"True Facts"

The Hot Weather Question:

“This warm weather has been great for the growth in the vineyards around the valley.  Our question to you is, does the HOT weather, above 90 really shut down the vines?  Or is it just a rumor?”

This is certainly WAY, WAY beyond the focus of a wine shop blog, don't you think?

Sure, I’ll look into this, I said. How hard can it be to find an answer?

How wrong I was.  Just looking in to the topic turns out to be way above my pay grade - AND there's controversy!

hmmmm

 Conventional Wisdom

At first blush, it seems that “everybody knows” that grape vines shut down when it gets hot:

“Vines can suffer heat stress, which happens in areas where daytime temperatures approach or exceed 100° F. This is true in many areas of California, Spain, and Southern Italy. High temperatures cause photosynthesis to slow or stop, reducing levels of malic acids in the grapes.”

“In fact, here's the big problem: When temperatures get much above 90 degrees, grapevines 'shut down.' In other words, if it's too hot, the vines go into survival mode and stop ripening grapes.”

“Also, photosynthesis slows around 90 degrees and shuts down after 95, protecting the plant from loss of water.”

“Strange as it may seem, when the heat and dryness hit their typical hellish levels in August, the grape vines go into stand-by mode. Over 35 physiological photosynthetic and enzymatic functions shut down and the plants go into self-induced hibernation. It’s their way of beating the heat!”

“Excessive summer heat will shut down photosynthesis (leaves are temperamental little synthesizers), retarding grape development.”

As I attempted to uncover more than anecdotal rationale for these statements I found, well... nothing. Very few actual studies have been published relating to grape vines and heat. The studies that I do find actually state  - that this area has not been very well studied. Sure, if you are a vineyard manager or vine tender, you can walk your rows during a heat wave, see the effects and draw conclusions, but do you know that the vines have “shut down,” that photosynthesis has ceased? 

“Indirect evidence indicates that high temperature may disrupt photosynthesis and berry sugar accumulation in commercial vineyards (AWBC 2008; Retallick and Schofield 2008) and phenological windows when high temperature correlates with low wine quality have been identified (Soar et al. 2008). However, these interpretations are speculative in the absence of experiments.”

 “Studies that focus on the effect of high temperature at … phenological windows are scarce and highlight important knowledge gaps. Importantly, the widespread notion that vines “shutdown” in response to heat stress…is inconclusive in the absence of studies where heated and control vines are compared.”

Grape Vines are Pussies

Is Something Burning?

When it is really hot out, bad things DO happen to vines - and most kinds of plant life that aren’t freakin’ cacti. A blazing sun and high temps can fry the vines resulting in stomal (stomata=leaf pores) water loss, shoot and leaf burn, desiccation (dried leaves) and leaf drop, stalled development affecting ripening and sugar accumulation, berry sunburn, berry bagging (this just sounds awful!) and berry shrivel. Prolonged exposure to high temperatures AND intense solar radiation damages berries, even those not in direct contact with sunlight.

Berry Bagging - As bad as it sounds

Water plays a key role here and dry-farmed vines fare worse than irrigated vineyards, since strategic watering can mitigate heat effects. Additionally, early season exposure (during key phenological windows) to sunshine seems to act as a sort of SPF 50 for vines since:

“Some plant secondary metabolites (mainly phenolic compounds, flavonoids, and hydroxycinnamate esters) accumulate in the vacuoles of epidermal cells in response to UV-B irradiation and protect plants from further damage and from subsequent or intense radiation and act in the same manner as sunscreen. Vineyards not preconditioned due to cooler early summer temps may have reduced levels and therefore less protection from radiation.”

But because photosynthesis, growth and fruit ripening are all dependent on adequate amounts of sunshine and warmth, most plants love and depend on warmth.  Is there a point of warmth prior to things going up in smoke, with plants actually getting cooked and burned, when things just “shut down” per the conventional wisdom?

The Devil's Wine

How hot is too hot?

