The Wine Savant: A Guide to the New Wine Culture Read Online Free PDF Page B

the texture like? As you run the wine around your mouth, do you pick up the acidity? Does the wine seem balanced, harmonious, or does it taste a little disjointed? After you swallow, do the flavors linger for a long time, or does the aftertaste quickly fade? And what about the tannins, which cause that astringent feeling after you swallow a red wine—do they seem like they are nicely integrated, or do they stick out a bit? These are the things you want to note while recording your overall feelings about the wine. And don’t be afraid to compare your impressions with those of professional critics. This, too, is part of the learning process. However flawed “professional” tasting notes might be, useful information can be gleaned from them regarding the particulars of individual wines and in terms of how to think about wine more generally.
    A word of warning: writing tasting notes in the company of non–wine geeks may invite some ridicule. Be strong and ignore it. A word of advice: write your notes electronically, or if you plan to do it by hand (so last century), be sure to get a dedicated notebook. Don’t make the mistake of writing down your notes on random scraps of paper (and here I also speak from experience); it’s too easy to lose those scraps, and even if you don’t lose them, they’ll end up as a disorganized pile of paper, which won’t do you much good.
    T HE E VOLUTION OF A W INE G EEK
    We all have to start somewhere, and for most American wine enthusiasts, that somewhere is California. The United States is the home market for California wines, and it stands to reason that these tend to be the gateway wines for American drinkers. Lots of people never move beyond California; they are perfectly content drinking only Napa Cabernets and Sonoma Chardonnays. Simplicity has its virtues, and there’s no shame in sticking with what you like. But the wine world is a big, fabulously diverse place, and arguably the greatest pleasure that oenophilia offers is the pleasure of discovery—of finding new grapes, regions, and wines. Brillat-Savarin said that “the discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star.” The same can be said of discovering new wines—it not only excites the palate, it serves to reaffirm one’s passion for fermented grape juice.
    In terms of changing tastes and expanded horizons, it is interesting to note that the traffic all seems to flow in one direction: New World to Old. Rarely, if ever, do you see Burgundy fans or Bordeaux diehards shifting their allegiances to the New World. By contrast, it is commonplace for oenophiles reared on New World wines to experience Damascene conversions, suddenly swearing off California or Australian wines with the same fervor that they once embraced them and filling up their cellars with Barolos and Bandols. Why the one-way flow of traffic? Speaking very broadly, I think that as people get deeper into wine, they place greater value on subtlety and complexity, and in general, Old World wines deliver more of both. I suspect another factor is romance. To be blunt, there is just not a lot of it in New World wine regions, whereas European viticulture is dominated by small, artisanal producers. Napa is beautiful, but it simply doesn’t exude the kind of charm you find in, say, the Loire or Alsace. And romance is unquestionably a big selling point for wines, for wineries, and for wine regions.
    So how does wine’s evolutionary process unfold? For American wine enthusiasts, it usually goes something like this: They start out drinking Napa Cabernets, perhaps with some Australian reds thrown in. Then they find some Old World wine that wows them—maybe a Bordeaux or a Châteauneuf-du-Pape (Americans, reared on big California reds, seem to have a particular fondness for Châteauneuf-du-Papes, the ultimate Big French Reds). Having thus crossed the Atlantic,