February 26 2008
I have been giving a lot of thought lately to a very simple premise related to people’s fascination with wine.
I believe that most people that crossover from being drinkers of wine to having general wine enthusiasm just before turning into a full-on wine elitist go through a sub-conscious process akin to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
In this process, you realize that there is something about wine that transcends what is merely in the glass. It is the whole shooting match that goes with wine, particularly an orientation to lifestyle. Like the hierarchy of needs, we eventually actualize and project our self-image outward and into wine as a vehicle for how we see ourselves.
So, here is what I have been thinking about: Do we think that wine and its associated lifestyle is more appealing from an agricultural perspective, or from a luxury perspective?
Oh, there is a huge difference.
Do wine enthusiasts fantasize more about a winery as a cultured farm, or living the high life as a gracious ambassador to customers?
The difference is really the image of Dover Canyon versus, say, Ferrari Carano.
I know which way I lean, and it is not related to Fumé Blanc.
Maybe my preference for the rural activities is related simply to my own background. I am only a generation removed from the farm.
Perhaps others who had a different upbringing are more predisposed to the bon vivant lifestyle associated in pockets of the industry.
What do you think? And, more importantly, are you an Agrarian or an Opulent?
On a separate, but related note, please check out a beautiful post from Mark at winecanine.com. He is a fellow Hoosier wine blogger and has written an elegy to rural Indiana that everybody can appreciate.
The gist of it is, our version of agrarian, not wine-related, but instead a maple sugar farm, had a tragic fire in the last week.
You can read his post here and see associated pictures here.
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February 11 2008
Nineteenth century gastronome and author of the influential “Physiology of Taste” famously said, “Tell me what you eat and I’ll tell you who you are.” What if somebody also told you, “Tell me what you drink and I’ll tell you who you are?”
For a wine lover, that becomes a mildly controversial proposition.
Nobody is going to define me by my drinking patterns, because it is an ever-evolving scenario. For the love of all things vinous, I just had my first Marsanne just the other day (tasty wine, too). I think most wine lovers, righteously, would bristle in self-defense—such is our wanton ways, not wanting to define our palates (or ourselves) while still reserving the right to pass empirical quality markers on wine.
It is kind of like the soothsayer telling me when I will die. Please do not, I would prefer not to know, I will simply take the journey. So it is with wine lovers and our palates, too—I will simply take the journey.
However, Tim Hanni, Master of Wine, formerly of restaurant wine consultancy WineQuest, and currently a co-founder of Napa Seasoning Co. and a proponent of taste bud categorization with a development process underway called the “Budometer” might change our perception of ourselves and our wine consumption, regardless of our trenchant wishes.
Sometimes change is good.
The Bourgeoisie Meets the Masses
Never before has the wine bourgeoisie been on the precipice of such egalitarianism.
I have read a couple of recent articles on Tim Hanni, Master of Wine, and very subtly you see the potential seeds of some radical potential change in the way we approach wine. This is change on the order of defining wine drinkers based on their God-given taste buds and, at the same time, balancing out the notion of food and wine pairings to a true state of, “drink what you like, with what you like.”
The Wall Street Journal had a recent personality profile on Hanni, even if it was a half-baked article shedding light on neither the man nor his passions and, likewise, a recent Wines & Vines article featured the implementation of the Budometer system engineered by Hanni at the upcoming Lodi International Wine Awards.
Simply, Hanni has a couple of credentials that bear, to paraphrase Janis Joplin, “great social and political import.”
First, he IS a Master of Wine. Second, he has already exerted great influence into the wine drinking landscape by working with a great number of casual dining restaurants across the company to help them categorize their wine lists by taste intensity and third he is working on a so-called Budometer that categorize wine drinker preferences based on the number of taste buds they have in a simple blue-dye test.
Wine Judging Formats Are Tweaked
From the Wines & Vines article (authored by freelance writer and wine blogger Tina Caputo):
(In reference to the Lodi International Wine Awards) … the competition will divide judges into panels according to their palate sensitivity. This will be determined by painting their tongues blue with food coloring, then counting their taste buds to see if they are “tolerant,” “sensitive” or “hyper-sensitive” tasters.
