3. Ballast.

4. Nostalgia.

5. Fortune.

6. Improvisation.

Picking up on #2, I will apologize for a three day hiatus where I didn’t have internet access.  Words will be fleshed out Monday night, and we’ll pick up the pace for the rest of the month! (JW)

2. Apology.

Being Canadian, I have to apologize.  I don’t know what I did, but I’m sorry.

Really though, apology and humility are synonymous with wine tasting.  When working through my Sommelier classes, our excellent instructor had to shoot down many tasting descriptions our class had.  It wasn’t because he wanted to offend anyone, but rather to help improve their abilities.

We face rejection every time we taste.  It’s a big reason why people are reticent to share their feelings about wine.  But hey, it’s just a matter of being wrong.  Not the end of the world!  I’ve been wrong so many times, and surely have more up my sleeve.

Day 2’s challenge: be okay with being wrong, because it’s the only way things can become right.

If nothing else it’ll be good practice for marriage.

1. Acceptance.

If you’ll allow it, 30 Words of Local Wine begins with ‘acceptance.’

Whether you’re in Ontario like I, or another province/state that produces wine, we have to be willing to first accept the responsibility of developing that wine culture. (Responsible wine culture.)

Niagara didn’t always make wine, and only relatively recently began growing vinifera grapes.  Since the late 1970s though, producers have been tasked with the challenge of converting Ontarians into a) wine drinkers and b) wine appreciators. There’s a difference.

You don’t have to be a wine appreciator, but we all benefit when wineries have local support from wine drinkers.

On Day 1 our job is simple: try some Ontario wine if you haven’t already.  If you aren’t a wine drinker, all we ask is for an open mind.

Accept change, cause we’re here to stay.

8.5 Grapes

This may not be Pinot for some people, but it’s Pinot for me.  It’s finesse that acts the word — not abetting a weak vintage and excusing a product.  Sultry and satin-smooth, dancing, pressed close for the first time with sweat in your eyes and lust in your heart. Slightly funky (Brett-astic) with lean/tart red fruits; great acid.  Cote de Beaune-Villages imitator.  Blood sausage, tender veal cheeks, or crispy dark-meat chicken.  Drink now-2014.

Invisible Woman and The Human Torch

Rough around the edges, loud, distinctly powerful, arguably callous and searingly authentic.

They’re also incredibly difficult to understand on the first go.

I count myself among the wine-educated; perhaps you do too.  You’ve tried examples of Nebbiolo and Gruner Veltliner, and you feel as though you have an edge on those boring old Syrah drinkers.

Then, Mavrodaphne and Savatiano steamroll your oeno-pride.

Greek wines receive far less attention than European wine-zones of France, Italy, or even Germany.  Similarly to Portugal, another classically important winemaking country, Greek wines are defined by indigenous varietals in geologically diverse Mediterranean climates.

“Challenging” best describes our topic. Surely, not impossible to learn, but foreign in most respects.  Rewarding, too.

Recently, I was privileged to attend Toronto’s “New Wines of Greece” tasting hosted by John Szabo, Master Sommelier.  John’s involvement with the Greek wine bureau signals a significant shift toward establishing Greece as a new force in Ontario — a market seen by some observers as precedent-setting for global trends.

An enthused crowd of wine writers, the city’s best sommeliers, and sommelier students (that’s me!) eagerly accepted the organizers’ four Greek “ambassador” grapes.  We were charged with a simple, yet nuanced task: sample three glasses of wine, describe their consistent characterstics; then, assess if two subsequent, different varietal-wines are comparable.

The grapes?  Moschofilero, Agiorgitiko, Assyrtiko, and Xinomavro.

Trust me, in a few years, they’ll roll off the tongue like Negroamaro.  Remember the first time you heard of Monastrell?

I’ve worked out my own unorthodox system for remembering these four fantastic grapes.  Comic books.

Moschofilero // Invisible Woman

Moschofilero

Sue Storm: Invisible Woman

Moschofilero is a pink-skinned, aromatic variety grown in Mantinia (central Peloponnese).  Crisp acid and light body define this ephemeral wine.

I hesitate to make allusions of femininity, but the examples I sampled were delicate, sprightly, and redolent of chalky vitamins.  All agreed to their bistro-ready nature, and favourable similarity to high-quality Italian Pinot Grigio.  Though they lacked obvious fruit, their subtle charms were clearly appreciable.

Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman, possesses powers of invisibility and the ability to create force-shields.  You may not be able to see what she’s doing, but she’s an integral part of the team.  Sounds like our wine.

Agiorgitiko // Human Torch

Johnny Storm: Human Torch

Agiorgitiko

Agiorgitiko, meaning St. George’s, is home in Nemea (Peloponnese once more).  Soils vary here with elevation, from fine alluvial materials, coarse colluvial, up to soft limestone.  Height matters - and yes, the Human Torch can fly.

