Your nose is a really important part of detecting flavor. I don’t think it requires sophistication to detect asphalt, etc., just experience and a willingness to accept descriptions that sound goofy. Once you had wine with a certain quality, and had it described a certain way, you can usually say, “Ah, I get it now.” There is a wee bit of power of suggestion in the process. “Here try this. What do you get? I get wet paper, elmer’s glue, and LA smog. And grapes, definitely grapes.”
But that said, people do fall on a spectrum of abilities to detect scents. Some are at the high end, some are at the low end.
Nebbiolo is one of my very favorite grapes. It’s such a shame that Barolos are so damn expensive (thanks, Gaja!) because I truly believe they are one of, if not THE very best red wine grapes on planet Earth. I am one of the few that can enjoy them young, as tannic as they are, and to me, I’ve never picked up that “poopy” aroma but I definitely get the violets, tar, dark cherry, autumn leaf, etc aspects in Barolos. Such big, magnificent red wines. For those of you reading, if you want to try this grape without spending close to or more than $100 for a bottle, look to other regions adjacent to Barolo in Piedmont like Barbaresco or Alba. Similar traits, more approachable when young, and way easier on the wallet.
As for smokiness in Pouilly Fume…well duh Grey Ghost, it’s right in the name, silly!
Great white wines though, love them too.
Could be. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted a wine that was “asphalt”, unless “tar” counts, or a “rubbery” smell, like in Pinotage. There’s a South African grape that makes wines people either love or hate. It’s the asparagus of wines. I happen to not like the examples I’ve tried but SA has probably come a long way with that grape since I was in the wine business so it’s likely there are now more flavorful/better smelling examples.
That’s a great descriptor, and very true of Retsina. That is such an oddball wine, I could never get into it but it definitely smells funky as all get out. I’d probably call it “melted telephone poles” because it has that aroma of tar/pitch on it that telephone poles smell like when you sniff them on a hot summer day. Yes, I have done this, why do you ask?
Minerality is especially explicit in what are known as “transparent” wines, grapes that display terroir more than others. The best example of this I can think of, and some of the most memorable wines I’ve ever tried are German Rieslings, specifically those from the Mosel, and also to a lesser degree the Rheingau and Nahe regions.
That “wet stone” minerality is possibly my favorite aspect in a Riesling, because it is something you can both smell AND taste in the finished product. For those that don’t know, it literally comes from the vast amounts of shale in the soil on the hillsides where the vines are grown. As a wine grower, you want to vines to “struggle” a bit to get water. Too much and they produce watered down juice and a thin finished wine (especially true of a very rainy harvest season), and obviously too little and the vines will die.
The vines, seeking water, will extend their root systems deep into this shale rich soil, and as they draw water from there, that minerality is literally transported from the shale into the water the vine uptakes, and then into the juice of the grape. It’s fascinating, and one of the elements of wine that make it such an interesting, and historically important, topic of humanity and it’s ancient relationship to the production and consumption of wine.
Also for the record, and since nobody else has asked…what the hell wine is it, anyway? Producer, region, grape varietal, etc…pretty please.
Possibly, and my experience with Premier and Grand Cru Burgundy is limited (just like the production, hence the expense), but I have found those Pinot Noirs are all over the map (literally and figuratively) aroma and flavor wise.
My understanding is that Burgundy reds are the apex of terroir. I do know that the best vineyards are heavily parceled out to many different owners. You’ll have your row of vines over there, and here are mine, all on the same plot of land on the hill facing the Sun in Romanee Conti.
Burgundy was also home to medieval monks that practiced winemaking and whom developed the essence of terroir, learning to taste the soil, where to best locate the vines, which direction they should face, how to prune the leaf canopy to to get the right amount of “spangled sunshine” on the grape clusters…it goes on and on. These vineyards are ancient and are family heirlooms, and some of the land parcels are TINY. It’s amazing shit, read up on it sometime.
Foiegrasisevil, I’ll look for it the next time I’m at that particular store. I’m pretty sure WordMan is correct and that it was a pinot noir. It might be a few weeks before I head back there, but I’ll post here when I find out specifics. I hope they still carry it!
In particular Langhe Nebbiolo can be a real bargain. Vietti makes a Nebbiolo called Perbacco that is basically decertified Barolo. The could declare it but choose not to do so because these are the younger, more productive vines. It still runs $25ish a bottle but is well worth it. There also some excellent wines from the more northern part of Piedmont in the Gattinara DOCG. Travaglini is a reliably excellent producer that is most likely the easiest to find in the US. Their basic wine runs around $30 a bottle and is consistently excellent. Ghemme DOCG is another northern spot for great Nebbiolo but they are not so easy to find here.
Aha! I remembered the producer’s name was female and sounded American aristocratic. That led me to “Kennedy,” and after I googled it, then did a Google image search, I recognized the (boring) label, which I’d examined carefully for signs the asphalt thing was a joke. When I looked it up on the Wine Enthusiast site, the description fit. It’s a Kathryn Kennedy 2012 Estate CabernetSauvignon (Santa Cruz Mountains). I’m not certain of the year, but the rest is accurate. Here’s the description from Wine Enthusiast:
A thoroughly elegant, serious and yet immensely
enjoyable wine that stays lively many days after
opening, this bottling from a regional icon shows
dried violets, dried strawberry, crushed pepper
and touches of leather and soy on the wondrous
nose. Lithe black plum and elderberry fruits ride
along a tight but forgiving tannic structure, with
support from crushed gravel, asphalt, potpourri,
sandalwood and cedar flavors. Editors’ Choice.