The categories are defined as follows:
• Tolerant--those who tend to favor dry, high-intensity, assertive wines
• Sensitive--the median group with a broad range of preferences
• Hyper-sensitive--those who tend to have an aversion to bitterness, and favor delicacy over intensity. They often prefer some degree of sweetness in their wines.
You can also do a simple online quiz to check your tolerance level by going here for the original web site and a special test put together by the Wall Street Journal. According to both sites, I am a “Sensitive” taster.
The other interesting thing that the Wines & Vines article pointed out that is completely separate, but somewhat related to Tim Hanni, is a wine competition in Iowa that is doing food pairing as a part of the judging component:
We think that all wine competitions ought to consider food affinity when selecting wines for acclaim.”
A group of 30 wines will be selected to participate in the food and wine judging. Wineries will then choose one food item per wine from a list of available dishes that will be prepared by local chefs. Frost and competition director Bob Foster will help vintners choose the best pairings, if necessary.
A Sprinkle of This, a Dash of That to Pair Your Wine Dish
This is an interesting development, but Hanni, in fact, is trying to democratize the wine pairing process with his Napa Seasoning Co.—a concept that utilizes a technique called “flavor balancing” rejects the notion that wine and food pairing is a pseudo-science. According to him, any wine can be paired with any wine by adjusting the salt, acidity and sweetness in a dish.
His new product from the Napa Seasoning Company is called Vignon and it is in a spice shaker combining a number of ingredients including salt, lemon juice and other ingredients like soy sauce that are high in umami. A couple of dashes and supposedly you can enjoy that red wine and fish.
This is all fascinating stuff and typically the sort of thing that sneaks up on us as a society. Rarely do we watch these developments and understand the ramifications in context; it is usually after they become accepted prevailing wisdom that we ponder the way things used to be.
It won’t be a complete upsetting of the apple cart, but if you want to think about the future of wine differently, think about the possibilities presented by Hanni—the potential Brillat-Savarin of our times-- and the potential change that can come if every wine drinker is categorized based on God-given taste buds and the ability to sprinkle a combination of spices on a steak in order to pleasurably drink it with a white wine.
For More Reading:
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January 31 2008
Is it me, or does Gary Vaynerchuk at Winelibrary TV taste an inordinate amount of pickle juice, beets and other “green” vegetal characteristics in the wines he tastes? I do not find these in many wines that I taste and they do not appear in many (any?) wine descriptor guides.
Curious. However, researchers indicate from the world of food that descriptors that are even more complex might be on the way.
First, Dr. Debs at Good Wine Under $20 has a fascinating post (found here) on the different types of sets or words that wine writers use—words that frequently confound the perfectly normal, yet eventually make their way into our lexicon.
She says in part:
It turns out that wine writers use three kinds of confusing words: jargon (technical terms about wine), dialects (terminology common to a group of wine writers), and idiolects (terms that a single wine writer comes up with; if sufficiently popular, idiolects can be shared and become dialects).
Dr. Debs goes on to define the three areas with some background, including:
Wine jargon can run from winemaking terms like malolactic fermentation to the technical words associated with tasting (such as attack, mid-palate, and finish) and with taste (extracted).
Wine dialects include terms like those on the tasting menu in the picture: lush, fruity, soft tannins, juicy. These are short-hand terms that wine writers use that they think have a consistent meaning, but which are sufficiently subjective that no one knows for sure.
As for idiolect (please note: no “t” after idio), one of the great recent examples can be found in the tasting notes of Gary Vaynerchuk on WLTV. His unique tasting vocabulary started off as an idiolect …
Again, it is a fascinating post and goes a long way in nicely explaining not just the differences in wine phraseology, but also the buckets into which each fall.
So, yes, it does seem as if Gary’s idiolect with “pickle juice” is well on its way to moving from being an idiolect to a dialect.
Reading Dr. Debs post nicely coincides with an article I read in an industry journal (Sante) about descriptive menu labels influencing customer behavior in restaurants. While the article isn’t online, its content is derived from a book called, “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think” by Brian Wansink, Ph.D. and at his website -with plenty of research material available- www.mindlesseating.org
The crux of the Wansink article is about the use of descriptive language on menus and the impact on the perception of the food by the customer. Therefore, instead of having some wacky “Italian quesadilla” at TGI Friday’s, you have instead the, “Parmesan-Crusted Sicilian Quesadilla.”
