The Wine Tasting Stream of Consciousness.

Chapter Four. Part Three.
It’s wine tasting season in New York once again. A season-ending injury kept me out of the fall tasting line-up and at the first spring event I started slurring my speech, dropped several wine glasses and fell down twice. I became disoriented, dizzy and incoherent so I did the only sensible thing.

I drove myself straight home.

Years ago, when I first started attending wine tastings, I developed an olfactory/gustatory associative process to try to pinpoint the flavors and aromas that seemed so familiar yet so elusive. The first time I recognized the taste of vanilla in a red wine is a good illustration of how this free flowing stream of consciousness unfolds. 

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Quality Hangs In The Balance.

Chapter Three. Part Three.

To enjoy a great symphony or painting you needn’t analyze each note or brushstroke; you should embrace the emotional impact of the whole piece. It’s up to the snobby enthusiasts, historians and critics to pick apart the elements behind the artwork and ruin it for the rest of us. Hey, somebody’s gotta do it.

Wine is much like music and art in that it is best appreciated when approached holistically. Unless of course, you’re one of those wine aficionados that spends all day in wine chat rooms when you’re supposed to be watching the kids. In that case you’re going to pay close attention to the individual elements inherent in wine so that, much like a music or art critic, you can bore your friends into a catatonic stupor with your insightful analysis. Thank God I’m here to help.

Let’s face it. When it comes to wine you’d probably like to be more like me – except that you’d want to bathe more often and

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Pain & Sulfuring.

Chapter Twelve. Part Six.

Contrary to public opinion, wineries didn’t start adding sulfites to wine in 1987. That’s simply the year the US government dictated all wine containing more than 10 ppm, the smallest detectable amount at the time, be labeled with the warning “contains sulfites.”¹ If a winery can produce wine with less than 10 ppm of detectable sulfites they can forgo the warning label. I’ve sold organic wine for years and only once have I seen a label that read, “contains no detectable sulfites”. It may have been a misprint as the label should have read, “contains no detectable flavor”.

The warning label only applies to wines sold in America, leading many consumers to mistakenly believe that just those bottles destined for America are adulterated with sulfur while their European counterparts remain sulfite-free. The European Union has recently instituted a similar sulfur warning label so the idea that they are sulfite-free should soon be exposed as a myth – just like the idea that vampires can’t go out in daylight (like, have you even seen Twilight?).

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Wild, Cultured or GM; Is Yeast a Fermenting Controversy?

Chapter Twelve. Part Five.

In an effort to tame the temperamental tribulations of fermentation, men have long tinkered with yeast, and as a result, winemakers now have many types of these little critters in their winemaking arsenal. Despite their differences, the one thing that all yeast organisms have figured out is how to convert sugar into alcohol, which is a far greater achievement than anything my college buddies have done with their lives.

Although wild yeast permeates the vineyards and wineries, many winemakers prefer to use cultured yeasts because they come from well-heeled families. Wild yeasts are uncultivated party animals and are therefore less predictable (of course unpredictable can also mean crazy-good). Think of it this way; uncultivated yeasts are like the wine bloggers of the fungi world but not quite as moldy.

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New Year’s Eve, A Pahlmeyer Tasting & Downton Abbey.

For New Year’s Eve I decided to spend the night in quiet meditation while channeling my inner tranquility, by which I mean I got more fried than a Paula Deen chicken.

I did this with some friends who are selling their house up north and want to thin out the wine cellar so they won’t have to move it. They don’t know how many wines are stacked down in the basement but I told them that given a few days we could get to the bottom of it. So a bunch of us headed north to usher in the New Year by ushering out some old wines. By the way, this is a service that I offer people in need of wine cellar cleansing. The service is free, but only for those who can afford it.

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