lgsjr – Page 40 – Power Tasting – The Wine Tasting Experience

Tired Taste Buds…or Not

A few years ago, we were on an extended wine tasting trip to Paso Robles. We had been to most of the wineries we knew we wanted to visit, including Tablas Creek, Justin and Adelaida. We had made some nice discoveries, such as Ecluse and Caliza. We were fairly intent and the tasting was intense, because the hot growing conditions in the Paso Robles area lead to some very high alcohol content in the wines produced there. In fact, one winery’s wines were topping out at 16.5 percent. Lucie was constantly complaining about the high level of alcohol in Central Coast wines.

On the last day of our visit, we were just driving along Route 46 stopping rather randomly at wineries along the way. We had never heard of any of them, so the best that could happen was a new discovery and the worst was learning what to avoid in the future. But that afternoon just seemed to go from worse to worst.

Now, Power Tasting’s philosophy is not to speak ill of wineries but rather to praise the ones that we believe deserve it, and we’re about the experience, not the wines themselves. That day, we finally arrived at a winery where the experience was mixed. The tasting room was tastefully decorated with antiques and the bar was almost unobtrusive in a space that felt like a visit to Grandma’s. Unfortunately we entered just behind a family with two little boys who, as little boys will, wanted to touch everything. The servers were in a tizzy, trying to pour wine while preventing destruction of the knick-knacks. So we have to admit that conditions weren’t optimal for enjoying what was in our glasses. That said, the wine was simply awful. We paid our respects and left quickly, hoping not to hear anything break as we departed.

In the parking lot, we looked at each other and said “Maybe we ought to stop. Our taste buds might just be worn out.” Perhaps all we had sipped in the past few days had caught up to us and we simply couldn’t differentiate good wine from bad any longer. There was, however, one winery that we had deliberately left for last because we knew their wines well and liked them very much. This winery was Turley Wine Cellars (http://www.turleywinecellars.com), famous for their Zinfandels. We gave ourselves one last try.

Turley’s tasting room in Templeton, near Paso Robles. Photo courtesy of pairingswineandfood.com

We entered in Turley’s cool, woody tasting room and sipped some Zins. Hosannah! They were delicious. Our taste buds hadn’t died after all.

There are a few lessons to be learned from this experience. First of all, trust your taste. Your tongue won’t actually shrivel up and die. If you like a wine you’re tasting, it’s good wine…at least for you. And if you don’t like it, it’s not good. (Of course, if you’re sipping Lafitte Rothschild and you don’t like it, either it’s corked or you need to re-calibrate your taste buds.)

Another lesson is about the purpose of wine tasting. It’s a joy to taste a famously great wine and maybe even more so to find a wine you’ve never heard of that blows you away. But it’s also important to find out what you don’t like, to educate your mouth.

And finally, within the bounds of reason and safety, don’t give up. If you don’t like the wine you’re tasting now, the next one may be the one that makes your whole wine tasting trip worthwhile.

Reader’s Comment: It’s All about the Taste

The following comment was submitted by Paul de (J. P.) Bary, author of The Persistent Observer’s Guide to Wine: How to Enjoy the Best and Skip the Rest. Paul was a college classmate of Steve’s.

Kudos for your focus on what matters most – taste!

I love Steve’s simple rules*. Most people have an intuition about them, but are misled by all the hype.

Learning to know what you like is all about feeling comfortable with your own sense of taste. You can connect that with the hype once you get comfortable with your own instincts.

Most people get confused about Rule #2, thinking that you have to memorize labels. With all the wines in the world, that’s obviously a daunting proposition…and there’s no guarantee that any specific wine will be available when you want it or that it will be the best choice under the circumstances.

What’s easier to remember is the grape variety (or blend of grapes), the region and the style of the wines you drink and how they fit with the food or occasion.

These are the types of things that are easy to bring home from a visit to a winery and your tips make that experience easier and more rewarding.

Keep up the good work!

____________________________________________

* 1. Know what you like. 2. Remember what it’s called.

