Archive for the 'Tasting and taste' Category

The joy of brett

Published on January 26, 2013 in Tasting and taste. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

A recent seminar at UC Davis seems to have sparked a little flurry of discussion on brett.  These seem to be five of the PowerPoint presentations used at the seminar: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.  And here are a couple of interesting follow-up articles I came across on wine-searcher and Palate Press.

I thought the brett debate amongst wine lovers was relatively straightforward.  Some think that no detectable level of brett is acceptable, not only for its unpleasant aromas, but because it suppresses more positive aromas in the wine.  On the other hand, a commonly expressed opinion is that, at low levels, bretty smells add interest to a wine - complexity if you like.  But even those who see low levels of brett as potentially positive seem to implicitly agree that the smells are basically rather unpleasant.

However, findings presented at this seminar (presumably they were known before, but certainly not by me) throw the debate wide open.  It appears that some aromas produced by brett are judged by some people to be unequivocally positive.  These include chili powder, red pepper, black pepper, cardamom, leather, cooked meat, smoked meat, coffee, mocha, graphite and cigar.  I don’t think it is being claimed that these aromas are always due to brett, but they certainly can be.  My guess is that no one really knows how they arise in practice. Another example is the bretty band-aid aroma, which apparently is recognised much more positively as five-spice by those more familiar with Chinese cooking than Western hospitals.

However, even given this positive angle, there is still the issue of how to bretty aroma development in the right direction - to improve the wine rather than reduce it only to the smell of shit.  We might well learn how to do this in the winemaking process.  Indeed we must do it already to an extent, even if we do not know exactly how it works.  But after bottling, the conditions to which the wine is subjected are out of the hands of the winemaker.  So unless any remaining brett is zapped with a pre-bottling injection of sulphur, each bottle will develop unpredictably depending on the precise content of the bottle and its environment.

A new Brett Impact Wheel of aromas was presented at the UC Davis seminar, and I am wondering if brett connoisseurship might become one of the next big things in wine, replacing minerality and terroir expression as subject to discuss.  If it does, remember you heard it first here.

Olfactory white, and complexity

Published on December 23, 2012 in Tasting and taste. 0 Comments Tags: , .

For me, as far as winetasting is concerned, the most thought-provoking piece of research in 2012 was published an article where the concept of olfactory white, the smell equivalent of white noise, was mooted.

The researchers mixed unrelated aromas of equal intensity, and presented them to the noses of the participants.  In the words of the authors, ‘the chief finding of this study is illustrated in [the figure reproduced below]: The more components two mixtures have, the more similar they smell, even though they have no individual components in common. Moreover, odorant mixtures with ~30 components or more begin to smell alike, having a quality we call “olfactory white.”’

olfactory_white

The usual assumption seems to be that the introduction of new aromas into a wine serves to increase its complexity.  In this article there is at least a hint that additional flavours may serve little purpose, merely taking it one step closer to olfactory white, or at least to the point where it merely has a generic wine smell that is indistinguishable from other wines.

Personally, I actually find that rather satisfying.  When ever I read, usually on the back label, that something, for example a small percentage of grape variety, is used to “add complexity”, my bullshit detectors start twitching.   It is just a pity that all those top Burgundy and Barolo producers never thought of adding a soupçon of Syrah to give their wine more complexity.   Adding Syrah to give insipid Burgundy more oomph is of course a totally different matter!

It also got me thinking about the concept of complexity, which is perhaps all too often taken for granted.  It is one of those winetasting terms that rolls off the tongue and pen a little too easily, and is almost synonymous with good.  Here are a few definitions:

Many-faceted smell and taste. The hallmark of a well-developed fine wine (Michael Broadbent: Winetasting)

Opposite of simple or one-dimensional; a multiplicity, intricacy, nuance of smells, textures. Quality of a high order. (Michael Schuster: Essential Winetasting)

Quantitative/qualitative term referring to the perceptible presence of many aromatic compounds, combining to generate pleasure; a highly desirable attribute. (Ronald Jackson: Wine Tasting – A Professional Handbook)

Refers to the presence of many, distinctive, aromatic elements, rather than one or a few easily recognizable odors. (Ronald Jackson: Wine Tasting – A Professional Handbook)

The final quotation from Jackson is interesting in that it includes the word “distinctive” – preempting the concern that the aromatic elements might be merely participating in a soup where the components cannot be identified.  Because that is a negative thing, isn’t it?  Maybe, but I have certainly seen others suggest that complexity can work at a subconscious level.  That is, you might not detect the oakiness (for example) but the subtle use of oak improves the wine regardless.  There is also the case where all the aromas may not be distinctive at the same time.  Here the aromas you get at any one time depend on many things – like temperature, degree of swirling in the glass, distance of your nose from the wine, etc.  Multiple clearly defined aromas, subtle aromas that work at a subconscious level, and aromas that come and go all sound credible and positive to me.

But soupiness is bad, and usually associate it with cheap wines.  It is very tempting to associate that soupy quality with olfactory white, or at least a step in that direction.  If so it might be the case that the relationship between the number of aromatic compounds present and complexity is not as straightforward as you might think, and complex wines are actually distinguished by having fewer aromatic compounds.

You might like to take a look at the discussion on Wine Lovers Discussion Group.

More on astringent wine with meat

Published on October 28, 2012 in Tasting and taste. 4 Comments Tags: , , .

In a previous blog post on the subject I quoted Tim Hanni as saying “fat actually increase[s] the intensity of [...] the astringent feeling of tannin”.  But as far as I could establish, Hanni has no evidence for this other than experiences from his own workshops.  In direct contradiction what Hanni says,  recently published correspondence in Current Biology from Catherine Peyrot de Gachones et al  seems to show that fatty and astringent substances moderate the effect of each other.

I say “seems too”, because the source of fat in the experiment is salami, which also contains protein and salt.  It is unfortunate that they did not use a purer fat, so it is still a possibility that it is the protein or salt that reduced the astringency, as suggested by others.

On the other hand, as 3 different astringent liquids were tested, it is a lot more certain that the astgringency itself reduced the fatty sensation, rather than anything else common to each of the liquids.

Regardless, to me it intuitively seems a lot more convincing that it is fat, rather than the protein or salt, that reduces astringency in wine.  The idea that astringent wines “cut through” fatty meats is well-known and accepted.  And from a wine and food matching point of view,  I can appreciate that it is good to have alternate opposing sensations in the mouth from sipping red wine while eating meat -the  astringency from the wine, and the slippery richness of the fat.

The final lesson we can take from this research concerns the assessment of the astringency of wine.  The research clearly shows that as you take multiple sips of a tannic liquid, the perceived degree of astringency increases over time.  So to fairly compare the astringency of different wines, we really need to make sure we start with a clean palate for each wine, and assess each one after the same number of sips.