volume II is in the works.)
 
-TFO