Advice for First-Timers

Maybe you’ve heard this question from some friends: “I’ve got a business meeting in San Francisco and my Significant Other is coming with me. We’d like to spend some time going wine tasting. You’ve been there a lot, so what would you suggest?” We’ve gotten that a lot. In fact, the reason we started Power Tasting, in part, was to answer questions like that.

There are a lot of questions to ask your friend first, among which are

Are you driving or will someone else drive for you?
Are you going just for the day or are you staying over?
Are there particular wines you especially like or dislike?

So let’s assume that these hypothetical friends are going to drive up for the day and are pretty open about what they will taste. Moreover, they’re not going to be constrained about paying for top-quality tasting. We would recommend a day-trip to Napa Valley. Why Napa? Because that’s where American wine as we know it today got started. We love Sonoma County and some parts of Santa Clara County – also short distances from San Francisco – but if your friends have never been wine tasting in California, they really ought to start with the most famous American wine locale of them all.

Photo courtesy of Eater San Francisco.

Here’s how we would respond:

Take it easy. If you’re not used to sipping wine all day, you need to respect your limits – don’t wait until you’ve reached them. This is especially true because you’re going to be behind the wheel.
Restrict yourself to the southern end of the Napa Valley. There are a lot of great wineries on the southern (i.e. Carneros and Napa appellations) end so you can minimize your driving time. That’s doubly important, since you’d like to avoid the traffic and not spend too much time driving with alcohol in your bloodstream.
Try to taste a wide selection of wines. You could do all Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay, but what’s the point? So, for example, Etude winery is one of the closest to San Francisco and you can taste top-end Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon there. Not far away is Domaine Carneros, for more Pinot Noir and especially for sparking wines. We’d also recommend getting into the main valley; Trefethen is close by and has a lot of top-end wines to offer.
Stop for lunch. For one thing, if you’re tasting wine, you ought to have some food. For another, Napa Valley is almost as famous for its restaurants as it is for its wines. Mustards on Route 29 has been a destination restaurant for decades. Or you could drive into Napa town, where there are many places to eat. There’s also the Boonfly Café on Route 121, near Domaine Carneros.
Enjoy the views. There’s more to Wine Country than wine. Everywhere you go, it’s beautiful. If you’ll excuse a bit of American pride, Napa Valley is among the most beautiful. If you do go to Domaine Carneros, you’ll have one of the loveliest vistas while sipping Champagne…(oops, California sparkling) on the terrace. Maybe give yourself a little time to drive around on some of the little side roads. Route 29 is too full of traffic to be taking in the views.
And above all else, have fun. Don’t be over-awed or try to do everything in a day. You can always come back.

Which One Is the Star, the Wine or the Winery?

In all the years that we have been visiting Napa Valley for wine tasting, a lot has changed. It’s hard to say whether it has been, overall, for better or worse. In our opinion, the wines are far improved over what was available in the 70’s and 80’s. There is more diversity, more top-quality wine makers and (memory may be playing tricks here) the same wines from the same producers are better today that they were then. More expensive too, to be sure.

But Power Tasting isn’t about wine, it’s about the experience of wine tasting. In that regard, tasting in Napa Valley today is far different than back in the “good old days”. In those days, tastings were usually in the barrel room, with nothing of architectural, cultural or sartorial interest. There are no “two barrels and a plank” wineries left in Napa Valley although there are still some in other wine making sectors of California.

We certainly enjoy sipping wine in a comfortable setting, with a sleek wooden bar and some tasteful artwork on the walls. More broadly, we prefer wine tasting in a comfortable atmosphere, with attractive surroundings and knowledgeable servers. These are the types of wineries we seek out when we are traveling and there are many of them in Napa Valley. Those old days weren’t always so good; a handsome tasting room is better than a barn, capacious glasses that let us savor the aromas of the wines we are drinking are better than the teensy glasses we had then and wine educators are more interesting to chat with than farmhands.

Sometime around the late 90’s or the early part of this century, two things happened. The pioneer wine makers who established Napa Valley wines as we know them today were bought up by international corporations and these companies discovered that they could profit handsomely by making Napa Valley into Disneyland for adults. And so they began to build what we term “Napa Palaces” where the objective was to provide an experience independent of the wines being served.

