Who are you calling dumb?
You may or may not have heard the term before. Perhaps you’ve come across its alias, “mute”? No? Well, if you tend to drink your wines young or tend to drink youthful, fruit driven wines, this is not a surprise. So exactlty what are we talking about here?
These terms refer to the level of a wine’s “expressiveness” - the aromas and flavors that a wine yields. But in this case, it’s more about what the wine is NOT doing than what it is…
The terms “dumb” or “mute” are usually used in reference to wines that are ageworthy that are, give or take a year or two on either side, in their “middle years”, though it is indeed possible for a very young wine to be said to be dumb. Let’s start at the beginning…
Wines that are capable of long-term aging often go through several phases of aroma, texture, taste, etc. as the many chemical processes that allow for this longevity wax and wane over time. For example, highly ageworthy wines like Barolo, Bordeaux, Port, Rioja et al. which are most often at their peak drinking form from between about 10-30 years from the vintage date, often make more pleasurable drinking on release than they do let’s say two or three years down the line. Frequently, though the tanninc structures of these wines can be fierce on release, they often retain a great deal of the “baby fat” fruit character that can balance these as of yet unrepentant tannins. These types of wines drunk in their extreme youth hardly represent these wines’ full potentials, but they can indeed be hedonistically direct and can also give a fascinating glimpse into what a winemaker encounters when all of his or her labors in the vineyard as well as in the cellar are “in the books”, and he or she has to decide “Are we ready to bottle or not”? Evaluating barrel samples is one of the last great skills that comes to the aspiring master palate, and tasting just-bottled highly ageworthy wines is as close to this often humbling experience as most of us get.
So once a wine moves out of its infancy, we begin to be able to encounter “dumbness” in the bottle. So let’s get down to brass tacks - what EXACTLY are we talking about here? At least in my definition, dumbness is the descriptor used to represent a wine that doesn’t taste or smell of much of anything, or seems to be less “expressive” than one would expect. Other descriptors that are used to denote this same phenomenon are “closed down”, “shut down”, or “tight”, though the term “tight” might be more frequently used as a less pronounced interpretation of “dumb”…
OK, you’ve pulled the cork, you’ve let the wine breathe for 30-60 minutes, you pour out the wine, swirl and sniff and…NOTHING (or not much). You let the wine rest in the glass for another ten to fifteeen minutes, and still nothing. The wine has gone dumb. What can be done? My advice is a good, roiling decanting. Sometimes, a rigorous infusion of air can wake up a sleeping wine, but then again, sometimes not…and if not, there’s really not much that you can do. For whatever reason (and the science is STILL not yet clear) wines that have gone dumb cannot be revived with a short term “fix”…whatever has happened or not happened in that bottle cannot be remedied with a post uncorking aeration or not at least before the air begins to turn the wine into vinegar…If you get to this point, you’re just plain S.O.L.
But there is a way to make at least a LITTLE sangria from sour grapes…One can learn a bit about the wine, and hopefully use this knowledge to avoid this problem in the future. Questions/notes that one can ask/record oneself that can be helpful are:
- What kind of wine is this EXACTLY? - Note this, and try to retain it. You may begin to find patterns.
- What is the VINTAGE of the wine? - Experiment with another wine from the same appellation and the same vintage from a different producer - are you still noticing “dumbness” or not?
- Whatever small amount of aroma IS emanating from the glass, note this as well - REALLY awkward aromas (ones that are not bad per se, but just strange) may indicate that a wine has a LOOOONG way to go before it begins to “speak” again. A wine that is just a bit “shy” might be about to wake up sooner than later…
- If after a decent aeration session has occured, and there is still no satisfaction, let the wine continue to breathe in a COVERED decanter for 24 hours, and then re-taste. Carefully note any further change, and try to make inferences (read “educated guesses”) about the wine’s future drinking window.
- Talk to others that have purchased the same wine. Have they had a similar experience?
- If you cannot find any other buyers of this same wine, if you dare, are able to do so financially, and actually HAVE another bottle of the exact same wine, open it too…in some cases, dumbness is the problem of this or that individual bottle rather than a function of producer, grape, vintage, etc. Clearly, if the problem persists, its a generalized problem rather than an isolated one, and you then know that any further bottles of this wine that are in your possession should be shuffled into the back of your cellar and forgotten about…
When all is said and done, opening up a truly DUMB wine is just one of those unfortunate events in the drinking life of the oenophile It’s not not QUITE as bad as corked wine, which is simply unredeemable, but the net effect can be the same if the wine has truly shut down hard.
