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Jancis
Robinson's
How To
Taste: A Guide
To Enjoying
Wine
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I have begun reading a book from the public library, Jancis Robinson's
How To Taste: A Guide To Enjoying Wine, and finding it a much better introduction to the subject than others I have perused. Robinson starts her discussion with the most important aspect of wine: its taste. This seems to me a better starting point than, say, a bone-dry dissertation on grape varieties or on the history of winemaking.
One of Robinson's points that most impress me concerning wine taste is her careful distinction between bitterness and tannin. Other writers tend to lump the two together, albeit erroneously.
Bitterness is not often a component of flavor profiles in wine, with the noteworthy exception of certain Italian reds.
Tannin, on the other hand, is a big part of the red wine experience. It comes from the polyphenols in grape skins, stems, and seeds (called pips in the wine trade), and also from similar chemicals in the wood of casks in which wine has been stored and aged.
Tannin makes the inside of the mouth pucker, and as such is not really a component of taste at all, like sweetness, acidity/sourness, saltiness, and bitterness. As a class of chemical compound, it is given its name because it is actually what "tans" leather in a tannery.
Fine red wines from Bordeaux, Burgundy, and many other wine-producing regions are intentionally made to be full of tannin when "young" — that is, within five or ten years of their "vintage," the year in which their grapes were harvested. Yet tannin makes the wine harsh and unpleasant to drink. Robinson explains in crystal clear fashion why this should be so.
The
good flavors of fine reds such as those of Médoc, St. Estèphe, Pauillac, St. Julien, and Margaux, from Bordeaux, don't reveal themselves in their full glory right away. These are the flavors from the fruit itself — the pulp of the grape — and they start out quite simple and not all that interesting. It takes years of aging in the bottle, Robinson says, before "the fruit-based flavors at last start to emerge in subtle and complex formations."
Meanwhile, the tannin acts as the wine's natural preservative. It actually dissipates over, ideally, the same time it takes for the "fruit" — the subtle and complex flavors derived
from the physical fruit, that is — to emerge.
The tannin story is, in fact, yet more complex than that. As the "tiny flavor elements" extracted from the fruit "knit themselves together" over time, the individual molecules of tannin "break down and combine with other [flavor] elements to contribute toward this ideal" (p. 27).
It reminds one of alchemy, the predecessor of modern chemistry in which practitioners, in the Middle Ages, tried to turn lead into gold. There is an alchemy to fine red wines that is no such will o' the wisp, but that turns undistinguished, tannic, "hard" wines into the nectar of the gods.
Winemakers and professional wine tasters such as Ms. Robinson have to be able to sample a young, tannic red that is designed to be laid down in its bottles for years of aging, and estimate how good it will be at its peak. They judge, too, when that peak ought to arrive. They are often fooled, sadly, when a given vintage's "fruit will fade long before the tannin dissipates" (p. 28).
Tannin in smaller concentrations can give other, to-be-drunk-young red wines and even some whites a dollop of character. Beaujolais and Pinot Noirs are mildly tannic reds of this ilk. Merlots, also, are less tannic. Italian Soaves, especially the cheap ones, are white wines with noticeable tannin that comes from pressing the grapes especially hard.
Red wines, however, are the prime province of tannin in wine. In making them, usually the grapes (which in the wine world are called not "red" but "black") are crushed, but they are not immediately pressed to separate the juice from solid matter. The unfermented "must" is instead left in contact with the skins while fermenting and sometimes even, in what the French call
cuvaison, "for an extended period after that" (p. 30).
More tannin comes from the oak or other wood in which the early part of the wine's aging takes place. But most of it comes from the skin of the red or black grapes, "partly [Robinson says] because the pigments derived from the skins are needed to interact with the tannins to soften them." White grapes — which can actually be green or yellow — don't have these softening pigments in their skins.
I gather that "modern" red wines are intentionally made to have "softer, riper, more approachable tannins," right from the get-go (p. 28). Picking the grapes later in the growing season helps the cause here, although it means increased risk of bad weather spoiling the harvest. "Treating the nascent wine more gently" also makes its tannins more politically correct.
Civilizing the wines' tannins is one of the prime directives of California and other "New World" wine growers. ("New World" is an appellation used not just for the Americas, North and South, but also for non-traditional wine-producing regions such as South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.) In response, France and other traditional winemaking countries have followed suit.
Actually, I have read elsewhere that French tastes in wine agree with the idea of reds with "big" fruit that can be drunk early and young without encountering the astringency of too much tannin. It is the English, to whom France has historically directed its wine exports, who lap up the highly tannic reds, for whatever reason.
So when we Yanks buy a domestic Cabernet Sauvignon — a wine made from the grape variety used in Bordeaux wines — we are apt to find it already at its peak just as it comes from the wine seller's shelves, within, say, three or four years of its vintage. Holding onto it as it ages further is a mistake.
I myself as yet have no idea how to find a great aged Bordeaux. Robinson gives some examples of what were at the time notably good vintages — 1990, 1989, 1985, or 1982 — but one guesses they must have passed their peak since the book's 2000 publication date.
But even if I knew what years are now at their peak of magnificence, where would I buy a glass, or a bottle? Especially without paying an arm and a leg for it? I may learn answers to these questions in the fullness of time.
