Two Buck Chuck has nothing to worry about: Reports not fit for wine blogosphere

You heard it here first. But it may already be too late.

Be warned the press releases that come from yet another scientific study involving wine on humans. Here's how AP phrased it when they first filed the news brief on this recent American study now making the rounds: "Apparently, raising the price really does make the wine taste better."

Actually the point of this study is that it really DOESN'T, but that there are reasons why it would appear to happen.

More importantly: "Raising the price does make the wine taste better." Taste better? To whom?

I'll tell you who. Volunteers who didn't pay for the wine, that's who. Surely this is not a real-world scenario. Had the money required to pay for these wines come out of their own pockets, I think the folks tasting would've reacted differently. Perhaps a little more skeptical and contemplative when the chips are down. That's just my theory.

Science being science, this kind of study demands random "volunteers" so winos with wallets were not invited. Now, I ask you, what about the world of enjoying fine wine is based on volunteering? Nothing. That's because most people work for their wine. And that's why this experiment and any like it are limited in how they depict the truths in wine consumption -- Two Buck Chuck has nothing to worry about.

Statements circulating in the press like "while many studies have looked at how marketing affects behavior, this is the first to show that it has a direct effect on the brain" mischaracterizes what's going on. There's no buying behaviour in this experiment, so how can marketing actually be involved?

Shouldn't the statement have been (which I might add merits some credit to the scientists, who are Antonio Rangel and his colleagues at the California Institute of Technology): "While many studies have looked at how marketing affects PERCEPTION OF PLEASURE, this is the first to show that it has a direct effect on the brain."

My point is that perception of pleasure and behaviour are obviously not the same thing. In fact, the disconnect between perception of pleasure and behaviour is a big deal for me, and, I think, anyone else who wants to live in a civilized society.

But wait. It gets even worse than that. The copy used in reports of the study suggests that volunteers selected their preferences based on results shown by the MRI scanner hooked up to their brain.

We've left the real world of wine blogging entirely. Since when is looking at brain scans useful in relaying information about wine? Maybe once or twice on Chateau Petrogasm but that's a site whose usefulness I question on a daily basis.

What I say: Of course the anticipation of drinking expensive wine is going to affect my body in different way than the anticipation of drinking plonk-priced wine. Is that the scoop we are being fed by the press -- as if it is some wine marketing revelation?

I think the press should stop selling this study to winos and wine marketers. It's merely a test on brain functions. This seems obvious to me now, but it didn't at first when the story came out. So since you're here, I'll explain what I have made sense of.

The study sets up a bogus taste test by placing wines of different prices in front of tasters. But some wine samples are identical and marked with a different price tags (there were three separate wines: a $90 Cabernet correctly listed and then listed at $10; a $45 Cab correctly listed and listed at $5; and a $35 Cab correctly listed). MRI "pleasure" activity and participant wine selections are consistent, which is I guess why the study is being called a clear success. But the hoo-ha in the news is being generated by the fact that the big pricetag wines are the ones being favoured.

Everyone comes back two weeks later to repeat the experiment using the same wines but without the prices marked. It's unclear in the press reports what happened here (Were there five or three samples? Were they hooked up to MRIs again?) but what incredible results emerge this time!

"They liked the wines originally marked $5 and $45 best," says one report. But the $5 and $45 samples were actually taken from a single solitary wine -- a five-dollar bottle. (Now that's something interesting to wine marketers!) So if and when participants' brain activity is allowed to be filtered into real-life actions and words (instead of being prematurely stopped in the lab), are pricetags really affecting their ability to identify good wine? In other words, is this experiment proving that humans evaluate quality based on cost? I say no.

Not even. What I might say however, is that this experiment demonstrates that pricetags affect one's ability to identify equality, i.e. identify that the wines marked with different pricetags were actually the same wine. Which is a whole different ballgame, and I think one which has already been played. (I play it all the time, sampling a little bit of wine from my usual glass and a little bit from one those Eisch breathable glasses, which claim to make the wine taste different... but I can't tell.)

The real intrigue here lie in the brain scans, which I'll leave to BlogMD, despite the name of this blog.

Dreaming of a White Xmas: Domaine Mourgues du Grès Terre d'Argence 05, Palacios Remondo Plàcet 05, Domaine Cauhapé Sève d'Automne 04, Bodegas Aura 05

     
Is one in five accurate odds that the wine you open is spoiled? Our Dreaming of a White Christmas blind tasting -- hosted by Joe of Joe's Wine -- marked the second time he and I got together with five bottles. As it turned out, we found that one of the five bottles had gone off, just like what happened at our first event.