So if you find yourself sitting in front of a dumb wine, try as many little wine CPR tricks as you can devise, and if nothing works, chalk it up to experience, learn as much as you can from the disappointment, and move on. One of the best things about wine is that there’s always another chance for a great experience just over that viney ridge…
TOM CIOCCO
Blaufrankisch - Central Europe’s Favorite Red Grape
I wasn’t exactly sure exactly how I was going to title this piece on this grape variety. For whatever reason, I settled on “Blaufrankisch” (the vine’s Austrian name) but I could as easily have used “Kekfrankos” (the Hungarian name) or “Lemberger” (what the Germans call the variety). But whatever you call it, it is indeed Central Europe’s favorite “native” grape variety…
So now that we’re talking about the name of this vine, let’s look a little more at it…Both the words “Blaufrankisch” and “Kekfrankos” mean “French Blue” in their respective native languages. Now clearly this would lead the reader to believe that vine might have its origins in France, and for a time, there was a theory that Cistercian monks from Burgundy in France may have brought cuttings of the variety from their home to the monastaries that they were helping to establish in the east. And to further this connection, the vine, which also grows in Bulgaria where it is called “Game`” and a bit in Romania where it is called “Burgund Mare” certainly lends some creedence to this argument, and there is indeed more than a few intersections with the look of Gamay on the vine, and the taste of the wines that it yields in the glass. But, during the late middle ages/early Renaissance, a particular Austrian King, when organizing the planting of the kingdom’s vineyards, made a major distinction between “Hunnish” (read “pedestrian”) and “Frankisch” (read “noble”) vine varieties, and where each of these groups should be planted, so it seems that this is probably the source for the actual name. And, to further promote the French origin theory, recent DNA profiling has shown a relationship to a moribund French variety called Gouais Blanc, a variety which seems to have left its genetic stamp on scores of other wine grapes as well. But, while the ULTIMATE origins of this variety MAY be in France, the variety is completely unknown there now, and is probably the result of a crossing with Gouvais and some other now lost, and un-French variety.
Today’s Blaufrankisch is most famous as Austria’s workhorse red grape variety. There it is most closely associated with the Burgenland region in the extreme southeastern corner of the country. Just over the border in Hungary, the variety finds welcoming soils in Sopron (which adjoins Burgenland) as well as the southeastern Hungarian wine regions of Villany and to a lesser extent, Szekszard. Moving back west, the vine, under the Lemberger name, grows in modest quantities in the Wurttemberg region of southwest Germany. And, a little suprisingly, there is a fair amount of the vine found (under the name Lemberger) in Washington state’s Yakima Valley where it continues to gain in importance and popularity.
Physiologically, the vine is quite healthy (not particularly prone to the range of common vine diseases), vigorous (producing copious foliage), and high yielding (produces large quantities of fruit), and for these reasons, growers love it. The variety’s early budding tendencies as well as late ripening tendencies however, make it susceptible to both spring frosts and early-onset cooling at harvest. These exigencies make growing Blaufrankisch a reality only for those vignerons whose vineyards are found in overall fairly warm regions, and without any great temperature snaps in making the transition from winter to spring or from summer to autumn.
Once vinified, Blaufrankish is more likely to be seen as a varietal bottling (unblended), though especially in Hungary and Washington State, Blaufrankisch is sometimes blended with the more tannic Bordeaux varieties to soften and leaven them. In the glass Blaufrankisch is quite dark in color. The olfactory descriptors most often assigned to Blaufrankisch wines are notes of black cherry, loamy earth, and ground spices. On the palate, the wine is decidedly more acidic than tannic, with a medium to full body, and a noticeably “fruity” character - something like a fantasy blend of Barbera and Gamay. Blaufrankisch is a grape that rarely produces wines that anyone would dub as profound or sublime (at least not yet!) but it’s wines rarely disappoints either, and in the best conditions in the best vintages, Blaufrankish can indeed surpise even those most well-drunk oenophile with its character and quality.
Blaufrankish pairs very well with all kinds of foods, but especially well with richer, liberally spiced dishes featuring lighter meats…can anyone say Chicken Paprikash?