Inglenook winery. Photo courtesy of the winery.

Some of these drew on Napa’s wonderful history. For example, the Francis Ford Coppola’s Inglenook, Beringer and Chateau Montelena are housed in 19^th century buildings that have been restored to their former glory. They would be worth visiting even if there were no wine to be tasted. And the fact that all three of these do make excellent wines certainly doesn’t hurt.

On the other hand, wineries like Castello Amoroso, Darioush and even the newly constructed Stag’s Leap were built to be tourist attractions. Regardless of the quality of the wines – and some of these are very good – visitors are unlikely to go away with the thought of the wine foremost in their minds. They’ll remember the architecture, the shopping, the snobbishness and oh, yes, they tasted some wine too.

Castello Amoroso. Photo courtesy of the winery.

To be honest, there are some of these palaces we enjoy. For example, Domaine Carneros is a faux French château (which may be excused by the fact that it is owned by a real French château). We love their sparkling wines and Pinot Noirs. But for the most part, we enjoy wineries where tasting their products is given prominence. Pretty surroundings should add to the wine tasting experience, not overwhelm it.

Napa’s Oxbow Public Market

The Oxbow Public Market’s (http://oxbowpublicmarket.com/) name comes from the shape of the Napa River. The course of a river may encounter an obstruction, causing the river to bend in a U-shape around it. This creates a widening of the river, effectively a lake. This is called an oxbow, because it resembles the U-shaped yolk placed around the necks of oxen. Such an oxbow occurs in the Napa River, at the town of Napa and this is where they have erected the Oxbow Public Market.

It is various things for different people: a place to buy food and wine, a tourist attraction and a site for casual and slightly more formal dining. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a person who loves good wine loves good food as well, so the Oxbow Public market has become quite a magnet for those who take a little time away from wineries to venture into town. As the weekends can be awfully crowded on Route 29 and the Silverado Trail, Napa Valley visitors might find it a good idea to visit Napa instead, making the market quite an attractive stop.

For one thing, the views over the oxbow are quite beautiful. As you cross the First Street bridge approaching the market, you see the broadening of the river, and the buildings alongside it. It is a particularly attractive view at sunset.

The Napa River oxbow. Photo courtesy of the Iron Pig.

The interior of the market is a mix of kiosks and booths hosting purveyors of fruits, vegetables, sausages, wines, books, ground coffee, bread and spices. Local people actually do shop there, but a great number of the people you’ll find in the Oxbow Public Market are tourists. Of course, the same can be said of New York’s Chelsea Market, Seattle’s Pike Street Market or Victor Hugo Market in Toulouse, France, Barcelona’s La Boqueria, or other urban markets around the world. For the visitors, ice cream, hamburgers, chocolates, cupcakes and pizza are available.

The interior of the Oxbow Public Market. Photo courtesy of Madison Marquette.

Then again, if you’re a real foodie (and most wine lovers are, so we’ve observed) you like looking at the food available in any city you’re visiting, even if you don’t have a kitchen nearby to cook it in. It is certainly something we do in our travels. If nothing else, seeing all the culinary bounty fires up the appetite. When that occurs, there are restaurants in the market as well.

Of course, there are many restaurants in Napa outside the market, some of them quite good. The point is, you don’t have to eat at the market but you can. Much like going wine tasting, it’s as much about the experience as the food itself. And in this case, the Oxbow Public Market is symbolic of the revival of Napa, which had been left behind as Yountville and St. Helena, up the highway a bit, became meccas for food lovers on a wine tasting vacation. Those are indeed great destinations, but the town of Napa should be included in your Napa Valley wine trips. And the Oxbow Public market is fine place to see when you’re in town.

Hagafen Cellars

Levy’s Rye Bread had a famous series of ads showing people not expected to be Jewish (a little African-American boy, an elderly Asiatic, a red-headed Irish cop) enjoying a piece of their bread, with a tag line that said “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s”. Well, you don’t have to be Jewish to love Hagafen Cellars, either.