The grape’s high tartaric acid, low pH, and soft tannins are a curious combination; rebellious/antithetical to most popular modern wines. Noting flavours of tart red fruits, spice and earth, some in the audience commented on the similarity to Rioja. I saw it as a fiery wine before all this nonsense about the Fantastic Four began.

Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, can fly when setting himself aflame.  Boy, when you put it like that, this whole allusion does sound silly. I stand by the fiery wine comment.  (Did you know he married a shapeshifting alien once?)

Assyrtiko // Mr. Fantastic

Assyrtiko

Dr. Reed Richards: Mr. Fantastic

Assyrtiko was the one grape I had some familiarity with (and love for) prior to the tasting.  Grown on Santorini’s viciously infertile volcanic soils, the vines are actually coiled into small baskets.  Foliage shields the grapes from the intense heat; their minute moisture a gift from the morning dew against the ground.

It’s a marvel they grow at all, made even more impressive by their blistering acidity and perceptible gout de terroir.  Dry with astounding length, yet still brightly fruited, bearing aspects of yellow plums and citrus.

Dr. Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic, has the ability to stretch his body like water (or like plasticine, if you will).  He’s also a brilliant scientist.  It’s so easy to be brilliant when you’re fictional.  Still, the key point: length, and impossibly flowing acid.  Aloud, I commented on the similarity to Savennières; not in flavour per se, but by the strength of acidity and earth-derived flavours. Chablis was the obvious choice, but someone beat me to it.  Interestingly, Gruner Veltliner was also poured, though I wasn’t as convinced as some.

Xinomavro // The Thing

Benjamin J. Grimm: The Thing

Xinomavro

Xinomavro might be the closest match to Nebbiolo I’ve come across — and Nebbiolo is a tough cookie to copy.  You can’t miss it in a blind tasting: high acid, high tannins, low colour.  Xinomavro is grown particularly well in Naoussa, although more regions are taking to the bruising varietal.

Aside from varied red fruits, the group spoke of spices and olives.  The powerful, savoury aspects of the wine lend them to hearty meat dishes. Muscular wines need their protein!  When purchasing the scant supply of Xinomavro that could cross your path, acquire multiples to see the weathering effects of aging.

Our last member of the Fantastic Four, Benjamin J. Grimm a.k.a. The Thing, is a behemoth made of stone.  The Thing always had a tough rap.  His power of super-strength and near-impervious rock-skin was something he couldn’t turn off, but inside he had a heart of gold.  Tragic figure? (JW)

————–

For more fun with Greek wines, drop in at AllAboutGreekWine.com. They generously donated the above images without knowing it. (Free advertising, guys!)

Need more Four? Head to Marvel Comics’ official site for the FF.  Images sourced from Wikipedia (don’t judge).

(Bonus points if you recognized that a semi-deserted tropical island isn’t properly suited to wine production… and that Jacob’s wine bottle isn’t exactly traditional… and that with so much oxygen in-bottle at hot temperatures, they’re probably drinking something really vulgar.)

As a narrative, LOST is blisteringly difficult to follow.  The main story is augmented using flashbacks, flashforwards, flashsideways, and shifts its focus to one of many characters — who may or may not be killed off by the season’s end.  It’s unsettling to the viewer, but perfectly embraces the idea of being lost… there may never be a better major-network-televised example of postmodern narrative.  (And frankly, I may never watch another.)

[Very] generally speaking, LOST is built on twists, shocks, and mysteries which are either later explained, or forgotten by the writers.

Example: a giant four-toed foot is observed early in the series by characters sailing around the island by boat.  No further mention is given until a few seasons later when time travelling characters see the full statue the foot belonged to.  I still have no idea why it’s truly significant though.  (To readers who don’t watch LOST: Yes, I realize how ridiculous this must sound.  Bonus hysteria: the mysterious island demigod lived in the damned thing too.)

The point is that the show’s vague symbols don’t often make their meanings known immediately.  Dialogue is invariably occasionally invariably open-ended, too.  But when the writers actually want to tell their story, they’ll take pieces of their scattered mystery-mythology and put them together.

Now, the wine.

Blind tasting basics require you to appraise appearance, smell, and taste to make your assessments.  Is it remarkably difficult?  It’s no worse than watching LOST.

I’ve found the biggest challenge with blind tasting is restructuring expectations on the fly.

Pretend you’ve got a bright, dark-ruby-cored wine with edges of blue-purple; it’s semi-transparent and highly viscous.  All you smell is oak on the nose.  Fruit’s sorta there, but it’s as if the raspberries and cherries locked the door when they jumped into the hot-tub.  It’s too young to get a grip on what the real flavour profile is.  Upon tasting, you’re getting really refreshing acid, surprisingly tight tannins, and some alcoholic oomph.

If you focus on just one factor, you’ll guess incorrectly every time.

When the above situation happened to me, I stabbed at Australian Shiraz.  The style was modern.  The acid could have been added.  The tannins could have been softened.  Fruits are tough to judge with any wine considering so many grapes deliver wide flavour-ranges. I figured it was mid-range, for fans of the style.

