“Typicity” - A slippery but core wine concept
I LOATHE Emeril Lagasse (and I KNOW that I’m not the only one!) but there is one of his little quips that doesn’t send me diving for the remote to annihilate his presence from my screen, and that one is “(now were going to roll up these basil leaves and slice them thin, which is called a chiffenade)” - “BIG FANCY COOKING TERM”…Yes, I know, he’s trying to bring “fine” cooking down from the stratosphere into the real kitchens of Ma and Pa Frontporch, and this appraoch I do admire, I just wish he could do it with a bit more articulation, and a lot less overdramtization…but I digress…So the matter at hand here is not a “big, fancy cooking term” but a “big fancy wine term”, and that term is TYPICITY.
The first problem that you might note with this term is that it doesn’t really exist in English, so if you go looking for it in the dictionary, you’ll be looking a long time. The word is derived from (just an Anglicized version, really) of the respectively Italian and French terms “tipicita`” (tee pee chee TA) and “tipicite`” (tee pee see TE) both of which refer to an item that displays clearly the classic traits that make an “X” an “X”. For example, an orange that is a bit bigger than a baseball, is orange in color, with deilcately but markedly dimpled skin, and spoons of sweet yellow/orange juice that can be expressed from the fruit’s segmented orange-fleshed fruit that can be exposed by peeling it back with your hands shows great “orange typicity”.
The application of this concept to different grape varieties is quite easy to identify as well. With regard to grape varieities, typicity refers to how closely a wine cleaves to the flavor, aroma, and texture that over many years, has been identified as immutably linked with that variety. For example, a Cabernet Sauvignon that is colored deep garnet/purple, has a chewy, dense, and tannic mouthfeel, and smells clearly of black currants, green peppers, and cedar is said to possess great “typicity”. This term is nearly always applied in a complimentary manner…Easy enough…
So those of you who are using your heads for more than hatracks are probably about to ask “Well why are wines that are said to possess high levels of “typicity” not all exactly the same, and therefore boring?” And before I can even answer, you think you’ve got one of these “wine pros” cornered, and you ask “hey, wait a minute, how do you square ‘typicity’ with ‘terroir’ and a winemaker’s individual ’style’ - they seem to be inherently contradictory!” And when I finally get a chance to answer I’ll say “Good questions all - here’s my take”:
Typicity is a good thing in and of itself, without even bringing the other oenological “ideals” mentioned above into the ring. Think of it this way - do you like bananas that taste like lamb chops? What about potatoes that taste like minty fresh toothpaste? All snarkiness aside, I think we all know the answers to these questions. Besides, those of us who pay close attention to our sensory perceptions as we eat know that even two different bananas from the same bunch or potatoes from the same bag can taste subtly different…Here’s a direct wine example…my collegues and I recently tasted a Bourgogne Rouge that we thought TASTED very nice, but three of us agreed that, though it was quite delicious, if given the glass blind, we would have ALL sworn that it was Syrah, not 100% Pinot Nior…what good is that? When you order a steak, and you get a plate of fried chicken set down in front of you, are you happy? What’s wrong? they both taste good…
So let’s let the tigers in…So how does typicity square with terroir? How could something be both typical and terroir-driven? Well, as is the case with SO many things, we’re dealing with varying and relatively small gradations of difference and a deft balancing act, not MAJOR departures. Think of it this way - if you look at your friend Jocko through an orange-tinted sheet of plastic and then through a blue one, Jocko certainly looks different through one than the other, but is identifiable as Jocko nevertheless. In this case, Jocko represents the concept of typicity and the plastic sheets stand in for terroir - Jocko is exactly the same person, but the plastic (terroir) applies not a radical, but certainly clearly notable effect on what Jocko looks (tastes, smells) like.