Back in October, I hosted a Cab Franc Table Talk night where I found that oxidation had all but ruined one particular bottle (to be fair, Joe was less categorical on this wine's demise). And then for Joe's white wine event earlier this month, we had a corker on our hands.

One in five bottles seems tremendously unlucky and much more than my usual day-to-day discovery of defective wine. But no complaints here, since Joe and I get so much out of these blind tasting nights. An evening of wine appreciation like these is so much more than the sum of its parts, even when there's a minus in the mix, so to speak.

So without further ado, here's our notes (Joe's are inset and mine follow) on some wines made from white grapes along the Spanish-French border: blends and varietals from Roussanne, Viognier, Grenache Blanc, Verdejo, Viura (Maccabeu), Malvoisie and the two Mansengs (Gros Manseng and Petit Manseng).

(The order corresponds with the bottles aligned across the top of the post, which are clickable images that offer more detailed product info.)

1. Domaine Mourgues du Grès Terre d'Argence Vin de Pays du Gard 2005

The decanter on the left held the Domaine Mourgues du Grès Terre d'Argence Vin de Pays du Gard, a blend of Roussanne, Viognier and Grenache Blanc. A new appellation for me, this wine was reminiscent of the white Hermitage I had recently. Yellow gold in the glass, the nose showed lavender, lemon, apple and toast. A touch thin on the palate, but as it warmed it showed a nice, rich apple flavour. Good acidity, but a bit hot. Very Rhone-like, and a nice effort.

Eyes: Darker than the others, kind of greyish

Nose: Apple, flowers, with complexity

Mouth: Honeycomb, note of cream supplanted onto a grassy edge. Full-bodied and heady.

Stomach: Had this one in a leftover minibottle so I opened it for dinner two days later. Vanilla notes totally pronounced where I hadn't thought to note anything earlier -- a sign or poor oak integration of poor conservation? In any case, with my dinner of trout and sautéed veg, it was an okay match but the woodiness was a bit overwhelming. For a fresh bottle, it'd be a great pairing for boldly seasoned Asian stir fries loaded with crunchy MSG'ed vegetables. An umami-suited wine.

François Collard, Beaucaire, France. 14.5%.

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2. Château les Pins Côtes du Roussillon 2003

The next decanter held a Château les Pins Côtes du Roussillon. Corked, unfortunately, as there were some neat aromas hiding underneath - cooked pears, flowers - and some almonds on the palate.

Eyes: Golden-yellow

Nose: Cardboard over white fruit

Mouth: Complexity is there but it's all coloured by cork taint. (Fruit from 2003 already receding it would seem making this even more pithy and pitty -- hard to assess whether buying another bottle would be in order.)

Stomach: This bottle would do a disservice to food.

Cave des Vignerons de Baixas, Baixas, France. 14.5%.

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3. Palacios Remondo Plàcet Rioja 2005

For both Marcus and I (and my wife who joined us later) the clear favourite was the Palacios Remondo Plàcet, a white Rioja wine made from the local Viura grape and reviewed here earlier this year. A pale white gold in the glass - the palest of the bunch - I thought it might be the Rueda by the colour. Very interesting on the nose – citrusy (limes), minerally, and floral – gorgeous. Elegant, rich and luscious, with a nice long bitter finish. Sometimes a great wine comes together so well that you can’t use words to describe why you like it so much – the Plàcet is one of those. Marcus and I just bought up the last bottles on the island (sorry).

Eyes: Straw

Nose: Flint, funky and direct -- this wine was less changeable, more distinctive than the others.

Mouth: Mineral but smooth, honeysuckle, with nutty-bitter finish. Medium body.

Stomach: Yum. My favourite style of wine of the bunch so I'd eat this with anything or drink it down all on its own. Joe's selection of cheeses from the Pyrenees did it justice, as did a salmon mousse and yeasty baguette. Even a saucisson side -- why not? Entirely lovely.

Alfaro, España. 13.5%.

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4. Domaine Cauhapé Sève D'Automne Jurançon 2004

The next decanter held the Domaine Cauhapé Sève D'Automne, a wine from the Jurançon sec appellation (made from the Gros Manseng grape) and tasted in my Southwest France review. Deep yellow gold in the glass, it showed green melon, banana, honey and pineapple on the nose. The tropical theme continued on the palate - papaya and melon, with a nice bitter and minerally finish. Once again, the whopping alcohol was not overly apparent. Flavourful and elegant, but an extrovert amongst a more reserved peer group. Note: the priciest wine of the evening.

