Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Palate Drift...

Palate drift is a fancy way of saying that some of the wines that you used to love are less enjoyable than they used to be. Maybe your first love was a fruity Zin, a buttery Chardonnay, or a jammy Shiraz, or even the big, brooding wines of Barolo - where your first love came from doesn't really matter, but at some point you decided to see the world and leave your high school sweetie behind.

You see, drinking wine is very different from tasting wine. When you drink you pour, you taste, you say "mmmm, I like", and then you move one. Tasters are different - sometimes you sniff a glass for a half an hour or more pondering it: What is that aroma? Where have I smelled that before? A hot or cold vintage? Judicious use of oak? Flowers, which ones? And then the tasting...swirling, analyzing, critiquing...tearing apart in your mind a liquid that is part art, part natural chemistry.

There is nothing wrong with 'drinking' wine, but once you move from drinking to tasting you have cut yourself from your moorings and set your palate adrift. The symptoms are noticeable - signing up for a mixed case from your wine club, forcing dinner guests to drink from two glasses to compare wines they've never heard of, or an attempt at the Wine Century Club - these and other wine 'deviances' are signs that you have found some new love interests in your freshman years of wine.

Adrift, the great fear for a wine aficionado is that your cellar could hold dozens, hundreds, or maybe even thousands of bottles that are no longer 'your style'. Every time you reach into the cellar, you guiltily walk past 'that section' and say "maybe tomorrow", or even worse you say "I wonder how much I could get on auction for that". The relationship is not only over in your mind, you need to formalize the breakup.

So is Joe's style drifting? Absolutely, but it may not be instantly obvious if you look at my scores. I am clearly losing my taste for modern-styled fruity wines - not wholesale abandonment, but a definite reduction in both the frequency of purchase and the frequency of uncorking. In my scoring of wine I try to be style agnostic and focus on quality, i.e. is this a good representative of the style and region. So a fruity wine may be complex and balanced so I score it well, but only by reading my notes you realize that something is amiss. And this is not just happening here - nearly all of my wine friends and fellow bloggers have commented on wines they no longer drink.

In the end we me may drift back to where we began, taking the knowledge that we have gathered on our journey, tearing apart the wines we used to love and finding a new appreciation for them. But undoubtedly many of us will never return.

What prompted this reflective moment? Eminent blogger Barry picked up on my limited enthusiasm for last Friday's The Bull and the Bear - I am adrift, Barry, and enjoying the journey right now.

Cheers!

11 comments:

Shea said...

That was very insightful and true. For a little perspective I always remind myself that way back when I was 17-19 I used to love Rosemount Shiraz for $13.

Edward said...

Very very true, I've got too many bottles of unloved wine which sit gathering dust, often the result of buying wine by the case (as is often wrongly recommended).

Joe said...

That's pretty classy, Shea - when I was 17-19 I would have spiked that Rosemount with Vodka. My first "wow" wine was probably a Koonunga Hill, but haven't had one in years.

Ed - You know I never buy by the case, just 3 at a time. That way I get diversity, and I never have too much of any one unloved wine. The downside is that I have so many unloved "singles" that I can't even prepare a case for auction...

Barry said...

Joe.. start a 'singles' club

Pair that heavy Borossa guy with the gentle lady from the Rhone.

and that macho Zinfandel with that nice Germany girl ..known as SB

and any new world Cabernet Franc man should wander over to Madame Loire..she'll shown him the moves..

hmmm...seems the girls have it in my comparisons..maybe I should have done one starting with..

that Butch girl from Australia....

David said...

well done post Joe. And thanks for the link to the Century Club, I came across that awhile ago. I've had a lot of new varietals this year, I ought start sizing up the Century Club task.

Joe said...

Barry - I will not pimp my pretty German SB lady to some big, burly Zin guy - besides, I hear that she gets around with some pretty shady guys...

David - I saw that a year ago as well, but left it for a bit when I realized it would take some time. After some Portuguese wines in August I could finally see the end in sight...You really need to dive into portugal and poke around Italy to get that last 20 or so done. Good luck, it was great fun!

Orion Slayer said...

I'm still in my first phase of discovering wine. Those big zinfandels and buttery Chardonays still thrill me. What's cool is that the other styles are great too. I'd never know about them if bloggers like you hadn't turned me on to them.

I'm curious, though. What do you tend to drink when you're not going to "study" a wine, but just drink it with a meal. Is it possible to just drink a glass with food?

Joe said...

Orion - don't get me wrong, I love buttery chardonnay when I have the right pairing, and occasionally love the big Zins (Bella, Ridge are more my style) - for me it is all about the food pairing. I am glad you are trying new things - you never know where it will take you - I still don't know where I am going. Virtually every one of my wine write ups is done in the presence of food - we love our wine with food, food with wine in Quebec! So it is not only possible to drink with food, it is improbable that I would drink without food. However, when I don't feel like "studying" a wine I will pour something I have tasted and scored before - then I can just enjoy and take mental notes of how it compares to the last time. But I have to admit, I find it very hard not to study a wine - bad habit (I sometimes swirl my water glass and sniff it by accident). Cheers!

David McDuff said...

Nice post, Joe. For me, the now neglected sector of the cellar is New World wine, mostly California Cabs and Zins (and even a little Aussie stuff). The good thing is, I've now got a decent little haul of 10-20 year old CA wines, some of which may turn out to be quite interesting. The bad thing is, it's all taking up too much space and it's all too rare that I find a reason to open them.

Shea said...

I'll take them.

Joe said...

David - sounds like Shea will take all those bottles off of you. One key thing to think about is not just "palate drift", but "winemaker drift". I have a suspicion that those 10-20 year Californians may be as good as your remember but the newer vintages have "softened", become "fruitier" - RP's ascendancy was a late 90s thing. I would be interested in some 20-year old Chateau Montelena if you have any...I like their style of wine.