Spring Wine Tasting Extravaganza

I spent yesterday afternoon at the Wine Tasting Association/Chevy Chase Wine & Spirits semi-annual tasting and sale. They also do one in late fall, for your holiday wine shopping. There is a VIP hour before the proletariat are allowed in, with special VIP wines to taste. In contrast to the DC Wine & Food Festival (see my rant about this in an earlier post), this tasting event is less expensive ($65 VIP/$40 Grand Tasting) and better managed.

The room is small, and it's always too warm, but it's large enough. There's food available just outside the tasting room--cheeses, grapes, breads and crackers. Each participant gets a WTA tasting glass. These are very nice crystal glasses, a good size, and a much better alternative to the small, heavy glasses they've used for the past two years at the DC WFF. The only drawbacks to these WTA glasses are that they are rather fragile, and IMO too light and slightly unbalanced as a result.

Overall it was a nice tasting. During the VIP hour the participants were for the most part courteous and allowed other participants to squeeze in to the tables and get a sample of wine. I did have a mildly unpleasant exchange with one of the reps pouring samples. She opened a new bottle of a wine I wanted to taste, and then she smelled the cork. I suggested that it's better to smell the wine in the bottle, and she replied that she's a wine professional (as if I'm not!) and she knows what a corked wine smells like by smelling the cork. I didn't bother to argue with her, but as a wine professional she should know that there are many other faults that can be present in a bottle of wine, and none of the other faults can be detected by smelling the cork. And sometimes you can have a really gnarly, moldy cork (usually with older wines) and the wine in the bottle is perfectly fine. As my friend Lynne likes to say, smelling the cork is just about as effective as holding the cork up to your ear and listening to it!

Although this blog is about wine, not about wines, I do have to single out one of the wines I tasted at the event. It was the Ch. Doisy-Daene Grand Vin Sec, Bordeaux 2006. I'm very familiar with the Ch. Doisy-Daene Sauternes with it's honey notes, silky texture and clean mineral finish. I didn't note the name on the label until after I tasted it. It was a "wow!" wine. The nose was intense yet layered and complex and on the palate it was exceptional. Then I noted the name of the chateau and expressed my surprise. Brett, the rep from Elite wines, was delighted that I was familiar with the Sauternes from the same chateau, and he was also delighted that I liked the Bordeaux and recognized its high quality. He told me that the wine spent a long time on the lees but saw no oak.

I deemed the Elite VIP wines (there were 3) the best selection of the tasting, and the Ch. Doisy-Daene the "best in show." Even during the VIP hour, there were many participants who shunned the whites in favor of the reds. I often find that the white wines at events like this are the real sleepers and should not be missed. In the case of the Ch. Doisy-Daene, this was certainly the case.

I wonder what fabulous surprises are in store for the tasting in the fall?

Wine faults are subjective?

Earlier this week I attended a Burgundy tasting and dinner led by Allen Meadows, "Mr. Burghound." We tasted Burgundy wines all from the 2005 vintage, 8 wines before dinner and 3 with dinner. During the tasting portion of the program, Allen was talking about Brett, and how he enjoys some wines with "a little Brett," but that too much causes the wine to taste metallic, and he doesn't enjoy that. He went on to ask rhetorically, "Aren't all faults subjective?" This was part of his larger discussion about how wine tasting is subjective, and he tried to make the point that just as how we perceive the flavor of wine is subjective, so too is how we perceive wine faults.

I heartily disagree with this premise. While I do believe that so much of our perception of the flavors and aromas of wine is subjective, I think a faulty wine is faulty and there is nothing subjective about it. It is only the degree to which the fault is perceived from person to person that varies. For example, I am highly sensitive to TCA in wine ("corked wine"), so when I smell a wine that is corked, I smell the TCA and not much else. When a person less sensitive to TCA smells a corked wine, that person may only perceive that the wine smells flat and lacks aroma. The person is not perceiving the TCA, only the effects of the TCA on the wine. The TCA masks the other aromas and flavors of the wine.

On the other hand, Brett (Brettanomyces, a wild yeast that reacts with the chlorine with which corks are sterilized), has an additive effect on the wine. It adds aromas to the wine while leaving intact or even enhancing the other aromas. Indeed, some wine lovers feel that a certain amount of the "earthy," "barnyard" aromas of Brett are desirable in a wine, especially in Old World wines such as those from the Rhone Valley or Burgundy. But that does not mean that we perceive the Brett differently; it means that the degree to which we perceive the Brett and how we feel about it varies.

So how is this different from the subjective way in which we perceive a wine? Perhaps the best way to explain the difference is to use the explanation I give to "newbie" wine drinkers when they ask me, "How do you taste all the different flavors, like cherry and raspberry and currant, in a wine? Isn't that what wine tasting is all about, being able to discern the different flavors?" My response is no, even after tasting thousands of different wines, "wine tastes like wine to me. I don't try to figure out if I'm tasting cherry or raspberry or currant." I taste the wine and decide whether it's balanced, has good structure, is varietally or stylistically correct, and of course, whether it has any technical faults like TCA or Brett.

Do you agree with Allen Meadows that wine faults are subjective, or do you agree with me that they are not?