Research indicates that more descriptive language increased sales 27 percent over plain-labeled menu items and that more description added other associational benefits like diners thinking the food was more appealing, tastier and the restaurant as being trendier and more contemporary.
According to the research and the author,
Descriptive labeling allows consumers to concentrate more on the feelings and taste aspects of the products instead of focusing only on the functional or utilitarian properties. For instance, when asked to comment on their entrée or dessert, people who were given a descriptively labeled product directed 84.5 percent of their comments to factors related to the taste and sensory nature of the product. In contrast, those who ate the less descriptively labeled products focused only 42.6 percent on these sensory aspects and reserved their remaining comments (…like filling) for the more utilitarian or functional characteristics of the foods.
In the article and on his web site, Wansink goes on to bracketize categories that can generate descriptive or suggestive language.
They include:
Geographic: Labels that mentally tie or associate with a geographic area)
Nostalgic: Using past time periods as a trigger for happy memories of family, tradition, and nationalism
Sensory: These are descriptors that describe the product in endowed and specific terms
Band: This is related to cross-promotion and not as readily found in the wine industry and example would be Kahlua flavored Seattle’s Best coffee, for example.
Taken together, Dr. Deb’s post and the Mindless Eating site and research offer some interesting food for thought (bad pun, I know) for the wine industry – both for wineries and consumers.
Simply, while even hardcore enthusiasts may find wine language frequently forbidding and enthusiasts find it impenetrable, the evolutionary answer may be that wine tasting notes will continue to get even more colorful and full of life, as opposed to less so.
Your “A classic California Zin--fruit forward and brambly with notes of stewed plums” may soon turn into the even more flowery and prosaic note like, “A beautiful example of Dry Creek Valley, in Sonoma, CA, Zinfandel. Its brambly notes that are redolent of earthy blackberries also call to mind stewed plums, dense and rich … “
Is this good for wine consumers? I am not so sure that it is but I do know that it sure does not do anything to clarify the notion that tasting notes are already too complex to penetrate for many. It would seem that wine knowledge is going to have to increase, not decrease. Taken together, though, Dr. Debs astute analysis of our language patterns juxtaposed against independent research that can be translated from the food world point to this increasing complexity as an eventuality.
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January 14 2008
My introduction to the Pomegranate was, no kidding, in 7th grade social studies. Our teacher brought in a pomegranate as a part of lesson on fruits that settlers of the Americas enjoyed in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. In the mid-80’s it was an uncommon fruit not frequently found at the local supermarket and a bit of a treat to see this “living history” up close.
We passed the pomegranate fruit around the class as each student carefully extracted a couple of the seeds to taste and ponder. It was an exotic treat (and a staining treat as well; a couple of kid’s shirts did not come out of the fruit interaction unscathed--despite the teachers’ warnings). Assuredly, this pomegranate eating was much more exciting then the firefighters delivering apples in October. Early palate training, it was.
In the intervening years between then and, say, 2004 I didn’t hear much about the pomegranate. It remained a seldom seen fruit, a relic in my childhood memory bank. Then, it seems, marketing took over as pomegranate juice and pomegranate flavored everything exploded onto the market.
Nowadays the Pomegranate and its various derivations from juice to jam are commonplace. And, as a result, based on the palate training of enjoying this once seldom seen and now oft eaten fruit, you now see pomegranate show up in tasting notes more often. It seems only natural—the hundreds of flavor nuances you can find in various grape varietals will lend themselves to flavor matching once our palates are adept at picking them up.
The Litchi (or lychee as it is also known) shows up occasionally, as well. This exotic Asian fruit is increasingly seen fresh and canned in grocer’s international foods aisle.
While shopping this past weekend and subsequently doing some studying in the Macmillan Visual Food Encyclopedia (a must for any home kitchen worth its sea salt) I think we’re on the cusp of another wave of fruits that will find their way into our kitchens and subsequently our wine tasting lexicon.
If I’m buying starfruit and horned melons in Indianapolis, IN then I know these exotic fruits are “Playing Peoria.”
