Different Tongues - Power of Suggestion

[Randy Caparoso]

If you will, Jeneroo: Tasting varietal flavor has more to do with identifying, through memory, like descriptors than anything else. Chardonnay, for instance, is describe as appley, and sometimes pear-like or even pineappley. Of course, if you've never tasted -- or actually, smelled -- an apple, pear or pineapple, you'll never understand this. Fortunately, it's easy to understand.

In other words, a whether or not you're a wine tasting novice is not a detriment to learning to identify varietal characteristics because the language that we use to describe wine is pretty much the same as what we use to describe any food or beverage. What could be a detriment, however, is a refusal to apply your memory and language to describe foods and beverages which every average adult has already acquired. Wine tasting is pretty much an exercise in thinking and concentration -- which is what you normally do when you are actually enjoying (and thus wish to remember) what your are eating and/or drinking anyhow.

So let's talk about what is actually sensed as a wine is sipped: Flavor and its related sensation -- that of aroma, fragance, "bouquet," etc. -- is not really to be confused with the sensations of sweetness/dryness (due to presence of sugar, or lack thereof in dry wines), tartness (acidity), and bitterness/astingency (tannin) detected by the tongue. But Chardonnay, for instance, does tend to be a dry, full bodied wine; and so dryness is associated with Chardonnay. There are, however (in rare instances), such a thing as perceptively sweet Chardonnays. For instance, in New York recently I enjoyed a medium-sweet "Superior Late Harvest" Chardonnay made by Pannonia in Austria; a very, very rare experience indeed, since over 99.9% of Chardonnays are pretty much dry tasting to the average palate.

Another example: Riesling, which tends to be perfumey in a floral sort of way. So flowery is a varietal characteristic of Riesling. But grown, as it is, in virtually every place where wine grapes are grown, Riesling can be anything from very sweet to barely sweet to very, very dry. In Alsace and Germany, for instance, it veers towards the dry side. In Germany, it is usually at least a little sweet to balance out the tartness resulting from the colder climates; although "trocken" (dry) or "halbtrocken" (half-dry, which is almost dry) German Rieslings are being increasingly seen. In California, Rieslings are all over the map -- from very dry to lusciously sweet, from quite light and lithe in body to quite full and mouthfilling. In other words, although a little sweetness is associated with Riesling, the perception is not technically a "varietal" characteristic. Just the floral, fruity qualities that you smell, which translate into the "flavor" you taste through the interaction of smell-related sensations on the palate.

Confused you enough? Good. That's the reason you need to just open up as much variety of wines as possible, and just taste, experience, remember, and above all, enjoy!