As you can see from a couple of the comments quoted above, there’s not even any agreement on what constitutes really hot weather. Experiencing the myth of global warming first hand, the growing areas of Australia have had some SEVERE heat waves recently, in 2008 and 2009. Since then, they've actually put some effort and science into understanding what happened to their poor vines. Let’s ask those guys Down Under:

“Temperatures over 40°C (104°F) for longer than 2 days is considered a hot event in Australia, but they have experienced 12 day periods twice in two years. Most growers suggested that more than 2 days over 40°C could be considered a hot event. . . The event was long and challenging! It got hot and stayed hot. . . Both duration and intensity were considered important but duration was more of a factor– '…you can’t keep up with the water for extended periods.' In one case the extended stress on vines caused the leaves to eventually wilt and then the berries became exposed.”

That’s just during the day! If nights are hot too, then things are even worse for vines:

“Significant nighttime stomatal conductance and transpiration (due to nighttime heat) is associated with higher daytime evaportranspiration values and the driving gradient between the leaf and the atmosphere at night.”

Temperature is not the only variable either. Irradiance, or sunshine, is also a significant factor. Intense sun AND intense heat are a lethal combination for plant life, and solar radiation’s effect on grape berries, in particular, is pronounced:

“The temperature of the grape berry or cluster is dominated during the day by solar radiation, or the intensity of sunlight reaching the fruit. Some heat can be gained or dissipated by convection as warm or cool air passes over the berry. A small amount of evaporative cooling occurs when berries are green and can transpire like leaves, but the berry has fewer stomates than do leaves. The berry stomata are essentially non-functional during ripening. Berry temperature can exceed air temperature by as much as 18ºF to 27ºF when berries are exposed to direct solar radiation in mid-summer. The more intense the solar radiation and the less that air moves through the canopy and across the fruit, the higher the average berry temperature.”

A Heated Explanation

“High temperatures inhibit plant growth and development. Elevated temperatures increase respiration and therefore require greater carbon fixation for sustained growth and survival. Temperatures >35C significantly decrease the activity of Rubisco, thereby limiting photosynthesis.”

That quote appears only to be true to those who have actually studied such things. Everyone else seems to assume the opposite – that respiration slows or shuts down during heat stress. But this point looks to be the key one. High temperatures don’t “shut down” grape vines per se. Given adequate amounts of water, the high heat causes the plants to breath harder, to pant in order to cool off. As temperatures increase the photosynthesis engine kicks into high gear, but at some point chemical reactions begin to fail. Actual experiments have shown that:

“Photosynthesis was also affected on each occasion, with rates declining by 35% and taking 12 days to recover. Up to 10 mg carbon g (berry dry weight)^–1 day^–1 was required for ripening after veraison. For vines heat treated at veraison and mid-ripening, net carbon acquisition rates fell to below 4 mg carbon g (leaf dry weight)^–1 day^–1, which is inadequate to supply berry carbon requirements. This suggests that the impacts of heat on the ripening process can be traced back to the supply of carbon.”

“Photosynthesis occurs in two stages. In the first stage, light-dependent reactions capture the energy of light and use it to make the energy-storage molecules ATP and NADPH. The light-independent Calvin cycle uses the energy from short-lived electronically excited carriers to convert carbon dioxide and water into organic compounds[2] that can be used by the organism (and by animals that feed on it). This set of reactions is also called carbon fixation. The key enzyme of the cycle is called RuBisCO.”

In controlled conditions and with sufficient water, the vines don’t shut down so much as they lose the ability for carbon fixation and therefore photosynthesis eventually fails rather than shuts down. Stomata on the leaves remain open and the vine keeps “breathing”, however, rather than the plant going dormant.

Broiling in Controversy?

Do grape vines “shut down” in hot weather? Well that depends…

If there isn’t sufficient access to water at the roots, then for sure leaves go limp, pores close and the vine quits breathing. Everything goes flat line as the plant goes dormant.

