Thursday, May 14, 2015

My Growing Arsenal of Information

As I keep searching for information I stumble upon seminars, wine tastings, and of course wine. I look at local restaurant wine lists to see what they are stocking, and I am amazed at the prices they have the nerve to charge. I have also assembled a small selection of books. Currently I am reading Adventures on the Wine Route, by Kermit Lynch. I love this book, mainly because I love French red wines! It is a great travelogue that goes way beyond just writing about wine. It reveals a culture (old France's wine industry) and an aesthetic (Mr. Lynch's search for stellar, off the beaten track wines) that have become intertwined with each other and become a symbiotic force in the wine import business.

Other books I haven't had the chance to delve into yet are How to Taste, by Jancis Robinson, Judgement of Paris, by George M. Taber, and the Windows on the World Complete Wine Course, by Kevin Zraly. Another book that I seem to use quite often is The World Atlas of Wine, by Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson. Each time I open a bottle I open The World Atlas of Wine and read about the geography and the climate that produced the grapes I am enjoying. It has been a great asset to my enological endeavor.

A little over a week ago I attended one of the local Science Pubs. This is where an audience of interested listeners gather to hear a speaker talk about a topic that has some scientific merit: the "Science" part. You can do this with a drink in hand, which is the "Pub" part. The speaker was James Frey, winemaker and owner of Trisaetum Winery in the Willamette Valley. His topic was Winemaking: Art vs Science. Mr. Frey is a type-A, fast talking, do-it-his-way, kind of guy that has had some great success growing and bottling Pinot Noirs and Rieslings. His Rieslings even get a shout out from Robinson and Johnson on page 289 of The World Atlas of Wine where they refer to Trisaetum as a "notable producer". It was interesting to listen to him talk about making wine but the most interesting fact was this. From the time he and his family bought the land for the vineyards and planted the vines, it was seven years before he actually sold a bottle of wine. A great display of patience.

I also attended another wine tasting at the Wine & Spirit Archive in Portland, This month it was the Wines of Southern Oregon. We started out with a fresh, Vermentino from the Troon Vineyard, bottled by Minimus Wines. The climate in southern Oregon is warmer and allows winemakers a chance to experiment with grape varieties that are imported from Mediterranean locales. We also tasted a Pinot Noir (HillCrest), a Barbera (Heydon Road), and a Cabernet Sauvignon (J. Scott). All three of these wines had a similar underlying taste to them. All three somewhat transparent, dark purple (not red) and infused with an earthy, dewy, musky undertone that just might be a kind of signature flavor of Oregon red wines that aren't overtly oaky. A taste that reminds one of the rich earth, the ferns, the fungi, and the smell of wet topsoil. I had only connected this to local Pinot Noirs, but now I am curious if this is just the local terroir.

Well, I must end this entry. I do have a day job and it is getting late. As Oscar Wilde said, "Work is the curse of the drinking class."




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