Brandy is Dandy, But Wine….

Part 2

My maturity as an imbiber of the fruit of the vine was not a smooth transition.  Collegiate bouts with vintages manufactured within the last month along with ales best suited as cleaning solvents had an adverse effect on my palate.  As my professional environment expanded, so did my need to refine my taste buds.  It was not an easy task.

One of the legends anchoring our family history involves Polley’s first visit to New Jersey and her future in-laws.  My parents liked her immediately.  I expressed my fears that she was much too good for me.  But you know parents…..especially parents with an Italian heritage.  “What’s a matter with you?!!  You are wonderful!!”

Understandably nervous, my fiancé sat down at the dinner table.  My mother presented her with a six square inch, five pound slab of homemade lasagna while my father lifted a jug of red over his shoulder and poured her a tumbler of vino.

Now Polley’s Midwestern roots had not prepared her to view the six inch square five pound slab of lasagna (which she repeatedly praised as the “best lasagna I ever had”) as an hors d’oeuvre.

But appetizer it was, followed by roasted potatoes, stuffed roast beef, sausage and peppers, peas and onions, sautéed spinach, rigatoni with bracciole, steamed broccoli rabe with lemon, and the odd roasted chicken.  As the meal progressed, and my father replenished the tumbler several times, the conversation diminished.  Polley pushed her chair back from the table, my mother (immediately embarrassed, surmising that the roast was overdone, the broccoli rabe undercooked), looked at Polley in panic.

Polley slowly surveyed the faces which, I am certain, were wine distorted from her perspective, and announced, “Excuse me.  I am really sorry.  Really sorry.  I have to go lie down.”

My mother escorted her to the guest bedroom.

I turned to my father who was pouring himself a glass of red.  “So, Dad, what do you think of her?”

My father took a healthy sip, looked at the door through which Polley had just exited, paused and said, “You are a lucky man……but the girl can’t hold her wine.”

As I matured, I began to realize that drinking wine was not simply drinking wine.  The imbibing of liquid grape was, in elegant circles, an experience.   And the experience of wine drinking needed to be preceded by wine tasting.   This was a revelation.   For years I thought I knew how to drink wine—–just tip up the Welch’s Grape Jelly jar and swallow.  Boy, was I wrong.  There are “stages” involved in wine tasting.  To wit:

The results of the four recognized stages to wine tasting:

• Appearance

“One of the things that you can tell by looking at the color of the wine, is the region and climate where the grape vine is located. Darker shades of wine, namely the darkest reds and yellow whites come from warm climates. Lighter colors come from cooler climates and taste lighter and less lush.”  In my college days, the conclusion drawn from an examination of the $1.99 bottle of Thundercloud would be “Secaucus, New Jersey, lower swamp near the railroad tracks and pig pen, Saturday at 5 AM vintage.”

• “in glass” the aroma of the wine

I have watched wine connoisseurs stick their noses deep into the wine glass almost to the point where their eyebrows are brushing the rim of the glass.  Sometimes they are in so far I think they are snorting the liquid.  This wine smelling is a problem for me.  Parkinson’s stole my sense of smell.  White wine tastes light, red tastes heavy, potato chips taste salty, broccoli tastes green; so when we are with relatives or friends dining out, and I order a bottle of Pinot Noir, and the sommelier pours a small amount in my wine glass and waits for my approval, I have to pretend I can smell.   But I have perfected going through the ceremony sniffing the wine and fooling the somnolier;  One cannot fake blindness or even deafness, but one can fake smellingness.

• “in mouth” sensations

Wine tasters swish around the liquid in their mouths for a couple of hours and then forget to swallow.  “When at a wine tasting event, it is not frowned upon for spitting wine out. Take a sip of wine and hold it in your mouth for a couple seconds, then either swallow it or spit out. This is an acceptable way to know if it’s a good wine. A good wine will have a lengthy aftertaste.”  Spitting it out is acceptable?  Had I spit out even a morsel of that “vile” vegetable weed broccoli at my mother’s table, I would not have lived to write this blog.

• “finish” (aftertaste)^[2]

Okay, so my smellingness is responsible for my inability to develop a highly sensitive and refined palate.  But I have to wonder if I really want to experience tastes that wine connoisseurs seem to enjoy.

This is a partial review of a gerwurztraminer:

“This example from Alsace makes the point, with exotic, perfumed lychee and turkish delight aromas. There is good texture and body, with floral and soft stone fruit flavours ending with a touch of honey and fresh acidity. Try pairing with an aromatic curry.”  I am suspicious about both the Turkish delight and soft stone descriptors, because I have to tell you I am more of a hard stone fruit guy.

Here is another review for an expensive red:

” is a complex and layered wine. Pleasant green notes of savory herbs, peppercorn, blackcurrant leaf and brambly berry drive the bouquet, while the medium-weight palate offers flavors of black-fruit skin, char and cigar box all framed by a crushed-velvet texture.

It shows good grip, concentration and length, and should drink well through 2021.”   Mmmmm hmmmm!  The char and cigar box flavors make my mouth water, especially when framed with crushed velvet texture.

And another one, this for another red:

“Carrying a whiff of musty leather, it nonetheless impresses with mixed black berries, a hint of cigar and polished, firm, substantial tannins. It’s a fine steak wine to enjoy now through 2022.”  Now if I were sitting at Mama Maltese’s table, and I pushed back my chair from that table so loaded with great dishes that one could not see the tablecloth and exclaimed, “Hey, Mom, that bracciole sure tasted like musty leather!”, you can imagine what her next move with the five foot wooden spoon would have been.