And its important to note that studies in Australia where the impacts of warming are truly being felt suggest that:

“a short period of high maximum temperature disrupts gas exchange and arrests berry growth and  sugar accumulation in established, well-watered vines, and the magnitude of these effects depend on the phenological window, or when in the growth cycle the heat stress occurs”

So it is worth noting that a heat wave can effect grape vines to different degrees depending on when in the growth cycle that it occurs. A blast of heat at the flowering stage or at veraison seems to be the most risky. Studies were done on vines in controlled environments where they were:

"...exposed to temperature (spikes) at flowering, fruit set, veraison and mid-ripening stages. Results: Leaf growth and stem extension were unaffected by heat whereas flowers completely abscised. Berries heat-treated at fruit set developed normally, and those heat- treated at veraison and mid-ripening stopped expanding and sugar content stopped increasing.”

But for my final evaluation I am going with:

“At low water stress, the diffusion resistance for water vapour decreased in response to a gradual increase in temperature. Transpiration increased accordingly. This response was reversible. All plant species studied responded in the same way... At high plant water stress, the stomatal response was reversed, i.e., the stomata closed when temperature was gradually increased.”

High temperatures affect and can inhibit vine growth and berry development. But rather than the vines “shutting down” as is commonly thought, elevated temperatures actually increase respiration. But the requirement for greater carbon fixation to sustain the plant can’t be maintained indefinitely, above certain temperatures. When its hotter than 95F (35C) the activity of Rubisco, a key enzymatic reaction required for photosynthesis, is significantly decreased.

The plant's photosynthesis engine revs up in response to rising temperature, and increased respiration helps to cool the plant. Providing there is enough water at the roots, respiration, or the plant's breathing, continues even above 95F, but photosynthesis begins to fade as key chemical reactions fail. Hardly a plant that is "shut down" or dormant, but of course, after a certain point, temperature and sunshine take their tolls in other ways.

“Contrary to the notion that vines “shut down” in response to heat stress, …trials suggest that (irrigated vines) show otherwise. An important point when drawing conclusions from observation sin the vineyard, however sound in principle, is that the field involves …myriad…correlated factors. For example, if we observe a slowdown in accumulation of sugar in berries after a heat event, can we conclude that heat was the cause? The answer is no. This type of circumstantial evidence is a valuable guide, but no proof of cause and effect. … When heated and unheated vines are compared in specially designed experiments, two seasons of field trials showed a consistent lack of response to three days in a row with day temperature of above 40C (104F). Foliage maintained photosynthetic activity, and the Brix trajectories in berried in heated and unheated treatments were identical. Two important traits, namely photosynthesis and berry sugar accumulation, remained unaffected by short exposure to extreme heat."

"Physiological principles suggest that if the vine is simultaneously hit by water and heat stress, the consequences could be much more negative. Indeed, anecdotal observation of vines shutting down in response to heat episodes might be reflecting the interaction between water and heat." Victor Sadras, principle scientist for crop ecophysiology, at the South Australia Research and Development Institute (SARDI).

Almost perfect for a Cali Cab

I hope to hear from people telling me everything I don’t know about plant biology. Hint: I know nothing!

Sources:

Turn up the heat: How to cope with heat stress and high temperatures this

season. Katherine Lindh               www.winebiz.co.au

http://www.extension.org/pages/33025/an-introduction-to-environmental-influences-on-ripening-in-grapes:-focus-on-wine-grapes-and-phenolics

http://www.landfood.unimelb.edu.au/vitum/Heatwave.pdf

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC541637/pdf/plntphys00170-0028.pdf

http://www.springerlink.com/content/p3j810792455xx41/

http://www.gwrdc.com.au/webdata/resources/project/SAR0501.pdf

http://tgiflorence.com/in-chianti-the-grapes-are-resting-up-for-the-harvest/

"True Facts" Pink is a 4-Letter Word

“Rosé” is a four-letter word for many Americans, but if you think about it so is the word “WINE” (and love, cash, date, glad, holy, cute, ruby and Spam!). The legacy of the sweet and cloying pink wine of the 1970s and 80s still has many people avoiding the delicious salmon and strawberry-colored wines of the modern era. Even if you are too young to remember the sweet Blush craze of the Nixon and Reagan years, your impression of the pink wines of summer may be that they are not wine for serious wine drinkers.