Naturally, it was a pricey, 2005 1er Cru Beaune; Pinot from Burgundy.

I forgot to consider the transparency and depth of colour.  Lightness often brings us to Pinot, and Shiraz/Syrah should operate at the other end of the spectrum.  Not always, but often.  That crashing thud you hear is my confidence finding the quickest way through the floorboards.

Blind tasting is about interpreting signs and creating significance.

What does a light golden colour suggest in a wine?  Was it barrel aged and had minor oxygen exposure?  Is it Pinot Gris or Gewurztraminer, known to leach a little colour from their darker skins?  Is it an older wine that’s showing its age?  Is it an intentionally oxidized wine?

The frustration of not knowing what to make of these signals can drag on you.  Piece it together.  Go to the nose.

You smell nuts.  Then you realize you’re perspiring.  Are you going nuts, yourself?  Is it oxidation, or barrel-aging?  You don’t want to start thinking about the other fruits because you’re wrapped up in that one aromatic clue which may or may not turn out to matter.  (Don’t think about apple.  Anything can smell like apples if it’s going bad.)

And then, because you need more things to worry about, the wine changes on you with the temperature… you re-evaluate.  Spice?  Complexity, or multi-faceted aromas, usually indicates a better-made wine.  Toss the spice in with the freshly-roasted nuts and the light golden colour and suddenly we’ve got a contender for barrel-fermented white wine.

Go through the list of styles in your head.  Chardonnay from most places: check for acidity, alcohol and fruit profile to assess potential climates.  Fumé Blanc from California: but it’s not 20 years ago, so there’s no guarantee oak will be used — check for high acid and/or grassiness.  Traditional White Rioja: is it dried out and slightly oxidized?  White Bordeaux: are there grassy and/or waxy elements?  How much grass, how much wax?  (Sounds like a rave.)

Assess for alcohol.  Curse the wine industry for generally pumping up alcohols to +13% and find band-aid for your tongue.  Assess for acid.  Thank self for listening to anti-drug campaigns and not dropping acid years ago.  Assess for flavours and comment where you perceive the wine to be in its development.  Consider yanking the bag off the bottle and running away.

—–

Recently I discussed exclusive, deductive reasoning with a sommelier-student friend.  (That’s to say: I smelled X, so it can’t be Y or Z.)  Though he used the method, I’m not so sure that’s a safe way to blind taste.

I would hate to exclude a possible wine style because I’m not used to smelling certain aspects from it.
Wine, like LOST, often finds new ways to cram in significance which upend our previous perspectives.

Is blind tasting inductive reasoning?  We’re trying to create a principle based on our assembled facts, but with such a plurality of qualities - especially regarding production methods - it’s doubly difficult to pin singular, definitive characteristics across the board.

Perhaps then, we should view blind tasting as somewhere between the two: groping in the dark for some semblance of a figure, and praying what we’ve found is what/who we thought it was.

The content could be explained very quickly by illuminating the pertinent context: producer, region, varietal, and year.  Blind tasting, like LOST, forces us to ask unnecessary questions which please us if only because we love the struggle of confusion and the aggrandizement of distilling the clues into a correct response.

Deductive reasoning?  Inductive reasoning?  Reductive reasoning?  Conductive reasoning?

I think we could make an argument for either. (JW)

8.5 Grapes

Sometimes I wish my words could be as well-sculpted as the wine sampled.  Here, I may fail.  Great intensity and scope across the board: nose is entreated with a fine, purely mineral essence, supplemented by toasty bread. The palate’s ripely hewn fruit and sterling acid belie a fleshy, mouthfilling chomp, flossed out with some strangely appropriate wood-tannins.  I’ve become extra-selective in purchasing lately, yet I dropped the cash for this in a heartbeat.  Seduction, thy name is Chardonnay.

9 Grapes

Niagara’s 08 Gewurztraminers sing a fine tune — no further proof necessary than this aromatic phenom.  Excellent bitterly-driven essence of dried spice and orange zest, while an opulent palate proffers lavender bath wash, nectarine core, and a bit of wildflower on the back end.  Decisively exotic.  Worth the plunge with pork rillettes. (JW)

9 Grapes

I see this wine like Pierre Thomas of the New Orleans Saints: a bruising, well-rounded running back (c)hard on nay-sayers. Dominant, between-the-tackles alcohol, but with commensurate aromatic vision and finishes [palate] runs very well.  Awesome sweet apple blossom, white peach and nectarine-pit fruit and some gritty, sponge toffee on the back-end.  A solid pick for your keeper league, a.k.a. cellar.  (JW)

8.5 Grapes

You know when you taste a wine and you can’t get a firm grip on it because it’s closed, ironically, like a tight fist?  Example C, right here.  And yet, despite the primary fruit restraint, the vanilla/char bouquet is powerfully telling.  Give it a few months to get humming, then drink over the next few years with coconut-curried chicken.  Limited to 60 lovely cases. (JW)