Eyes: Golden, most visually consistent of the bunch, viscous

Nose: Exotic fruit, honey

Mouth: Linear attack, white plum, spice changing more to green apple with a long finish. Nice acidity. Lime zinginess.

Stomach: What a well-made wine -- the way the acidity holds up against the fatness of the fruit. Had leftovers with dessert the following night and though this is a sec, is great with any course. Delicious!

Monein, France. 15%.

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5. Bodegas Aura Rueda 2005

The decanter on the right held a Bodegas Aura, a Verdejo from the Spanish Rueda appellation. This golden wine was rather simple - apples and lemon rind on the nose, some minerals. On the palate is was thin and light, lemony and minerally, with a nice crisp aftertaste. Kinda Pinot Griggio-ish, this was a terrific white quaffer - uncomplex, but fun. And the best price of the evening...

Eyes: Yellowish

Nose: Crisp nose of gooseberries and white pepper

Mouth: A full-fronted attack: Racy, appley, lots of zest. A bit of alcohol on the finish lingers. Odd resinated quality.

Stomach: A stand-in for Sauvignon in term of food pairings. There was a goat cheese (Tomme de Chevre des Pyrenees) that Joe served that initially suggested a good fit, but I think it liked it best with an interesting and zesty semi-hard cheese from Spain called Manchego. Clearly, Joe's cheese-mongering abilities live up to his keen wine appreciation.

Castilla y León, Rueda, España. 13.5%.

Cab Franc table talk: Château Gaillard Vieilles Vignes 2000, Charles Joguet Clos du Chêne Vert 2002, Thierry Germain La Marginale 2003, Steltzner 2004

It was a huge pleasure to partake is this substantial (and revealing) tasting of some fine Cabernet Franc wines.

By teaming up with fellow blogger Joe, I was able to stage a worthwhile look at this varietal in two New World and three Old World examples: from Napa Valley's Stags Leap District, from Niagara Peninsula's Glenlake Vineyard and three from Loire appellations, including Thierry Germain's Domaine des Roches Neuves cuvée La Marginale, which sadly is no longer available for sale in Quebec.

Thanks to Joe for extracting that bottle from his cellar. He also brought the Napa Cab produced by Steltzner Vineyards. I provided the Chinon and Niagara wines, plus a unique Loire red blend from Vincent Girault at Château Gaillard in Mesland, just to get our tasting hats on. Here's how I saw it all go down.

Château Gaillard Vieilles Vignes Touraine-Mesland 2000

This wine was not tasted blind. It was, as I mentioned, our warm-up wine. From the 2000 vintage, this has got to be the cheapest oldest wine you can buy at the SAQ. Adding to the intrigue was a percentage Gamay that the winemaker claimed to blend into this seven-year-old version of Cabernet Franc. How would this taste? A lot like Malbec actually, and that's of course because Côt was the third blending grape involved, perhaps the primary one. The Gamay provided a squelch of fruity tartness, the Cabernet seemed to add some rich cocoa notes. But it mostly seemed to be an expression most characteristic of Malbec or Gamay than Cabernet. (Several nights later this wine is still hanging on nicely with some zip). For $19, this bottle from 2000 is a rather odd delivery of an otherwise friendly and fun quaffer.

Château Gaillard: Certified organic and biodynamic. Vincent Girault, Mesland, Loir et Cher, France. 12%.

Charles Joguet Clos du Chêne Vert Chinon 2002

To me this was tell-tale Chinon, and the easiest to separate from the rest of the wines. It was decanted and definitely needs it. Even after a half-hour, it was still settling in. On the nose I first got cassis and cream. It seemed one-note on the palate, but that was still changing in the glass. On the palate it became less strict, offering luscious notes of tomato and green pepper. It is a typically vegetal wine with strong earthy/mineral elements so it's not surprising it goes so well with food. When I served beef tenderloin, seasoned potatoes wedges and garlic-steamed broccoli (which, perhaps unfortunately, only occurred after the wines were revealed), this Cabernet really showed its stuff. It ushered in the meal like none of the others, a perfect partner for steak and frites or for simmered beef and fresh vegetables. (I think that only food with really spicy or sweet elements would prevent this wine from shining as bright -- this wine definitely has a style shared with the ultimate dining wines.)

Clos du Chêne Vert: Charles Joguet, Sazilly, France. 12.5%.