You don't have to be a four year old girl to like Pink

Rosé is a tough sell here in the wine shop. I do see the aging hipsters who drank the sweet stuff listening to Steely Dan and Duran Duran, and then there are the disapproving hoighty-toighties who saw the fashion in drinking Rosés while traveling abroad. I’ve also met those about to graduate from pale, pale lager into the greater wine world who find the pink sweetness a welcome “starter wine”, or gateway beverage. “Hey, this wine stuff isn’t too bad.”. There are also those like me whose seasonal order/disorder has them craving a raspberry and cherry scented wine whenever the summer sun shines. When they, like me, feel the heat and humidity the idea of a crisp, refreshing pink wine starts to sound very appealing.

But there are also those who just say NO! Is it snobbery? For whatever reason; a bad experience, a bad impression, a sense of self-consciousness or stereotype, some people dismiss the whole Rosé category. 
“Mean people”. Now there’s a sort of category that one can readily dismiss in its entirety. But Rosé wine is a category full of different styles that should not be waved off without investigation and experimentation.

For one, the wines are just gorgeous to look at. Some have the hue and depth of cranberry juice, and others just a faint copper or salmon tinge that the French describe as Oeil du Perdrix (partridge eye), Pelure d’Oignon (onion skin), or Vin Gris (gray wine). Sunlight passing through salmon and cherry-tinted bottles aligned on a shelf can appear like gems in a jeweler’s display case.

Secondly, they don’t have to be soda pop sweet! These days it is easy to find  a bone-dry, crisp rosé wine with fresh fruitiness that offers just about everything you could want in a summer sipper.  

Quality rosé is so much more than watered-down red wine. The attractive strawberry color of the wine comes from the grape skins. Whether the wine grapes are black or white, the juice is (~99%) always white. While red wines macerate for extended periods with the skins, rosé has only a brief and fleeting affair, enough to pick up a faint hue and additional aromas and flavors.

The color is imbued into a Rosé in one of several ways.

The style you are unlikely to even encounter is made by blending red and white wines together. These include wines other than White Zinfandel; your basic sweet blush like Arbor Mist, etc. The few that I have tried were uninspiring and not at all helpful in advancing the cause (drink rosé!).

The more common method for making rosé, especially here in New World, is called “saignée”. "Boy, those French! They have a different word for everything." (credit: Steve Martin!)  Often it is the case that rosé is a byproduct. During the early stages of making a red wine, to intensify flavors, a portion of the juice is bled off  (saigner = to bleed). This juice has spent only minutes in contact with the dark grape skins so it has very little color. The pink juice that is removed is fermented separately to produce rosé – which may or may not result in a distinctive and enjoyable wine.

True world-class rosé is made purposefully, starting in the vineyard. If your primary intent is to first to make red wine then your grapes will be too ripe for good rosé.  In warm climates like in California, blush wines can be too soft, sweet and dull because the grapes were simply too ripe. Rosé, much like crisp and aromatic white wines, requires harvesting the grapes earlier in an effort to retain fresh acidity. The grape juice is left to soak with the skins just long enough to extract the desired color and fruit character followed by cool fermentation in stainless steel. This preserves the bright berry fruit, melon and citrus aromas that we crave in hot weather.  

You can find rosés made from many red grape varieties, including Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec and Syrah, for example. Zinfandel blush may never go out of style, and why should it? That grape’s natural sweetness lends itself to a lusher style that does have its place, and many of today’s White Zins are balanced and pleasant. Oregon’s own Pinot Noir is a real star when made into a delicate pink, with more vibrant and enticing aromas than a candy store. Imagine a dry Pinot rosé with a nose reminiscent of Red Vines crossed with watermelon Jolly Ranchers!

