There is more to tasting wine than taking a mouthful and swallowing it. The wine’s smell (bouquet) is half its pleasure, but many wine drinkers seem not fully aware of this.
May I recommend a brief tutoring video at www.decanter.com, where prominent wine personality Steven Spurrier quickly takes you through wine tasting. Please note the emphasis he puts on the nose.
Wine glasses should be clean (not smelling of musty cabinet or dirty dishcloth) and tulip, not funnel-shaped. Perfume, aftershave and smoking interfere with wine aromas and flavours.
Thirty-nine wine club members recently blind-tasted Merlot wines from France and Italy and, specifically, from Bordeaux’s Right Bank, Friuli and Tuscany. Merlot has traditionally been Bordeaux’s ‘other’ red grape because connoisseurs and writers favoured wines made with Cabernet Sauvignon, the main variety of the Left Bank. Here Merlot was used to soften Cabernet’s toughness and regarded as an inferior variety.
Merlot, however, came into its own to show a ripe and luscious personality in Bordeaux Right Bank’s Saint-Émilion and Pomerol regions.
Not many are familiar with what’s behind the St-Emilion Grand Cru classification. There has been commercial rivalry not only between Bordeaux and Burgundy, but also within Bordeaux itself, between the left and right banks regions. The St-Emilion appellation system is different from the Left Bank’s, and some French experts consider it rather misleading in its use of the term ‘grand cru’, which refers to the vineyard land on the Dordogne river plain.
In this region, the groundwater level is about 80cm below the sandy soils, so the Merlot vines have an abundant water supply, which is said to be contrary to the very idea of grand cru (GC).
During French tastings some years ago, it was claimed that none of the 80 GC châteaux of St-Emilion and neighbouring villages showed the concentration characteristic of GC wines from other regions.
The Saint-Émilion region is home to two different appellations – Saint-Émilion and Saint-Émilion GC. When the Saint-Émilion GC appellation was created in 1954, the INAO (Institut National des Appellations d’Origine) expressed deep reservations and indicated its preference for designation by vineyard location.
The Jurade of Saint-Émilion decides which of its wines can enjoy GC status on the basis of the wine’s ageing potential. But this characteristic alone is not regarded as sufficient to merit GC status by other French regions.
I found the Merlots chosen for this club session a most instructive exercise. The wines initially seemed very similar. With one exception, they had lovely bouquets but, again with one exception, they seemed to be weak on mouth feel and palate. Furthermore, our table appeared totally lost as to grape variety or wine region.
However, we are not too worried when we cannot identify the grape variety and wine region. In fact, when winemakers overdo oak-ageing and wine concentration, the results are often anonymous modern-style wines where the grape is masked by vinification tricks.
We feel it’s more important in blind-tastings to find out what one likes, or does not like, about the wine and to try and assess its quality level before being shown the label and price.
This session also saw a very wide divergence between the overall membership’s scoring pattern and mine. Le Vigne di Zamó’s Cinquant’Anni Merlot 2008 (14%; €34), from Colli Orientali del Friuli in northeast Italy, was the membership’s top preference and my bottom one. I thought this wine had the worst nose, a refined palate alright, but on the bland side with no length. Gambero Rosso awards it Due Bicchieri, but I couldn’t find any other international critic’s score for this wine. Château Gazin 2006, Pomerol (13.5%; €51) and Château Moulin Saint-Georges, St-Emilion Grand Cru (13%; €39) were both my second preference, although the St-Emilion was the membership’s bottom preference, albeit by very close scores. Both had lovely refined noses but rather bland palates with little length. This Château Gazin gets around 88 points from international critics and this St-Emilion GC around 86.
Marchesi di Frescobaldi’s Lamaione 2006, Tenuta Castel Giocondo, Tuscany (15%; €50) was my top preference, with the best nose. It’s intense and complex and has the best mouth-feel with fine tannins and average length. This 100% Merlot wine is scored around 93 points by international critics, but the general club membership placed it as their third preference.
acvincenti@gmail.com
Albert Cilia-Vincenti is a founding committee member of Il-Qatra wine club.