“Hagafen” means “fruit of the vine” in Hebrew and is a word frequently invoked in the Passover Seder, a ceremonial dinner that wine is an important part of. Hagafen Cellars sits along the south end of the Silverado Trail in Napa. Except for the fact that all their wines are made in a kosher manner, there is nothing to distinguish it from any other winery in the region. Nor is there anything about the wines they serve to indicate that they are specifically for Jews.

Hagafen does make an especially wide range of wines, from the usual (Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Syrah, Merlot and several Cabernet Sauvignons) to some that aren’t usually found in Napa Valley (Tempranillo, Reisling). Quite a few are available for tasting. One enticing feature of a visit to Hagafen is the gardens surrounding the winery, where you are free to take your glass and wander or just sit on the patio.

The winery itself is a pleasant Mediterranean-style building and the tasting room is simple and wood lined. You can stand at the bar and taste, but if it happens to be a beautiful day, the friendly staff encourage you to take your wine out onto the patio

As mentioned, there’s nothing particularly Jewish about the wine or the surroundings and people of all faiths or none at all are welcome. But if you do tell the folks behind the bar that you happen to be Jewish, the conversation steers in a particular direction. No one asks what your religion is, but if you happen to know what Hagafen means, well, that’s a leading indicator. You might be asked about where your family is from and especially about the Passover customs in your family. We wouldn’t say that Gentiles are left out, but rather that Jewish visitors get a little more interaction of a particular sort.

Hagafen is quite justifiably proud of how often their wines are served at the White House. It seems that whenever Israeli leaders come to Washington, Hagafen Cellars is on the table.

We would not say that Hagafen Cellars is a destination winery. There are better wines in Napa Valley, although Hagafen’s are enjoyable. There are wineries with more eye-popping architecture. But if you are tasting along the Silverado Trail, Hagafen Cellars offers a unique tasting experience of kosher wines

A Trip through the Drôme Provençale

Lavender field in Nyons, France . (Proto courtesy of Provenceweb.fr)

Wine regions around the world all have one thing in common: vineyards, of course. As you travel in the Wine Country in France, some have more to offer, such as historical villages, unique churches, Roman bridges, mountain views, gourmet food, farmers’ markets, pottery, art, fields of flowers, orchardsand agriculture. A sector of the southeastern part of France, called the Drôme Provençale, has all of these things and more; this is where we will take you in this article.

Market day in Nyons, France. Photo courtesy of francerevisited.com

This part of France is best known for its Rhône wines, lavender fields, but also for its apricot orchards and the famous olives grown in the small village of Nyons, where you can stop at the Cooperative for a taste of their olives and the local wines. You can drive through beautiful little villages like Sainte Cécile-les-Vignes (where we had a memorable lunch at the small hotel La Farigoule), Cairanne, Rasteau, Gigondas, Vacqueyras, Beaume-de-Venise, Châteauneuf-du-Pape (all Côte-du-Rhône villages). Then there are Orange and its Roman arena and Suze-la-Rousse with its castle, home of the Université du Vin (Wine University). Here there are laboratories and tasting rooms that are unique in Europe, offering courses in oenology and management for the wine industry. All those villages are surrounded by vineyards overlooked by mountains: the Mont Ventoux and the Dentelles de Montmirail.

The Université du Vin. Photo courtesy of Les Châteaux de la Drôme.

The village of Châteauneuf-du-Pape is the best known Rhône village, thanks to its famous and unique wines. The village itself is certainly worth visiting. You can park in the village, have a delicious lunch at an outdoor café and walk to some of the wineries in the village. Other vineyards are just a short drive from the town, where you will find Domaine Beaurenard, Domaine du Vieux Télégraphe, Château Beaucastel to name just a few of the most famous.

Châteauneuf-du-Pape, France. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.com

This is a favorite part of France for Lucie, since she has old friends in Nyons. She knows most of the villages and can drive you around (if you ask her). Being a member of the Commanderie des Côtes du Rhône (Rhône wine society) as Chevalière (knight), she is quite knowledgeable about Rhône wines and she happens to have some connections in this part of the world, which will bring a few future articles on the subject.