France produces the world’s most emulated pinks, and the Southern Rhone and Provence regions are where rosé has its traditional home. Blended from the principle grapes of the region: Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre, Cinsault (and others), these light-colored wines have richness, depth and spice. The rosés of Tavel and Provence are classically paired with Bouillabaisse (a regional fish stew). Never pass up an opportunity to enjoy this ever-so-European dining experience!     

Real Men, and Women, drink Rosé

If it’s too sultry out for culinary adventurism, you should know that rosés sing next to a difficult wine/food pairing like eggs. Scramble a couple and top with some smoked salmon. Add a side salad with goat cheese and red onion, serve al fresco and you’ve got a simple yet elegant dinner.

"True Facts" The Bad Side of Wine

I just spent 4 days recovering from a computer hard disk crash. As my young apprentice was too quick to point out, everyone who doesn't use a Mac has been through this. It was a slow excruciating process of watching my data become unreadable and disappear, and a slow and arduous process of trying to recover everything possible. My computer is back!  I am only a week further behind! 

The whole experience got me to thinking about what can go wrong in our world of wine.

credit: drvino

The Glass is Mostly Empty <sniff>

The worst thing that could go wrong, in my opinion, would be to run out of wine. Company is a the door, but you have nothing to pour, or you’ve only a trickle to tickle the glass midway through a meal. Heaven forbid! I’ll be posting some guidelines soon regarding creating a wine cellar so that nothing like this should ever happen. Simple solution - keep some bottles on hand at all times.

All Broken Up About the Cork

wtf?!?

Usually when something goes wrong when serving wine it is that you can’t get the wine out of the bottle! The cork breaks midway into the neck leaving you looking at a crumbly stub that the opener can no longer extract. 

Even for younger wines, the cork end closest to the wine may be on the soft side, ready to break away. Not only that, but the cork could snap simply because it is a product of nature – tree bark! - and there might just be that little imperfection causing it to split within the bottle neck. If the bottle is really old (10-30+ years) the cork may have become thoroughly saturated and soft. You are in Danger territory here. Be prepared.

With proper and diligent opening technique most of the cases of broken cork can be prevented. Often it is a case of too much muscle, either on your part or because your wine opener itself is on steroids. A lot of openers have overly big and hulky “worms”, or screws that can destroy a wine cork. Using an opener that has a thinner worm is important to pierce  and drill through the cork without chopping it up.  

Good

Brutal

                                  vs.

Just so, the "Ah So"

If you do break the cork, heave a sigh but don’t panic, you have a couple of options. The first is a type of opener called an “Ah So”. You can search for video online that shows how to use one of these. Basically, you gently rock the tines down each side of the cork and twist and lift to remove it. This has never actually worked for me to remove that bottom ¾ inch of wine-saturated cork.  I have better luck using my normal "waiter's friend" cork screw to carefully drill through the remaining cork section and apply a very slow, even and steady pull.

If none of this works, just push the cork all the way into the bottle. If it stays together, you can pour around it. If it crumbles apart as it is likely to do, pour the wine through a strainer, cheese cloth or towel. If you strain it into a bowl or decanter, you will be able to funnel it back into the rinsed bottle and serve your guests seemingly as if nothing ever happened.  

Interestingly, in Portugal, where Port bottles can age for decades and the crusted lids become impossible to remove, they use a device called a port tongs. How do they work? Basically, the port tongs are heated in a very hot fire and then clamped around the neck of the port bottle. The hot bottle neck is then chilled quickly. The dramatic change in temperature of the glass causes it to fracture cleanly, leaving the upper neck with the cork still intact and the bottle cleanly opened. That’s right, they basically use heat to snap the neck of the bottle off!

 

Oh No! I Left the Wine in a Hot Car!