Now onto the concept of “style”… First, what the heck is it? If a winemaker is being faithful to the nature of the grape from which she is making her wine, and is being equally faithful to her terroir, and the influences that that place wants to imprint on the fruit that grows out of it, where does style enter the scene? Think of it this way… In Barolo, as well as in Burgundy and other places too, many of the most famous vineyards are shared by scores of winemakers, each one harvesting and vinifying a certain percentage of the total tonnage in his or her own manner, and bottling them as special single-vineyard wines. And because Barolo and Burgundy are single-variety wines, it is very common to encounter scores of wines that are made from either 100% Nebbiolo or 100% Pinot Noir that were grown in the same vineyard in the same vintage. A comparison between a 1999 Marcarini Barolo Brunate and a 1999 Francesco Rinaldi Barolo Brunate leaves the winemaker as the only difference between the bottles, and so the mark of “style” steps to the fore. Thankfully, style is the easiest winemaking “pillar” to quantify. Winemaker #1 does lots of green harvesting, tends to pick a bit later than his compatriots, fements for 12 days in temperature-controlled stainless steel tanks, and ages his wines in 100% new, high toast, French barriques. Winemaker #2 does no green harvesting (but does employ an INSANE level of triage), picks at a “normal” time, ferments his wines in tini without temperature control for 25 days, and ages his wines in 50 hectoliter Slavonian oak casks that are now about to receive their 16th harvest…It doesn’t take a Master of Wine to know why these wines are going to taste different, and even to fairly easily tell you which is which with just a few sniffs and sips…
For so many more casual wine drinkers these concepts (”typicity”, “terroir”, “style”) seem like the rarified vocabulary of effete wine snobs - concepts that are either believed to be beyond the grasp of most non-professionals, or for the more cynical, just a lot of hooey that wine pros have concocted over the years to make their jobs sound more nuanced than “I like this one/I don’t like this one”. But as I hope I have succinctly illustrated, these concepts are VERY real, and are quite easily explicated, the devil is in, as with so many things, the ability to determine which of these “pillars” is supporting what and for just how much, and this ability, just like the finer points of trapeze acrobatics, chess, or creating new knitting patterns is determined by desire, practice, and plain old natural-born talent. Keep up the good work.
TOM CIOCCO
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Typicity means that a thing embodies qualities of itself? Sounds a bit circular. Isn’t everything itself? And what if itselfness changes over time, with shifting styles and trends. Does typicity change with it, or is it fixed and unchanging? And who decided when it should become fixed? What’s the sound of one hand clapping?
Interesting post.
BTW, tradition (and I Love Lucy reruns) aside, doesn’t it seem weird to be making a drink using somebody’s bare feet? You can conjure up bucolic images of Italian villages and late summer carnivals… but I mean, come on. It’s kinda icky.
Comment by TagWorld Brian — April 2, 2007 @ 5:47 pm
Great comments, Tom. Lot of ‘FLUFF’ around in the wine media to explain average wines. Another interesting adjunct is clones of diferent varieties. Different Pinot Noir clones (and not just one) are used for sparkling as opposed to red wines, giving much different qualities. Sometimes the different clones appear in the same wine. Same with other varieties, shiraz, etc. How well that clone suits the terrior, is up to the winemakers knowledge and whether she has the capital to experiment with a variety of clones.
Complicates matters? Conclusion: like cars, you have to have driven bad ones to appreciate the good ones. To find your own favourite, go off the beaten track, support diversity, avoid wines with great maketing, go ‘one to the left’
Comment by Garry — April 2, 2007 @ 11:01 pm
Thanks for a great article. As a budding wine lover, I’m trying to get a feel for the qualities of that identify a “typical” varietal. Typicity is what I’m trying to get a handle on, apparently.
What is cool is that there seem to be varying levels of typicity. By that I mean, it easy to distinguish the identifying characteristics of a red and white wine. It’s still a little harder to distinguish a syrah and a zinfandel or a merlot and a cab for this newby without seeing which bottle they were poured from. I look forward to being able to disinguish typicity between Cabernet from the Oakville district as opposed to the Stags Leap district like Gary showed on Monday’s episode.
Thanks again for an interesting article. Any suggestions for improving my typicity identifying skills? Do you recommend any references that list the identifying characteristics of wine varietals like you did in the third paragraph about Cabs?