I wish I knew the etiquette and language of wine tasting in my collegiate days.  A review then would have gone something like this:

“This Thundercloud Red (vintage last Saturday at nine AM) teases the senses with a bouquet of your roommate’s gym socks and cafeteria mystery meat, with just a hint of black bananas newly retrieved from under a pile of chemistry textbooks, and the after taste of stale smoke and semi-discarded pizza boxes lingers on the palate.  Pair with day old hoagies or the odd Slim Jim.”

And one last review:

“There is some bretty spice and oxidised richness on the mid-palate, adding complex notes that will work well with soft cheeses…”

The word “bretty” was new to me.  So I looked it up.

“The Aroma and Flavour of Brett Character

“But what is Brett character and how and why does it appear in some wines? The wine character described as “Bretty” comes in various forms. It is the combined result of the creation of a number of compounds by the yeast Brettanomyces bruxellensis, and its close relative, Dekkera bruxulensis. The three most important known aroma active compounds are 1) 4-ethyl phenol (4-ep), which has been variously described as having the aromas of Band-aids®, antiseptic and horse stable 2) 4-ethyl guaiacol (4-eg) which has a rather pleasant aroma of smoked bacon, spice or cloves and 3) isovaleric acid which has an unpleasant smell of sweaty animals, cheese and rancidity. Other characters associated with Brett include wet dog, creosote, burnt beans, rotting vegetation, plastic and (but not exclusively caused by Brett) mouse cage aroma and vinegar.”

http://www.aromadictionary.com/articles/brettanomyces_article.html

Here are the words that stick in my mind from the description of “Brett” above:

Band-aids, antiseptic, horse stable, sweaty animals, rancidity, wet dog, burnt beans, rotting vegetation, plastic (see my blog on plastics), and, my favorite, mouse cage.

“Hey, Mom, I think I detect a little flavor of wet dog in the meatballs.”

Time for a quiz:

Match the descriptions with the varietal of wines.  Please remember these are not my descriptions but those of wine connoisseurs.

tobacco, green bell pepper, raspberry, freshly mown grass [to my knowledge there has never been a gummy bear flavor “tobacco.”]	Pinot Noir
leather, tar, stewed prunes, chocolate, liquorice, roses, prunes [Prunes?  Twice?  Stewed and plain?]	Sauvignon blanc
raspberry, cherry, violets, “farmyard” (with age), truffles   [“Hey, Mom, this kitchen sure smells like a farmyard!”]	Petit Verdot
violets (later), pencil shavings [How does the connoisseur know what pencil shavings taste like?  I would like to have been a fly on the wall in his/her elementary school classroom.]	Cabernet Franc
gooseberry, lime, asparagus, cut grass, bell pepper (capsicum), grapefruit, passionfruit, cat pee (tasters’ term for guava)[26] [Cat pee? Really? See comment above for pencil shavings.]	Nebbiolo

“Yeah, my owner is a wine taster.”

Answers at the end of this blog.

Taste aside, here are other reasons to drink the fruit of the vine:

” While beer makes that unaesthetic beer belly, wine does not affect your waistline at all. In fact recent studies showed that “women who routinely drank moderate amounts of alcohol, totaling about one drink per day, carried almost 10 pounds less body fat than women who did not drink at all”. “Experts believe that the calories in alcohol are not metabolized in the same way as calories from carbohydrates, fats or protein. So if you are about to start a diet to lose weight, then you should consider having a glass of wine instead of chocolate pudding for dessert.

Red wines are known to contain many beneficial antioxidants such as polyphenol and resveratrol that have cardio-protective effects and anti-cancer properties. Grape skin is especially rich in antioxidants. Since red wine is fermented together with its skin, it has more antioxidants than white wine which is processed without its skin. White wine may even slightly increase the risk of contracting cancer, especially of the digestive tract, as some studies show. So, don’t drink more than 1 or 2 glasses of wine per day!”

https://www.wiine.me/blog/10-amazing-facts-about-wine/

Still, people don’t drink wine in restaurants to improve their health.  I mean, we don’t sit at La Maxime’s and order a celery tonic.  We like the experience of wine, and perhaps the tasting is all in our heads.  Consider these two biases:

“Color bias

In 2001, the University of Bordeaux asked 54 undergraduate students to test two glasses of wine: one red, one white. The participants described the red as “jammy” and commented on its crushed red fruit. The participants failed to recognize that both wines were from the same bottle. The only difference was that one had been colored red with a flavorless dye.[8][9]

Geographic origin bias

For 6 years, Texas A&M University invited people to taste wines labeled “France”, “California”, “Texas”, and while nearly all ranked the French as best, in fact, all three were the same Texan wine. The contest is built on the simple theory that if people don’t know what they are drinking, they award points differently than if they do know what they are drinking.[10]”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_tasting

So that is the good and the bad of wine drinking.  Personally I am thinking of this Parkinson’s affliction as a mixed blessing…..okay, it is NOT a mixed blessing, it is an #@!@!%$$ curse.  But I have to concede, when it comes to drinking wine, while I am missing out on the citrus and cinnamon and bramble berries and chocolate and thyme and truffle flavors, my palate is not experiencing after tastes of tobacco, tar, pencil shavings, farmyards, musty leather and cat pee.

So if you see me in a refined restaurant sipping a red, faking smelling, come on over and enjoy the taste of red with me.  Salute!

As promised, here are the connoisseur descriptions aligned with the varietals:

Salute!!