Isn’t the Drôme Provençale inviting?

Clef du Vin

The wine taster’s best friend! A miracle of modern science! A tool for bringing out the cork dork in all of us! It’s the Clef du Vin (pronounced CLAY do van. For that last word, if you’re American, start saying “van” and just when you get to the “n”, swallow it.) So what is this wonder?

The original Clef du Vin

It’s a metal gizmo about three inches long when fully opened, shaped a little like a flattened mouse. The tail of this mouse is a chain about as long as the device itself. The blade isn’t sharpened; it’s just a thin piece of steel with a small copper disk at the end. Actually, what we have just described and shown here is the original Clef du Vin; there are versions today that are short steel rods with a bit of copper at the end. It’s the steel and copper combination that’s key element of the Clef du Vin.

The Peugeot “Travel” Clef du Vin

Calling it the key element is a play on words, since “wine key” is the English translation of Clef du Vin. But enough of what it is. What does it do? Well, it simulates the aging of wine when you plunk the bi-metal tip into wine. It accomplishes this feat through the laws of physics. Two metals plus an acid form a battery. So steel and copper in wine (the acid) creates a very weak battery with a very weak charge. Each second in the Clef du Vin is in the wine equates to a year of bottle aging, or so it seems.

Of course, the question is: Does it really work? Well, who knows for sure. This we can say: wines with again potential do taste better – sometimes a lot better – when treated with a Clef du Vin. The tannins are definitely softened, the flavors more vibrant, the mouth-feel more mellow. But if a wine has reached its potential, there is no discernible difference.

One story is enough of an illustration. In 2013, we were at one of Napa Valley’s most renowned wineries, maker of one of the most highly rated wines in the valley. The server was extolling the virtues of the recently released 2011 wines. You may remember that 2011 was an unusually poor vintage in Northern California. Many wineries did not release their premier wines that year, but this winery did. At first sip, the wine didn’t seem to live up to its billing, but with five seconds’ use of the Clef du Vin the wine came alive in the glass. We offered to let the server try it and she called all her colleagues over, saying “You’ve gotta try this!”.

Is that wine going to taste exactly the same today, with five years of aging? Maybe Robert Parker can remember exactly what a wine tasted like back then, but we can’t nor do we know anyone else with that level of taste memory. But the Clef du Vin did demonstrate that this was a wine with potential and worth buying.

When first available in the US, the Clef du Vin sold for $100. Now you can find one on the Web for $50.00 or less. If you do buy one for use on wine tasting excursions, be sure to bring along a paper towel to wipe it off and a plastic baggie to carry it in. And try not to make too big a show when you use it; you’ll attract enough attention as it is just dipping something into your wine. The Clef du Vin certainly adds a layer of interest to your wine tasting experience.

Visiting Domaine la Soumade

Close to 20 years ago, Lucie was on vacation visiting her friends in Provence and what better to do while her friend was going to work than a little wine tasting? Let’s point out here that the Southern Côtes du Rhône is not California with its large wineries and palaces but a lot more modest in style and size.

Photo courtesy Domain la Soumade

On a cold January weekday, she was driving in the small village of Rasteau, looking for the home of one of our favorite wines, Domaine la Soumade. Driving back and forth along a small road, she finally spotted the name on a little signpost, but the only building there was a private house with a little shed in one corner of the garden. As she approached the shed, a big dog barked at her loudly enough to alert the owner of the house. A woman bundling a wool sweater around her shoulders against the chill opened her door to look at the intruder, asking what she wanted. When Lucie told her that she came as far as Québec to taste her wine, the woman said she’d be downstairs in a moment. As it worked out, this was Madame Romero, the wife of the owner and winemaker of Domaine la Soumade . She invited Lucie into the shed which was the tasting room.

