by Thierry Boeuf in The Tribune (March 6, 2001)

 

Tasting the true picture

 

One thing that always impresses me when I meet new people is that a number of them give me tips or information about wine and they hear about my professional background. This is quite common in France, where some people feel they acquired a knowledge of wine by privilege of their birthplace. The good thing about wine is that you will not die from your mistakes but I wonder if the same people give tips to their doctors about healthcare?

            A few weeks ago, I wrote that Oenology is the science of winemaking. This means that an oenologists job begins while the grapes are still in the vineyard and finishes once the wine is in the bottle. In the vineyard, during the weeks preceding the harvest, he closely follows the maturation of the grapes by periodically picking samples and analyzing them in order to decide when they should be picked to achieve the kind of wine he desires. This step can lead to the grapes being picked in the northern hemisphere from anywhere between August and late November. The type of wine made depends, of course, on the grape variety and the region in which it is grown.  However, even in the same area and with the same variety you can have very different styles of wine depending on the date of harvest. For example, if we were to compare a regular Riesling from Alsace with a Late Harvest Riesling, such as the ones I mentioned in my last column, the former one will make a relatively dry and crisp brand, though very flavoured with the specific aromas of this variety, such as roses and lychees, while the latter will be very sweet, less acidic and with flavours such as honey and caramel. Note that these two wines can perfectly well come from the very same area of a vineyard.

            After this time of preparation the main task, for the Oenologist, is to manage the process of the grapes transformation into wine through the different techniques of picking and selecting the grapes, crushing them, choosing the optimal temperature of fermentations and many other criteria, which he will have to do with the help of physical and chemical analyses and tastings.

Having worked in a number of wineries myself, one of which was a famous château of Bordeaux, I can tell you that the best wines are often not so pleasurable to taste at this particular stage. The taste is often closer to that of grass than to the final product. Fortunately, the job of an Oenologist does not end with the fermentation process, since the management of the wines aging before it is bottled is much more pleasant for the taste.

Consequently, you can understand that most of the tastings performed by Oenologists while the product is still in the production process do not have much to do with the renowned wine shows where you will find the second type of wine professional: the Sommelier.

Every year there is a worldwide competition that hands out the envied title of best Sommelier of the year. The participants have to answer a number of questions about wines- their profiles, the way to serve them and, in the most impressive part, they have to describe wines that are blind tasted and say what they are.

Moreover, they have to recognize the region of origin of the wine and the type.  The most spectacular part is when the Sommelier can completely identify the wine, even identifying who the winemaker was and which was the vintage.

If you want to see how difficult that can be, just try it with some friends. Taste a white wine and a red wine while blindfolded and say which is which. If people other than the tasters can do the preparation so that it totally complies with the rules of a blind tasting, I bet you will be quite surprised.

Back to the Sommeliers. Beside these impressive shows, they can usually be found working in restaurants, where their job is to give customers advice about the best wine to accompany the food. In some cases they are only wine waiters and, in restaurants with a real cellar, they have to buy the wine and know when a bottle is ready to be served, and how and with what the wine should be served.

 Sommeliers often buy the wine the year it is bottled to manage the ageing process, which can be very long for some red Pauillacs from the Bordeaux area, or for some sweet white wines such as the top Sauternes. The best known part of their job is the advice they give for matching the right wine with the food the customer wants. For that part they have previously done their homework, which was actually to taste the food with some wines and choose which ones at which preparation match it.

Preparation, that is a very important part if you really want to enjoy the wine, especially if you invest in an expensive bottle. For example the temperature will change dramatically the taste of a wine- when warmer they taste more acidic than cooler, which would lead me to advise people here in the Bahamas to cool almost all wines.

 If I simply employed the words normally used to describe the temperature at which to drink wines, this would lead a number of people to think that the full bodied red, such as a Shiraz, or an old red wine such as a Pauillac, should be served at room temperature and they would naturally serve it at the temperature of their dining room. This expression was invented in Europe over a century ago, where the climate is much cooler before there were all kinds of modern heating systems. Taking these factors into account, you understand why room temperature means around 60-65F. Then again, each wine has its better temperature to be served at even if, of course, the only criteria, which really matters is your personal taste.

Another factor just as important as temperature is when the wine should be open before you drink it. For instance, I have been drinking inexpensive - but good - wines from the south of France for many years. Here in Nassau we have the Paul Sapin wines in this category, including a full-bodied Shiraz from Languedoc. I have often been surprised to discover how much better they are the day after the bottle has been opened.

 In order to avoid waiting that long, you can transfer the wine into a decanter, and the oxygenation that occurs when pouring is enough to, as we say, open the wine in a shorter time. But in this instance, too, nobody can say better than the Sommelier who tested it how long each wine should breathe before it is served.

There is another category of wine professionals that have to taste wine- the wine merchants. They do a job very close to the sommelier by managing their inventory and knowing their wines and, even I, when I want to try something new, always ask the people who sell it how it is.

The region, the type of wine and the vintage and the information on the label are not enough to know what is really in the bottle. In the end, only a properly organized tasting can really give a good idea about the wines qualities.

Professional tastings have to be held under controlled circumstances - at the right time of the day when people start feeling hungry; with the right light so that you can appreciate not only the main color of the wine but also the brightness and the tints on the side; without perfumes or other smells than the wine itself, and without noise.

 If, in addition to these criteria, the tasters are not stressed you will have the ideal conditions for a good analysis. This is also the way for wine lovers to discover new products or simply learn how to take the best advantage of the wine.

In the end, the important thing is that although we can speak at length about wine we should never forget that it was made to be drunk and we will find in the bottle, like many poets, many other reasons to speak.