Thierry Germain Domaine des Roches Neuves La Marginale Saumur Champigny 2003

This was the first wine we decanted and the first wine I tasted blind. By the time I stopped taking notes it was still baffling me, especially as to its true potential. This wine was so solid with so much depth that I felt the best reading on what this wine really amounts to could only come years down the road. It had a sharp nose rendering a complex bouquet. On the palate it was equally complex and powerful. The finish delivers admirably huge tannins -- definitely an aspect worth revisiting in the future. If it was a bit tight in the early stages, a palpable acidity was shown so I see no reason why it wouldn't last a decade or more. The fruit reminded me of Saumur fruit and terroir, though with many times the body and many times the lift. Ultimately, this convinced me that it was the other French wine, though clearly more New World-ish than the Chinon. A revelation -- but it manhandled my meal a bit. If only I could save my dinner and then reheat it with this wine ten years from now.

La Marginale: Thierry Germain, Varrains, France. 13%.

Steltzner Vineyards Stags Leap District Napa Valley 2004

Here is where I lost my way. The nose of this wine presented grenadine and spices and a somewhat understated aroma of leather. This was soft and alluring and was channeling the French wines I drink almost every night. On the palate, it was sweetish and offered less intrigue than the nose. It was more heavily oaked and yet much lighter than the Marginale -- which is a far from ideal combination. Especially with food, it ends up generating vanilla and so it comes off cloying. You might sense that it has peaked and is already receding. So my guess was that this was the 2000 Niagara wine rather than the Napa three-year-old. I was wrong. Surprise! I really could not tell at all that this was an over-alcoholized American wine of 15%. Credit to Steltzner, though as the night went on and I revisited it after dessert the alcohol was suddenly unmasked. The Napa zap! But too late -- I was fooled. To me this was the most demure and attractive nose of the bunch but it took me spiraling downhill from there. If I had it again, I wouldn't decant.

Steltzner: Napa, California, U.S.A. 15%.

Hillebrand Estates Glenlake Vineyards Showcase Niagara Peninsula 2000

Alcoholized and highly evolved in the glass, despite not decanting this bottle. This wine is oxidized and was rebottled for return.

This post mirrors what Joe already published over on Joe's Wine. But unlike Joe, I am not including my notes for the Niagara bottle (and I instead mentioned the Gaillard, even though it was not tasted blind). I'm taking the Niagara wine back. This is my decision. Joe wrote me that he "didn't find it to be something that needs returning," but he understood my feelings. The fact is I had tasted the Niagara wine earlier this year and wrote glowing notes on it here. But it showed up at our tasting showing seriously aged fruit and oxidation and this was merely a matter of weeks after purchase from the winery. How disappointing.

MY LESSONS LEARNED

But I think my real disappointment was that during our tasting's blind phase, I didn't guess correctly. I observed yet I let a favourable memory of the Niagara bottle and a distaste of American wine dictate my guesses. This was because I mistook the strength of oxidizing elements on the nose for the presence of high levels of alcohol. I was shocked to see this actually revealed as Niagara. It made prefect sense to the neutral bystander, and in hindsight. This wine was much older, and had my observations been interpreted correctly, I was there. But I was swayed despite -- perhaps paradoxically because of -- the fact that we were doing them blind.

Lesson 1: Blind tastings are best performed on bottles that you have not tasted before or you'll be tempted to outsmart your own blind observations with memory and personal response, which is quite disappointing because it defeats the whole purpose.

Or rather, in blind testings, it's best to forget the past. I think my tasting partner Joe had a firm handle on this aspect. He had tasted the Steltzner before. Experience is knowledge but it's synthesized knowledge -- be advised to leave out individual bottles experiences!

"No need to be disappointed," said Joe in the postmortem. "It shows that the blind worked, and you correctly separated the old world from the new." [It's true I did ID this and the other French wines correctly].

"The Canuck wine was a bit tired -- Cab Franc, probably from younger vines than all of the others, is not going to keep forever... note that the bottle to bottle variability probably increases over time. Your previous experience was eight months ago at the end of a wine's life -- perhaps not that much of a surprise they were quite different?" surmised Joe.

OTHER LESSON LEARNED

Lesson 2: Is it hard to keep track of wine consumption at a blind tasting while it is happening! I don't think I'll ever figure out a way to better keep track when there's so much set before me. Perhaps proper tasting glasses would help?

Lesson 3: Blind tastings with "table talk" can sway evaluation as much as "drinking the label" does in non-blind tastings. Joe and I had some table talk, but not much. We didn't discuss conclusions until the end. And besides, what little table talk there was had almost no effect since the wines were positioned blind as well as tasted blind. This prevented a shared order of wines between to the two of us so table talk comments could not be attributed to a particular wine and therefore sway tasting opinions.

Lesson 4: I did not assess colour in the tasting because I thought it would too easily reveal the wine, given the broad four-year gap in cuvée vintages. The lighting was also poor so I let Joe turn up the house lights while I put the final touches on dinner (see Joe's notes for proper scoring). But the fact is that the wines' colour didn't reveal much at all, no matter how hard I tried to read them.