If there is a screwcap top you won’t have any obvious signs other than the bottle being warm to the touch. If there is a cork in the bottle and it appears to be pushed out a little (or a lot), the wine has been cooked/ baked/ roasted for sure. Well-done but still drinkable? That depends, but the wine will certainly never be the same and is no longer fit for aging. Cool it down and drink it within a few days. Lower your expectations and you might be pleasantly surprised.

Don’t lick the winesicle. 

If you left wine in the trunk on a frosty day, that’s different. Assuming the bottle is still intact, frozen wine has never shown any ill effects, in my experience. Let it thaw to proper serving temperature and enjoy. However, my experience ALSO includes too many bottles forgotten in the freezer section of my fridge. I’ll put one or two in there for a quick chill, but then leave the house or get busy drinking something else. When I finally remember too late, there is a big icy mess to thaw and clean up. Uh-oh.

A Very Dry Wine

Waiter, There is a Flaw in My Wine - Cork taint and wine flaws.

Despite advancements in science; despite the efforts of cork producers and suppliers, laboratories and quality checkers, the wine world continues to be vexed by the occasional bottle gone bad. TCA or “cork taint” is just one cause for a wine that smells and tastes “off”. Ken Wright, of Ken Wright Cellars, insists that, in fact, TCA’s most insidious effect is to “scalp” the aroma and flavor of a wine. The damp newsprint smell of TCA may not even be obvious, but the affected wine simply isn’t showing at all the way the winemaker intended.

Wine flaws is a topic all to itself, and the flaws can be myriad, with the hint of barnyard smell on the one end of the spectrum and full-on vinegar at the other extreme. In between are aromas of onion, cabbage, burnt match, vinyl, nail polish remover or chrysanthemum - all very un-grapelike. Send it back with the Sommelier or return the bottle to where you bought it. Hope you have a backup!     

Wound Too Tight... Shocking.

Bottle shock has a real effect on freshly bottled wine, but also on wine just delivered to you by FedEx/UPS, or as cargo unceremoniously lugged across town from your favorite wine shop. The wine may seem disjointed, angular, unbalanced and not what you expected. Wineries will usually let newly bottled cases rest for months before market. You too should let your just-delivered wine rest, for a couple of days if you can wait!   


Sometimes, especially for young wines, but also for maturing wines at certain stages in the arc of age and development, there doesn’t seem to be much going on in the glass. The wine’s bouquet is evident but elusive; faintly promising, but as if evading your nose. The wine is termed “tight” if youthful, or in a “dumb” phase if mature, and this is a very natural, and even predictable occurance. Decant!  This is exactly what a decanter is for, as are those wine aerator devices. Pouring into a decanter or through an aerator will incorporate some air (oxygen in particular) into the wine releasing aromas and opening the wine up.  

"True Facts" Learn to Use Your Nose, Get Lucky.

We talk regularly with customers in the wine shop about how and why wines are described the way they are. What is the best way to learn to associate what you hear and read with what you are experiencing yourself? How the heck do people distinguish black currant from black cherry, for instance? Can you learn to understand, talk about and describe wine like a pro?

We are always eager to walk neophytes through the wine tasting basics, and an elementary education can be had at nearly every wine tasting room in the Willamette Valley. Steps 1-3: Admire the color, swirl the wine and sniff the aromas. Then enjoy!

It is just after this that things can begin to get uncomfortable. The tasting room staff launch into a rote list of all the fruit and herb and earth components that you SHOULD be experiencing. Someone asks for YOUR opinion of the wine! And what about those over-the-top printed tasting notes? Violets and pomegranate? Tea leaves and wet stone? Wow, does this ever make you feel inadequate about your ability to even use your nose.

If you merely want to talk the talk like you know from grape juice, check out this article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sophie-brickman/how-to-fake-a-distinguish_b_153712.html

Want to learn to actually smell and taste like a pro? Train yourself! Let’s look to the movies for some help! Is there nothing that popular culture can’t do for us?