Here are the PURE Blaufrankisches that we’re currently stocking. If you pick up a bottle or two, please post your tasting notes here as comments. Enjoy!
TOM CIOCCO
Paul Lehrner Blaufrankisch Ried Gfanger 2004
Gesellman Blaufrank Creitzer 2003
Marzemino - Mozart’s Favorite
With the nearly dizzying diversity of grape varieities in this world, and the REAL desire over the last 5 to 10 years of the drinking public to branch out beyond the borders of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Chardonnay, I thought it might be interesting to profile some of the more interesting minor wine grape varieties.
So, this is the first installment of what I hope will be a series of profiles on grapes and wines that don’t follow the “crowd” in terms of flavors, textures, colors, places of origin, etc. but rather offer a new view on what a fine wine can be - wines that will challenge and hopefully intrigue and even excite. Look at these pieces as an incitement to leave your eonological comfort zone, and hopefully expand the range of sensations that the vine can offer.
Today’s subject is MARZEMINO. This is the name of a grape and most often the name that will appear on the label if the grape appears in the bottle (there are some exceptions, but more on that below). The Marzemino grape hails from the general area of northeastern Italy, ranging from the lake region in Lombardia in the west, to the western edges of Friuli in the east with the variety’s “heartland” being found in Trentino and to a lesser extent, Veneto. There are even some indications that the variety may have once been cultivated as far south as Tuscany, and that it may have even been a component in Chianti!
Marzemino is a late ripening variety which in part has encouraged its obscurity since fully ripening ANY sort of grape in the far north of Italy can be a fair challenge. In addition, the variety is also quite susceptible to fungal infestations which again, in the fairly wet conditions of the grape’s homeland in northestern Italy, can make cultivation of the variety a bit of a challenge.
Marzemino is not a a heavy wine, but it is very flavorful, “spunky” even. It’s color tends to a bright purple color rather than the red or brick tones of many other wines. Marzemino is more acidic than tannic in character with a medium weight body, but with a very good intensity. Marzemino often is said to smell of wild berries, violets, and asian plums.
The latest DNA profiling has shown the variety to be a relative of its Trentino brethren LAGREIN and TEROLDEGO (profiles pending!) which nearly proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that the variety is native to northeastern Italy. As mentioned above, most Marzemino is bottled as a varietal (single grape variety) wine, so the name “Marzemino” nearly always appears on the label, though in the Garda Rosso DOC, Marzemino always plays an important role in the blend, it rarely appears on the label.
Marzemino’s “claim to fame” (if it can be said to be famous in ANY way) is that it was said to be Mozart’s favorite wine grape. So much so that Don Giovanni’s librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, wrote the name of the wine into the opera - I believe the Don himself sings something to the effect of “…pour the wine, an excellent Marzemino” or something similar…
Marzemino pairs very well with big-flavored medium to soft paste cheeses, stewed chicken and rabbit, grilled pork dishes, and any dish containing mushrooms.
Here are the two Marzemino wines we’re currently stocking. If you pick up a bottle or two, I’d love you to post your tasting notes as comments below! Buon Appetito!
TOM CIOCCO
What makes a wine ageworthy?
There are lots of questions about wine that get asked at scores of wine shops, probably every day, all over the world, but this is a question that is maybe just a BIT too general to get asked in most customer/salesperson encounters. The question, as the title says, is: “What makes a wine ageable”? And thankfully, with all of the seemingly impossibly difficult things in this life, the factors that make a wine ageable are few, clear, and basically immutable. Just for the sake of clarity, I’m not talking about outside-of-the-bottle factors like storage conditions, but rather wholly inside-the-bottle “structural” traits possesesd by the wines themselves. And away we go!
1. ALCOHOL LEVEL Alcohol is not used as a topical disinfectant for nothing. It not only is anti-microbial, it is also a natural preservative - this is why you can keep soused plums or currants for months. Higher alcohol wines tend to hold their respective “top forms”, all things being equal, longer than those with lower alcohol levels.
2. TANNINS As I said in my piece about tannins, these still not fully understood compounds also have a preservative effect, especially with regard to oxidation. And since the fading of color in a wine is directly related to oxidation (as an aside, and perhaps a bit strangely, white wines get darker as they oxidize, and red wines get lighter - go figure!) highly tannic wines tend to retain a more youthful color for longer stints of time.