Comment by Dave Chouiniere — April 3, 2007 @ 9:52 am
TWB-
I knew someone would jump on this - Yeah, typicity is a difficult thing to relate to someone who hasn’t tasted literally thousands of wines (this is not braggadocio, it’s just what is required to allow this concept to really make sense). Here’s another analogy. Think of a theoretically infinitely large wall with a red dot at it’s (theoretical) center (stay with me) - For lack of a better term, that red dot represents the “Platonic Ideal” of Zinfandel - the most Zinfandelly Zinfandel in all Zinfandelland…Now, we begin to taste hundreds of Zinfandels and begin the process of plotting these wines on the “wall” relative to the “ideal” Zinfandel that the red dot represents. In the beginning we might place one or two VERY close to that center, but the rules of this game allow and even encourage us to re-assess already plotted wines as we begin to better understand with each wine we taste just which ones are near bullseyes, in the second ring, third, and 2.5 east of Omaha, etc. When ALL of the wines have been tasted, and adjusted RELATIVE TO EACH OTHER (and this is the crux), the cluster that is closest to that red dot are the most typical Zinfandels…what makes this a difficult concept to grasp is that each wine’s identity is definable only in relation to all of the others, and therefore the more sampling data one has to work with, the more accurate the determination is…it’s this aspect that clearly points up why a novice wine driker can’t even begin to speak about typicity - how could someone who has only tasted 3 Zins know that wine #2 is “classic” Zin? Does this clarify things at all?
About the feet, well, I guess it’s not great deal stranger than the chef who has got his (hopefully) VERY clean hands on your fish or that kneaded the dough that made up your pasta, but I do hear you… One caveat - if foot treading REALLY bugs you out, stay away from port, many if not the majority of port grapes are foot-tread…
TOM CIOCCO
Comment by Tom C — April 3, 2007 @ 10:34 am
Ha, thanks. The Allegory of the Zinfandel Cave. I like it.
Comment by TagWorld Brian — April 3, 2007 @ 1:47 pm
Awesome: “Zinfandelland”
Please give me directions on how to get there, I’d like to visit and stay a few weeks! Actually, you already have. It’s just going to take many years to get there. But what a journey!
Comment by Dave Chouiniere — April 3, 2007 @ 2:09 pm
Dave-
Welcome - The best advice is quite simple. Pick a variety that you’d like to draw an olfactory bead on, and drink as many 100% “X’s” as you possibly can, and MAKE NOTES! The more Merlots you drink (for example), the more you understand what Merlot’s core characteristics are…Enjoy the ride, brother!
TOM CIOCCO
Comment by Tom C — April 3, 2007 @ 4:17 pm
Dave-
Directions to Zinfandelland - Get in the car and drive west until you see Fruitpulponia on the left and The Democratic Rebublic of Ethanol on the right - Zinfandelland is right in the middle…if you get lost, call Helen Turley…
TOM CIOCCO
Comment by Tom C — April 3, 2007 @ 4:24 pm
Tom, I thought this was a great explanation - I never thought of it in the way you laid it out, and your examples are excellent! To me, that is probably the biggest risk of picking up a bottle that you’ve never tried before - if you know nothing about the winemaker/winegrowing choices, you’d be pretty disappointed to find out your $50 Pinot you wanted to match with your dinner actually tastes like Syrah! This is also why I’d like to see more of the winegrowing/winemaking choices described on the back label. You can at least make an educated guess on what you are in for and more likely take a chance on that unknown bottle on the shelf.
Comment by mas — April 3, 2007 @ 4:27 pm
As a Bordeaux lover, I sometime get into this issue with friends who criticize vintages for lacking typicity due to let’s say for example the extreme heat of 2003. They claim to prefer Clarets from cooler vintages like 98′ or 01′for example claiming them to be more typical.
If you take and analyze certain wines from hotter vintages,such as 1982, 1989 and 2003. a pattern emerges. Some chateau’s like, Leoville Poyferre, produce some of their most highly rated wines in hot vintages. Others do not. A great wine is a great wine and typicity does not matter as much to me as the juice in the bottle.
I guess that I would counsel others to not become a slave to typicity or any other descriptor. In the words of a good friend, “Drink what you like…like what you drink!”
Enjoy reading your Blog, Tom
Hope to see you posting on the Exiler’s message board
Comment by libbyg — April 11, 2007 @ 8:10 am