—M.K.
abv: 14.9% Price: $100
How I missed the “crushed gravel,” I’ll never know. I recall now that I thought of buying it just to show the “asphalt” bit to friends, but $100 was out of my price range. If anyone tries it, I’d be curious to know if you taste the crushed gravel; it seems the asphalt would drown it out.
That’s just cork-sniffing douchebaggery. A way to say that the tannins are as big as the very-forward fruit component, so it’s balanced even while a big taste. Beyond that, they’re makin shit up.
Fois is correct about Burgundies and terroir. The French literally want you to taste the dirt in their wines. California wines are like Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound: a huge production that is a blend of over-the-topness on all fronts. French wines are like string quartets: every ingredient is distinct, and you appreciate how the come together as much as what each is on its own. Both work.
That’s a good summation. Simply put, French wines veer towards elegance, CA wines towards power. And it’s not just how the wines are made in the winery, it’s the different climates too. CA is a much warmer growing region than France, and hence get more of everything in the grapes.
And just for the record, you aren’t supposed to sniff the cork when it’s presented. You check it’s pliability, see if it’s crumbling at all, and check the depth of the stain (if red) on the end. Age-worthy wines should always be stored on their sides so the liquid stays in contact with the cork to prevent it from totally drying out.
Of course, a lot of this is starting to go away with alternative closures like plastic corks, screw caps (stelvins), etc…
Oh. No WONDER wine stewards have looked askance when I snorted it up a nostril.
My mother was from an impoverished village in southern Italy. No tragedy was too great nor celebration too small to warrant the appearance of the wine jug, usually from the sale bin. Ma favored full-bodied reds, usually chianti from Ernest and Julio or the now-defunct Italian Swiss Colony. She came to appreciate white wine but I think always viewed it as foreign, probably due to the cultural rift between northern and southern Italians. Since Ma’s region produced olives, not grapes, wine was wine.
I know more about more kinds of wine than Ma did, but I still have a lot to learn. Thanks for all the help.
Oenophiles and audiophiles are the biggest bullshitters in the world. Yes, there is a difference in quality but it only fits into three categories, garbage, good and exceptional.
Audiophiles don’t listen to music, they listen to equipment. Oenophile don’t enjoy wine for the purpose it was created, they just want an excuse to act like pretentious assholes.
Can’t argue. As a man whose father has been married to a woman from Lyon for 30+ years I’ve experienced this first hand all over France one time or another. Nobody snobs up wine like middle class Frenchmen.
Seriously, basic marketing theory indicates that if you have to advertise - or talk up in fancy terms - your product there’s really not much difference between yours and the next guys. It’s why we see beer and cars advertised so heavily. If there were that large a difference in quality or performance we’d see the market take care of that in a reasonable amount of time.
That’s not to say that there’s no difference. Experiment and drink what you like. But the terms they use to promote and market could just as easily be cut down to ‘sweet’, ‘tannin’, and other straightforward terms.
As a Californian and a wine lover, I must step in to defend my state. More and more CA winemakers are opting for a European style and Californians (not all, but many) are tiring of the over-oaked Chardonnays (Rombauer, anyone?) and overpowering Cabernets. One of the leaders of that change is Randal Graham of Bonny Doon Vineyard (aka, The Rhone Ranger). This is especially true when you get away from Napa and into some of the other, just as interesting but less well known, wine growing regions.
I realize that you were purposely generalizing, which it’s sometimes necessary to do, but things really are changing in the CA wine industry, which is very large and very diverse in terms of winemaking philosophies.
Even before I came to the second sentence, I was thinking of the water taste in central/western NY, with the best tasting tapwater in the world. And NYS has a lot of shale, including in the wine-producing regions, so the next time I have a NYS wine I’ll have to watch for stony tastes.
No doubt that change is happening. Cline is a California producer of Rhone-style wines with traditional Rhone grapes…as well as making some great red zins.
Another producer I quite like is Edmunds St John. I have met their winemaker Steve, and he’s a cool cat. We had a great wine dinner based around his wines at a very nice (now closed) restaurant in Cincinnati called Pigall’s (by Jean Robert).
Apropos to the thread, one of Edmunds Saint John’s most popular wines is called “Rocks And Gravel”.
I rarely like wine. I don’t drink coffee, either, and tea must be sweet.
The only wines I have liked have been the sweeter ones. Riesling is about as far as I want to go away from dessert wines. Muscat, Gewurztraminer, and a wine from Wines of the San Juan called Sweet Cherry Pie are what I will drink.
I won’t drink beer either, because I can’t stand bitter flavors.
I never understood all the “notes” “tones” and “finishes.”
But I have heard many times that wine snobs are often completely befuddled when they don’t know what they are really drinking.