How to wash the wine glasses you most cherish (One man's story of tough love turned ghastly)

Holy busted blind Riedels, Batman!


Hallowe'en won't be the same without my trusty pair of "trick or treat" stemless blind tasting glasses to raise my spirits.

Luckily I still have one glass left to drink with but as my friend Johanna, who brought these Riedels back from Austria for me, said: what's the point of tasting with only one blind tasting glass? You need at least two to generate intrigue. Just like you need more than one guest at a masquerade.



Even in shambles, my blind Riedel showed its beauty, its charm, its form and its function. No matter how I reconstructed the crime scene, this was one tough wine glass to read: The dark, nearly-black-but-kind-of-purplish glass masked its contents so well that's practically impossible to photograph the inside of its bowl, even with great lighting shining directly into it.

The black hole is such an apt metaphor for wine appreciation in my house.

THE SCENE OF THE CRIME

Pose it and repose it as I may, the actual events leading up to my Riedel's demise confound me. I know fully well what happened but I have a hard time admitting it actually came to pass. The glass died in my own hands as a result of my own tough love -- harsh, abrasive and spotlessly clean.

Yes, I broke this glass washing it, something I hadn't done to a wine glass since my Spiegelau Spätburgunder glass bit the dust several years ago.

The problem is that washing stemware has a learning curve. Until you master it, you're on shaky ground. Once you master it, you're laughing. Laughing until stemless glasses come out and shake things up. Then you've got to rethink your whole approach.

HOW TO WASH YOUR FINE CRYSTAL (WITH STEMS ONLY)

The way I see it, stems are the easiest part of the glass to break yet the most integral part of the glass to prevent breakage, especially when washing up. Here's what I mean:

The trick when washing is to grasp the bowl of the glass with your two forefingers and your thumb. This way you do not to apply any direct or twisting pressure to the fragile stem. If you do, the image at left reveals the results (as you can see a wine glass with a snapped stem offers a unique opportunity to introduce a fancy candle snuffer/one heck of an expensive dust cover to you household, so it's not all bad).

But there's more! Grasping the bowl is sometimes not enough. Sudsy water can be slippery so I always hook my baby finger around the stem loosely. A good finger curl anchors the delicate process of washing (and drying too) and secures the glass should the bowl ever slip from your busy fingers and thumb.

Obviously, stemless glasses do not allow this. They lack this kind of forgiving component. Since there's no stem, more pressure ends up being applied to the bowl and rim to garner that same sense of kitchen-sink security, or in my case, my over-protective nature and...

Snap! Oh the irony!

Lesson 1: Don't smother the things you love so that the fear of losing them is what ultimately drives them away.

Lesson 2: [insert instructions on how to wash stemless glasses here]

Cooking with different wines, then tasting the results blind

Here is a useful experiment performed by the Dining and Wine team at the New York Times. They've titled the piece It Boils Down to This: Cheap Wine Works Fine. Bravo!

If you're like me, you're a wino who's given some thought to the inherent loss that is cooking with wine. Sure, it's good for the recipe, but damn, is this what the winemaker really had in mind? Can anything in the world denature wine more than cooking it in pot filled with various and sundry flavours, even if heated only for a few seconds? If you place any value whatsoever on the bottle you've just opened, you've got to wonder if this way lies madness.

CHEAP WINE + COOKING = FINE DINING ?

Stop wondering. The answer is yes. Yes, basically it is madness. Cooking with wine over $20 is an unwarranted loss, a wrong-headed ego trip, against the laws of nature. I could go on. I exaggerate? Just read the article and you'll find out some of the science behind it. These tests employed clinical methods and you've got to appreciate the results, including conclusions like:

• the tough and astringent tannic component of wine is the last remaining attribute you can identify in wine that's been cooked of all its subtleties
• rather than wine's quality, wine's sweetness makes a more noticeable difference in food dishes
• cheaper wines tend to integrate into dishes better than expensive ones (according to the panel, $70 Barolo actually made risotto taste worse while adding Two-Buck Chuck made it taste better -- if that doesn't add insult to injury to the deranged chef who approaches dangerously close to your wine cellar, what would?)

This kind of reverse psychology when dealing with wine as a kitchen ingredient doesn't really surprise me. After all, my second-ever post was about the benefits of cooking with Beaujolais nouveau, most hated of all wines here at Weingolb.