While tasting Domaine la Soumade wines, Madame Romero was intrigued why Lucie had come so far to Rasteau and where she was staying. When Lucie explained that she was staying with her friends in Nyons, Madame Romero gave her a bottle of wine with a smile, saying, enjoy it with your friends tonight at dinner.

Photo courtesy of Domaine la Soumade

A few years later, Steve and Lucie were wine tasting together in Rasteau, during the harvest. Lucie wanted to take Steve to Domaine la Soumade but could not find the place. The house was still there, but not the shed. And where were all the people who should be wine tasting at that time of year? Driving on the road to Orange we saw a beautiful building with Domaine la Soumade written on it. Since Lucie had been there, they had built a winery and tasting room that could now compete with some of California’s (humbler) tasting rooms. Madame Romero was there, serving behind the bar and when Lucie introduced herself to Madame, she immediately said, “Vous êtes la Québécoise! I remember you, you visited us before we moved here.” The conversation went around that first visit, and then we were introduced to her husband, the winemaker, André Romero. We had the immense pleasure of tasting some of their best wines, some traditional and others reflecting the enterprising spirit of Domaine la Soumade. The highlights included the flagship red wine, Fleur de Confiance and a delicious Rasteau “Vin Doux Naturel“ a sweet wine that is great at aperitif, but can be found only in France.

This experience will forever be one of Lucie’s most cherished wine tasting memories.

Château Guiraud

Visiting Sauternes is a revelation and also a bit of a surprise. The greatest of the latter is to see the grapes if you visit near the harvest. In all your other wine tasting voyages, harvest time means plump, glistening grapes hanging pendulously from the vines, just waiting to be picked and vinified. What you get in Sauternes is shriveled brown grapes, formerly green, that you would throw away if you found them in your refrigerator.

Sauternes grapes. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia commons.

The reason is botrytis, la pourriture noble, the Noble Rot. It’s a fungus that infests vineyards in damp weather, especially when the grapes are ripe and give the botrytis something to eat. Much of the liquid is evaporated out of the grapes and what there is is wonderfully sweet and concentrated. It doesn’t occur everywhere nor every year, but in a the area in and around the villages of Sauternes and Barsac, it is an almost annual event. As you can see in the photo, not even all the grapes in a cluster are affected, so the ones they want for the world’s most famous dessert wine have to be picked carefully, by hand. It takes a lot of these rotten grapes to make a bottle of wine.

There are many Sauternes producers, the most famous of which is Château d’Yquem. Other notable ones are La Tour Blanche, Suiduirat, Doisy-Daëne and Doisy-Védrines. We have chosen to highlight Château Guiraud because it’s one of the best (Premier Grand Cru Classé in 1855) and the only major Sauternes house actually in the village of Sauternes. For the visitor, Château Guiraud is a great deal easier to visit than others of the great Châteaux, with no reservation required and tasting hosted in English as well as French. (Oh, and also because we love their wine and keep it in our cellar.)

Château Guiraud. Photo courtesy of Vinexpo.

A tasting a Château Guiraud is part of the revelation we referred to at the beginning of this article. You’ll find that there are dry white wines made in the region and their second label, Petit Guiraud, is a pleasant before-dinner wine. Then you get to taste the big guns, the real Sauternes wines. Their basic tasting offers a vertical of three vintages, which again is revelatory. You learn the intricacy and delicacy of this fabulous dessert wine from the people who made it.

The château itself makes for a pleasant visit. You enter via a long roadway lined with plane trees. At the end you find a gracious 18^th century mansion, with a stone bordelais tower next to it. The tasting room has a grand fireplace and the room, while a bit sparse, is a welcome to a bygone era of French hospitality. If you’re there at the right time of year, don’t forget to see the rotten grapes.

One oddity of a visit to Sauternes, especially early in the day, is to find yourself sipping dessert before the sun is down or even before lunch. Best advice: get over it. Second best advice: give some thought while you’re sipping to how you might enjoy these wines other than as dessert. They certainly accompany cheeses and although they are a bit heavy are well suited to aperitifs. Perhaps the best and most widely know way to drink Sauternes is as an accompaniment to foie gras.