I direct your attention to three movies that influenced me and lit up pathways to understanding the senses that enable me to enjoy a glass of wine shamelessly. A common theme through selected scenes in these films is people making time to pay attention to their senses – smell, taste and tactile.

A recent movie with Matt Damon called Hereafter showcases a sensuous, entertaining and fun sensory-challenging experience that takes place in a cooking class. Damon’s character and his never-to-be love interest (spoiler alert) take turns wearing a blindfold while the other teases their nose and tongue with bits of food. There is a realness in how everybody struggles to identify common fruits, nuts, etc., and genuine delight when one finally guesses correctly.

The movie gets a bit slow but rent it or add it to your Netflix for the cooking school scenes in particular. Were it not for the actress Cecile de France (ooh-la-la), I might have fallen asleep.  

To see two people really get into a blind tasting sensory experience we have to go back to the eighties when the smoldering hot duo of Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger made a movie called “9 ½ Weeks”. This is a movie you won’t doze off to. Apart from watching these two actors at the top of their game, the movie is most memorable to me for the sensuous “refrigerator scene” where Rourke’s character tells Basinger to keep her eyes closed while he leads her on a sensory tour of the cleanest fridge in America. If memory alone of this film doesn’t have you feeding your partner fresh fruit, chili peppers and honey, then search online for  “Nine And A Half Weeks - Food Scene by the fridge”.

Finally, to tie together the cinematic sensory journey and the world of wine, we need to screen the movie French Kiss. The scene to highlight here is when Kevin Cline's character is showing Meg Ryan around the family winery he hopes to renovate in France. They come across an old wooden box from his youth and it is filled with flowers and herbs – an aroma box! Each vial and slot contained hand-gathered items to represent different scents one might experience in wine, so that he could learn to identify them by smell alone. Fresh flowers and herbs abound this time of year, but if you don’t create your own aroma box you can purchase such a thing ready-made. Le Nez Du Vin (The Scent of Wine) kits are available online.

Watch these movies or at least the relevant scenes for inspiration and for direction. Create a shopping list and get cracking with your own sensory party. Challenge your brain, ward off dementia, build synapses and neural pathways and re-learn how to smell. Don a blindfold and have a partner choose small spoonfuls for you to first smell and describe, and then taste and evaluate texture and every nuance while you attempt to identify what you are experiencing.

Just reach into your fridge today and you could probably come up with a reasonable sensory evaluation menu - a la 9 ½ Weeks. Fruit jams and jellies, maraschino cherries, oranges, lemons and other citrus, melon, olives. Don’t forget the spice rack for dried herbs and sweet baking spices. Throw in nuts of all kinds, both raw and toasted, as well as honeys and syrups.

A shopping list for items to buy for a wine-related sensory experience should read just like one of those winery tasting notes. Pick up fresh and/or canned versions of plums, berries, stone fruits, fresh apples and pears, bell peppers. Any concentrated substance will give you a leg up due to its intensity - such as fruit liqueurs like Cassis or Framboise  and the aforementioned jams and jellies. Fresh herbs like lavender, sage, and aromatic plants like eucalyptus and cedar fill your nose with pungent scents but are very tricky to identify blind for many people. A cigar or some pipe tobacco, and dried tea are useful to imprint leafy, earthy aromas onto your brain. 

A renewed focus on the sense of smell and taste seems to heighten all of the senses, making people more aware of their environment and of those around them. You'll definitely be a better wine taster, and who knows what else the experience can lead to.

"True Facts" Random Tips from the Wine Shop

Random Wine Tips

I’ve culled together for your enjoyment some of the topics and questions that regularly come up at the wine shop. Comment and add some of your own!

• Twisting and pulling the foil entirely from the wine bottle before uncorking is essentially undressing the bottle and akin to tearing off the label. Big money went into the packaging of the bottle, including the color and design of that capsule. Cut the foil just below the lip and leave the rest intact for presentation purposes.

• Wine aerators really do work to open up the aromas and flavors of young or tight wines. A decanter is also a suave and traditional way to serve wine with a flourish while allowing it to breath and reveal hidden character.