And yet a certain New York chef (make that executive chef, pardon me) who was interviewed for this story actually went on record to say that his restaurant always uses its expensive Barolos in its kitchens but when he cooks at home for himself he finds that he appreciates a cheaper wine in his food . . .

When I make the dish at home, I use a dolcetto d’Alba — a simpler wine from the same region — and honestly I like it even better.

Hmmm. No need to ponder long and hard about this. Now we all know why Mr. Executive Chef switches it up at home. The reasons are two-fold: because expensive wines are designed for the tasting glass, not the braising pan; and because he naturally prefers that his customers foot the huge wine bill rather than him! Bra-vo.

White, red and rosé: If you close your eyes, can you tell which is which?

I once heard something crazy and it went like this. Red and white wines when tasted blind at about the same temperature are difficult to identify. Studies say 60% of participants failed and this Wine Lovers Page article explains more. This is shocking because a) so many people consider themselves exclusively white or red wine drinkers so how could they screw up telling them apart and b) red and white wines are often posited as polar opposites both at the dinner table and in wine talk in general.

Although I thought I could distinguish the two in a blind taste test, how shocking a notion is this really? Not really that shocking, especially if you had styles of red and white wine you were largely unfamiliar with. After careful reflection, I think that b) is a vast oversimplification of the world of wine and a) can be the expression of a preference for many different things -- not just taste -- such as the refreshment value of chilled drink like white wine, for instance. But basically, in the end, shouldn't the presence of tannin in reds -- and all the elements it helps to create, structure, depth and astringency -- be a dead giveaway?


And so with that, I got out my trusty Riedel blind tasting glasses, a gift from my thoughtful friend Johanna who visited Austria last year and picked them up for me as a souvenir. I was glad to christen these top-notch glasses in this way as until now they only made for lovely conversion pieces that sat impressively atop my wine fridge. In action they are even more fantastic, as you may be able to see here. They are thin but strong crystal and they have a purple tint when held up to the light but do not reveal the slightest hint of its contents' colour. Obviously stemless, they have depressions built in the bottom and side for your fingers. Easy to swirl and a great shape for catching aromas. Using these babies, determining red wine from white wine was going to be a cinch!


And what can I tell you. It was easy. Here we are pouring out "the reveal" ... drumroll. Correct answer! My tasting companion who is an occasional wine drinker but mainly a beer lover, had no difficulty whatsoever. Seeing this, I told her to open a bottle of rosé wine and then secretly choose two of the three available wines to feed me. This was also relatively easy to detect. She had given me pink and white wine. The pink wine had a tell-tale tartness and slight astringency that simply was not there in the soft and rich white wine. The white we opened actually had much more body than the rosé, and maybe even than the red. That level of "lightness" which people often assume creates the great divide between red and white was not really a true factor here. Despite a lighter wine with a darker colour, I correctly guessed which was white and which was rosé. I pour out the reveal again.


Reds lighter in tannin would've given us more trouble likely. We had a red from southern France (a Syrah, Grenache and Mourvèdre blend) with a firm tannic presence (Clarification: the red is this one not what the label would indicate on the half-bottle, which I used to conserve the wine which had been opened previously.) I also wonder whether a white wine with greater bite, like a Sauvignon Blanc, might have muddled the identification process with its bracing attack. (I know I once had a Beaujolais that seemed so sour and attacking that I thought it could been mistaken for white.) Incidentally, our white was a unique Chardonnay-regional grape blend from Sicily, which I like a lot.

We probably should've had a third person there who would try to decipher the red from the rosé. After all the rosé was the same basic blend as the red and came from the same region. Yet, I'm betting it would be simple to distinguish, since the rosé was so noticeably less consistant and extracted than the red. Like comparing water to wine, you might say?


The serving temperature for this experiment is a key variable. I recommend something in the middle -- 12 degrees say -- so as not to give one side or the other too much trouble in naturally expressing its aroma-driven characteristics and acid levels.

All in all it was a worthwhile experiment. I think the lesson here is to picture wine as a full spectrum rather than just red, pink and white. Cheers!

My experiment in storing opened wine: Etchart Privado Cafayate & Carte D'Or Buzet 2003

The other night I opened a couple of low-end Cabernets. The first one was a Buzet blend from 2003. It was a disappointingly hot cuvée from an otherwise reliable co-operative. I didn't drink too much of it before I turned to open the other Cabernet, also from 2003. This one was Etchart's Cafayate Cab Sauv. It was better -- though not exactly supple either -- but my dinner was practically finished by that point.

And so, as a solo drinker, I faced a major storage issue: the better part of each of the two bottles I had opened for myself remained there in front of me, waiting for another opportunity to be drunk.