Herewith, a list of five fruits to get acquainted with as you’ll want to familiarize yourself with them and add them to your flavor memory:
Mangosteen: a Southeast Asian fruit with a unique taste, with subtleness to its strawberry-ish and peachy cream flavor
Starfruit: A Latin American fruit, and grown elsewhere, as well. It’s acidic with a sweet-tart flavor that has the consistency of an apple with pineapple and kiwi notes with less overall sweetness
Horned melon: Native to New Zealand these peculiar looking fruits taste like cucumber tinged with pleasant lemon.
Uniq fruit: Native to Jamaica, you may have seen this in your citrus section as the “ugli” fruit. Naturally, I think the marketers are working on changing that to “uniq.” This is a juicy citrus fruit with a nicely sweet citrus taste that reminds you of a mandarin orange with a little more zing.
Cherimoya: Another Latin American fruit, the Cherimoya has a firm texture allowing it to be eaten like an apple, with a flavor profile that is much softer—nicely tropical, but not definable.
Of course, there are other fruits that are gaining in exposure--fruits that we’re familiar with by name, if not by actual taste—gooseberry, guava, kumquats, quince and jujube, amongst others. Check these out, too.
Life is an experiment. Next time you’re in the produce aisle pick up a couple of these exotic fruits if for no other reason than palate training. And, look at my tasting notes in the future—I’m dying to work in a Cherimoya reference.
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December 26 2007
Those fascinated with wine and the wine industry have much family fodder to regularly consider. If it’s not the Mondavi’s it’s the Firestone’s. Every turn of the calendar year leads to speculation anew about some family foible or fable coming to a close.
General Hospital has nothing on the wine industry.
And, wineries aren’t alone in these “Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives” moments.
It turns out wine retailers have them, as well.
I read Inc. magazine as a subscriber so it took me by some surprise when I leafed through the magazine this past summer and saw a lengthy article on iconic Chicagoland wine retailer, Sam’s Wine & Spirits.
I thought then that it might make for an interesting blog post, but without a counterpoint to bounce it off of it ended up in the blog post graveyard --a bit of news without anything else to add to it.
It wasn’t a happy story, either, not when the elasticity of family relations had crossed over from tenuous to potential temerity.
It seems that ideological differences on growth and how to best go about it were getting in the way between the two sons of Fred, himself the 2nd generation to run the former bar that was now a significant fine wine retailer.
Darryl Rosen, (the eldest son of Fred) and younger brother Brian, it seems, were at odds over some ownership language and voting rights in the nuts and bolts of the business.
Likely in a fit of pique, Darryl told Brian, according to Inc. magazine, that he could buy him out.
And, Brian did. Darryl has exited the business, Brian retains 20% ownership and a private equity firm owns the other 80%
It seems that Darryl has taken the lessons learned from running Sam’s and re-christened himself as a customer service guru—author/speaker/consultant complete with book that can be found at his site, found here.
Darryl interviewed with Megan Haverkorn from Wine & Spirits Daily last week in an interesting, if somewhat obtuse interview. There’s even a couple of references to online wine sales that will leave you scratching your head. As referenced above, this is the counterpoint I was looking for.
The interview with Darryl was interesting for its relative lack of interest, frankly. Consider that the news around the guy is that he sold his business to his brother in what some would consider an acrimonious circumstance, yet not a single question was lobbed about the buyout of one of America’s largest wine stores. Secondarily, the guy, Darryl, just wrote a book on customer service called, ‘Surviving the Middle Miles’ and there’s not even an attempt at a decent plug, just an end of story sign-off mention. I mean the title itself, a reference to long distance running, would begat a question, or a glancing reference, you would think.
Peculiar.
Read the Inc. magazine article (found here) and then go to the W & Spirits Daily interviews here and here and do your own deductions but, I would be surprised if Sam’s Wine and Spirits wasn’t an equally rich story of intrigue, money, family jealousy and desire for progress versus status quo as the Mondavi’s, without the romance of Napa Valley to cast it as a fable and a book to chronicle it all.
Postscript: Wine Spectator’s trade magazine, Market Watch, reports in a story that is not online that Brian Rosen, now CEO and President of Sam’s, has just opened a 16,000 square foot store with plans for up to five more stores in 2008, bringing the total number of stores up from three to nine.
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