3. ACIDS Acidity plays a very similar role that tannins do in slowing the aging process of a wine. Acidity is, for example, what allows a drink like Champagne to age so gracefully - Champagne is not particularly high in alcohol (usually about 12% give or take a point), has almost NO tannins to speak of (there are some present in Rose` Champagnes that derive their tannins from the short juice/skin contact time with the Pinot Noir) but Champagne is ACIDIC AS HELL which goes a long way in helping to keep Champagne fresh.
4. SUGAR Yup, good old fructose. What, along with salt, do you use to preserve salmon to make gravlax? Sugar! Have you ever had to throw away a rotten bowl of sugar? What about honey? (yes, it does crystallize, but re-introducing a little bit of water, and a short run under a hot tap, and you’re good to go). Clearly the answer to both of these questions is ‘no’ and the reason is that sugar is one of the world’s most powerful, non-toxic natural preservatives.
So let’s look at a few examples…Why do the following wines age well?
- German Eiswein - No tannins at all, and actually fair LOW levels of alcohol, but eisweins possess SUGAR and ACIDS out the wazoo!
- Big California Cabernets - These wines are not sweet, and in most cases are not particularly acidic either, but those who know Cali Cabs know that a paucity of TANNINS and ALCOHOL in these wines is rarely a problem.
- Port - Now we’re cookin’ with gas. Acidic port? no, not much of that to be found, but their ALCOHOL levels hover around 20%, they are quite to very SWEET, and those of you that have tasted a just bottled port know how massively TANNIC these wines can be. And with three of the four factors in the house, one might make an inference that port would be ESPECIALLY long-lived, and you know what?…one would be right…
- Madeira - This is a bit of a trick question…Well, kind of…Madeira, like port, has high ALCOHOL, and is, unlike port, extremely ACIDIC, but Madeira is made in an intentionally oxidative style, and unwanted oxidation is probably the main enemy of longevity in a wine, but if your taking oxidation to the limit in the very production process, it’s basically a ironclad innoculation against any further oxidation. For these reasons, Madeira is the unchallenged KING of longevity. At least in THEORY, Madeira is indestructable. I’ve actually drunk one from the 1856 vintage (this is not a typo!), and it was still very well structured, and certainly in no danger of fading any time soon.
So that’s it. There might be some minor peculiarities in certain wines that change things one way or the other, but these four fundamental features account for well better than 90% of the ageability factor in a wine. And since we’re talking about ageing wines, remember these rules to maximize your drinking “windows:
- Cool temperatures. 56 degrees Fahrenheit is ideal.
- Moderate Humidity. 70% is ideal. Too much humidity risks mold growth on corks and labels, and too little risks cork shrinkage as they slowly dry out.
- Darkness. Light, like heat, speeds up the natural reactions in a bottle of wine. The darker the better.
- Lack of vibration. Same as above…just like stirring your cup of coffee encourages the sugar in your cup to melt faster, agitating a bottle of wine causes accelerated chemical reactions in bottle. Tempting as it might be, do not clamp bottles of wine into a paint shaker.
- Store bottles horizontally. The one aging advisement that almost everyone knows. Storing wine in this manner keeps the cork moist, and therefore more supple and less likely to shrink and allow air to pass into the bottle. The ONE exception to this rule is our friend from above, Madeira. Madeira is so acidic, and so long lived, that over decades, the acidity in the wine can actually weaken the cork’s structure causing failure and perhaps big puddles of Madeira in your storage area.
TOM CIOCCO
A bad taste in the mouth…
One of the boilerplate functions that wine professionals dance with throughout their careers is the formal, outside-of-the-shop wine tasting event. These are large, highly social functions that are usually held in places in which people host wedding receptions or family reunions. Typically these events are thrown by a major wine distributor, some themed (like “Bulgarian Red: Something for the Vulgarian and the Well-bred”) and some more general. The rooms are set with tables on which each of the producers in the distributor’s stable set out their products to be sampled. Tasting books listing the wines to be tried are available at the entrance to facilitate post-tasting recall and note-taking. In the main room tables are piled high and deep with cheeses, breads, salamis, salads, finger sandwiches as a courtesy to the buyers who may be skipping his or her lunch break to attend, and presumably, to allow those who like to see how certain wines work with certain foods to make such comparisons. These events are always free to those in the trade. Nice work if you can get it, right?