I keep several mini bottles of varying sizes specifically for leftover wine purposes. If you've read this blog before you know that I routinely minimize the amount of air and then chill until next serving, usually in following 48 hours (at which point I usually comment on the wine's development/degradation). But I've never attempted to formally prove why this rebottling process is worth the effort. Why bother transferring a half-full bottle of wine at all? Well, here is what I did and what I found out...


I filled a mini bottle to the brim with the Buzet, tightly screwcapped the lid and refrigerated it. I then repeated these steps for the Cafayate. That left roughly 1/3 of the wine in the original bottles. I re-stoppered them both with their respective corks and left them to sit at room temperature -- 18 degrees Celsius. And I waited three days before returning to them.


A bit of background and rationale for you: The effects of oxidation of wine -- basically wine tasting flat -- occurs through a natural process that is stimulated once the bottle is uncorked. But there are many people who say that the pouring of wine from half-full bottles (and into mini bottles) dissolves just as much oxygen in the wine as leaving the wine in a bottle that features a vast expanse of air. (My own educated guess from experience was that the presence of air over time during storage would be a greater oxidizing force than the momentary act of pouring into a mini bottle.)

To this experiment, I added a second variable of storage temperature. I wanted to investigate this because I always chill wine remainders rather than keep them at cellar temperature or room temperature. Yet I rarely or never see restaurants serve red wine by the glass in such a manner, and I have heard that oxidation is slowed at lower temperatures.


Days later, the wines are reopened and tasted. The results were conclusive. The methods of storing wine made for a very detectable difference in a blind taste test. Not only that, but the wines that were stored using my typical method tasted better than the other stored wines. I found this in a blind experiment comparing the Buzet samples and a second participant also found this when comparing the Cafayates blind during a second round. (After my first round, I separated out the two Buzet samples by deduction: since I had isolated and revealed to myself the two Cayafate samples -- which had tasted so radically different that my initial hypothesis was that one was a Buzet and the other was a Cafayate -- I was able to perform a second round of blind tasting for the Buzet. See complete notes below.)

CONCLUSION, FUTURE RESEARCH, AND MY ROUGH TASTING NOTES

Unfortunately, with this experiment, I cannot say whether it was storage temperature or presence of air that had a greater effect on the stored wine. Likely these variables are intertwined. Regardless, my storage method is better than doing the standard recorking, which is pretty much doing nothing at all.

This experiment looked at oxidation in a somewhat limited sense. It was more or less assumed that the more oxidized a wine became, the less palatable it would be. This should not be taken as a constant rule. In choosing Cabernets and a period of three days, I suspected that some elements of the wine might be more palatable, and I definitely think that the Etchart Privado Cabernet Sauvignon Cafayate 2003 was more fully developed three days after opening than immediately out of the bottle. This adds some interesting "reverse psychology" when creating storage conditions for your leftover wine, and certainly goes against Émile Peynaud's theory that aeration of opened wine is indefensible, something I consider even easier disprove than perceived rates of oxidation. Nevertheless, the Cafayate could've been drinking beautifully after one day or two days -- I cannot speculate on that based on this experiment.

Here are my complete notes:

MINI BOTTLE, CAFAYATE SAMPLE: Lovely bouquet of minerals and spice (Ed: I totally pegged this for French Cabernet -- and a good one at that -- when tasting it blind. Again this raises questions about whether the a little oxidation/aeration isn't such a bad thing).

ORIGINAL BOTTLE, CAFAYATE SAMPLE: Heaps of spice. Obvious oak and vanilla. (Ed: This tasted too round and flabby -- as I often expect oaked New World wine to be after a couple of days. That said, it was surprising to me that it tasted as good as it did considering it was so full of air and at room temperature for so long. Credit to Etchart for an outstanding value Cabernet.)

MINI BOTTLE, BUZET SAMPLE: too hot, quite unpalatable

ORIGINAL BOTTLE, BUZET SAMPLE: totally rounded, thoroughly tasteless

(Ed: These two Buzets were harder to differentiate than the Cafayates, I think because of the fact that this wine, even in its optimum condition, was hot, and rather nasty. The original bottle Buzet sample simply stood out as the nastiest of the nasty, and having seen how the original bottle Cafayate sample played out in round one of my tasting, I was fairly sure how to label these two Buzet samples.)

My Bordeaux 2005 tasting notes

Well, I'm fresh back from my Bordeaux 2005 tasting, which was held in my kitchen.

Now that I've arrived in the bedroom and I reach for my laptop with the hand opposite to the one that's cradling my glass of Graves white wine, 2005 in Bordeaux has really sunk in as being one of the finest vintages I can recall.

Alright, I admit I don't have a firm grip on what most of recent vintages in Bordeaux were like. What, you're expecting Jancis Robinson here? While I do find her one of the most demystifying wine writers as I indicated here, I am choosing to be even more down-to-earth. So click her link in the sidebar to read her full report or continue reading this post if you want a more basic approach to the current Bordeaux yields, the topic that is continually capturing the wine world at the moment.

WHAT 2005 MEANS TO THE EVERYDAY WINE CONSUMER

Here's the deal. I wanted to partake in all this new amazing vintage talk, but in a way that would benefit me and others like me, who are of simple means. I wanted to know if the affordable 2005 Bordeaux bottles that are coming out now (only whites for the time-being) have noticeably improved. So to best compare the current offering to previous vintages, I took a 2004 and a 2005 of the same bottle and tasted it blind. Here are the results of my investigation.

• Tasting things blind really require blind tasting glasses -- the kind that are made of black glass and shield any perception of colour. Because I don't have any, I could immediately differentiate the current vintage from the old one. The 2005 was obviously more lightly pigmented than the 2004, which had a gold tinge to it. I didn't need to taste anything to tell the vintages apart.


• When I turned out the lights and started over again, I made more headway:
  
  • The bouquet on one was of lemongrass; on the other, it was softer and more reminiscent of white flowers
  
  
  • On the palate, the first one possessed a silky texture and notes of litchi -- it was very balanced and refreshing; the second one was less so and instead had a weightiness to it that was marked by thoroughly ripened and slightly spicy fruits
  
  
  • As for a finish, the first one excelled: it was what I consider perfect for a lively Sémillon-Sauvignon blend, harmonious and delicious with traces of vanilla lingering amid the citrus flavours you'd expect. Yes, the first glass I had been tasting throughout was the 2005. It was remarkable and at $15, this 2005 Château Roquetaillade La Grange (clickable, above) is highly recommended.
  
  
  
  
• Finally, this tasting made me realize how ageing impacts a wine and how that affects comparison, especially for white wine which are generally "drink now". Comparing a new vintage to previous years in side-by-side tastings can never be a perfect gauge unless you are referring to tasting notes made when those previous vintages were new. When you base your comparison on how a wine tastes during the same period in a wine's life, you more accurately assess the value of a particular year and, in this case, best determine how formidable 2005 in Bordeaux is.
  

Okay Jancis you win. 2005 is your year. See you and your notes next April.

It's wise to depant after opening wines for certain people I know

"WHAT is with this blog business!?" screeched Jane, a friend who perhaps just came to realize that the time I used to devote to socializing is now being absorbed by my wineblog. She was exasperated. Not only did she recently end her blogging career two minutes after it started (she instantly forgot her URL), but she also has absolutely no interest in wine talk -- unless it's a discussion about getting the waiter to pull out a corkscrew. As a result a blog about wine is her sworn enemy and I was harbouring it daily.

And with that, she reached out for another swat at my shoulder, jaw clenched and making a show of looking fierce. I didn't get too pummelled because the group at the table behind us was up to no good. We all stopped and watched, brows raised, as one, two, three elegant pieces of stemware emerged glistening from a sleekly padded wine caddy. We knew our restaurant was bring-your-own-wine, but this was the first we had witnessed bring your own glasses. Jane was about to speak. But wait, now our neighbours were inserting drip-free wine pourers into their uncorked bottles in a way so that the paper bags wrapping the bottles stayed firmly in place and offered no hint of the bottle or the wine producer. Now I was sharing Jane's look. We were aghast.

I thought that if the wine glasses have to be that fine, it's obvious that someone's going to be indulging in some pretty exclusive wines. Good times! But now seeing these masked bottles turned my curiosity into obsession. What were they drinking? I was practically put off my food. Luckily I soon learned that this was not a elitist snub to the rest of the dining room but a tasting challenge for the diners at this table: Remark on each wine free of label bias and then reveal and compare notes. Now that seems like fun. I'll have to organize something like that sometime.

But maybe not when Jane is there. According to Jane, to decant a wine that benefits from a little breathing is cause for ridicule. She'd roll her eyes, as if the most pretentious act ever committed was unfolding right in her lap. I must admit that she's becoming a better sport with time. (I tell her that this is called mellowing out with age and then whisper that she is like a feisty Madiran.) Last time the topic came up, we were chatting about the general rule that it's almost always a nice idea to decant before dinner. She playfully jumped in: "I don't know about how I would decant, but I find that on most nights I like to depant just before I get into bed."

Maybe it's funnier after the third bottle.