Well, I gotta say, not for this guy (gasp!). I guess that the first few tasting events can be exciting, bumping around in a fancy-schmancy hall with the “movers and shakers” in the industry and some of the world’s most respected winemakers, with lots of free eats and HUNDREDS of wines from the world over to sample. But, as with so many other pursuits that are seemingly inexhaustably pleasurable, for some, the bloom comes off the rose pretty fast.
Let’s start with the “social” aspect. Yes, tastings CAN be wonderful places to meet colleagues to discuss the latest trends and peeves in the wine world, but things rarely work out that way…I liken this aspect of these events to some of the less motivated folks who you might have met in college - the types that were ALWAYS in the study lounge, but were RARELY studying, most of them just chatting up or flirting with anyone that they could corner for 5 minutes. For many present, tastings are just an excuse to leave work for a few hours to provide them their fixes of fake kissing on two cheeks, name dropping, and making fun of this one’s shoes, or that one’s cackling laugh, just like they used do at a high school parties. And clearly with all of these people, the din can reach deafening levels and therefore can become very distracting. And even though formalized “scientific” tastings strictly forbid its wearing, the multiple bodies doused in cologne and perfume can make getting accurate takes on a certain wine’s subtle charms very difficult to achieve…
Too many cooks spoil the soup, and likewise, too many wine buyers spoil the tasting too. Tables manned by representatives of famous wineries or by famous winemakers themselves are often mobbed four bodies deep, usually with at least one plainly sycophantic wine groupie batting his or her eyelashes at the wine “celebrity”. In such cases, it can take 10 or 15 minutes to even get a spalsh of wine in one’s glass to taste. In one particular instance, I had managed to get a bit of a famous red Burgundy to taste which I eagerly sipped, swished, and considered, and when I was ready, I jostled my way to the nearest spit bucket for expectorational purposes. But, as I bent to the silver vessel, a tall gentleman who was clearly more concerned with returning to the conversation with the fetching blond to his left, spit his wine directly on the back of my head. It took all of my self-control not to replace his crustless watercress sandwich with an Italian knuckle sandwich, but I kept my cool.
And likewise, too many WINES spoil the tasting. These “Grand Tastings” are often comprised of literally hundreds of wines from all over the world. Obviously, to the wine lover, this is an “eyes too big for the stomach” scenario, so one is tempted to taste ’til you cants taste no more. But at the same time there is almost no one who would HAVE TO consider tasting the lion’s share of the wines on offer, so unless you go in with a specific agenda and an iron will to stick to it, these events often foster a sort of oenological dissipation. It’s amazing how something that seems like a colossal time saver all too often turns out to be a terrific time WASTER.
And then there are the in the business “cherry pickers”. This sub-species lines up at 10 AM for a tasting that starts at noon. As soon as the doors are opened, they trample each other to get to the table with latest vintage of Steaming Beagle or Dopus Won, get a paltry jigger to swallow (since producers rarely open more than one or two of these sorts of wines), and then race off to the next super elite producer to do the same. So, unless you want to do combat with these vultures, you’re unlikely to get a chance to taste any of these trophy wines (if you ever had a desire to do so in the first place) because these boneheads drink them all up within 10 minutes of the doors being flung open.
When you get right down to it, these tastings are done for the benefit of the DISTRIBUTORS, though the events are always couched as a “wonderful opportunity to explore all that the wine world has to offer under one well-appointed roof” or some other similar drivel. These events allow the distributors to taste scores of people on a single bottle that is most often paid for by the producer him or herself. Under normal circumstances, a salesman might be able to get a day or two of mileage from a bottle that his boss foot the bill for in his sampling budget for that wine. There’s a bit of the “emperor’s new clothes” reasoning at work here…
I realize that this whole phenomenon has precisely ZERO connection with anything that most if not all of you encounter regarding wine on a daily basis, but I thought that revealing some of the inner workings of the wine professional’s world might help the amateur understand not only what makes this a great line of work surely, but one that, like most other professions, has its downsides as well. There can be no doubting in watching the behavior of many people at these events that some in attendence there truly enjoy them, but I think that it’s safe to say that even the most social and wine mad of those reading this piece now, after the umpteenth such gathering, might be ready drown himself in a vat of Vernaccia.
TOM CIOCCO