• Your first taste of a wine can be influenced by whatever you had previously tasted, whether that be toothpaste, gum/mints or that humus and pita appetizer. The wine deserves a fair chance so give it a first taste, and then try it again before deciding if you like it.

• When a sommelier or restaurant server asks you to approve of a wine, check the label to make sure it is the type and vintage you ordered. Then you need only to smell it - to make sure that it is neither corked nor vinegar.  You may proceed to taste the wine, but if it isn’t spoiled (which you could smell), you now own the opened bottle and it is assumed that you’ll drink it. If you want to sample different wines to find one you like ask for tastes of the wines available by the glass.

• The best wine opener is the one easiest for you to use. A lot of people like The Rabbit or the new cordless power openers, but just try to get one into your pocket or glove box. A wine key or “waiter’s friend” with a two stage lever is really all you need. These are inexpensive, uncomplicated and simple to use.

• Warmer climates make for riper fruit and therefore richer wines, cool climates make for lighter wines with more acidity. Where a wine comes from can be a good indicator of its style.

• Most wines, say 95%, do not age well and are ready to drink on release from the winery. For reds, 1 to 5 years is a reasonable window to drink them, and for most whites, within 1 to 2 years of age is the time drink.

• Regarding age, red wines get lighter with time as color compounds settle as sediment, while white wines gain color as oxygen takes its effect – just as it does on a sliced apple.

• Nearly all of what we think we taste and perceive of a wine’s character is actually through our sense of smell. The tongue is able to sense only the 5 aspects of sweet, salty, bitter, sour and the mysterious umami (think savory).  It is the olfactory bulb that allows us to enjoy all of wine’s complexities.

• We tend to like our varietal wines here in the USA. A wine labeled as Cabernet or Merlot is easy to identify and understand. However it is the winemaker's art of blending that gives the world its greatest wines. In fact, your favorite Cab may have small amounts of Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec or Syrah, for example, blended in for extra roundness, depth and color. Some reds like Syrah may even be blended or co-fermented with tiny amounts of white wine.

• For all the verbose and flattering descriptions of wine you may hear and read, none of the fruits, berries, mocha or chocolate, flowers, grass or rock are actually ADDED to quality wine. These adjectives refer to characteristics of the wine that are provided by the grapes themselves, the yeasts used in fermentation and the terroir (terr-whar), or sense of place, where the vines are grown.

• In general, most red wines are served too warm, and most white and sparkling wines served too cold. Red wines can seem too alcoholic when warm since the alcohol evaporates quicker and hits your nose more intensely. The fruitiness and aromas of whites are dulled and muted when the wine is too cold. An easy guideline is to serve your red wines at a cool room or “cellar” temperature (65 deg), your still whites at around 50 degrees (leave a bottle out of the fridge for 15-20 minutes).  Sparkling wines and dessert wines should be served slightly warmer than fridge temperature (~45 deg).   

• Use your cell phone camera to take a picture of the label of any new wine discovery. You won’t have to tax your memory trying to recall the name of a wine when you go searching for another bottle.  Or just show the pic to your wine guy or gal and let them do all the work for you.

• All wine sold in the US is supposed to be labeled with the percentage of alcohol by volume. Among other things this figure can be a good gauge of how sweet a wine is. The more grape sugar converted to alcohol by the action of yeast, the less sweet (and more potent) the wine. A wine with 8-10% alcohol would be considered off-dry. Dessert wines (not including fortified wines like Port) are in the 5-7% alcohol by volume (abv) range.

• When serving multiple wines over the course of a meal, attempt to pour lighter before fuller-bodied, drier before sweeter and lower alcohol before higher. The dessert wine should be sweeter than the dessert it compliments,  with perhaps one exception - chocolate.

• Proper glassware really does matter. Tucked in a hotel room with only the disposable plastic cups? Go for it. But when the wine and the company are worthy, only good stemware will do. In general, a deep wide bowl that tapers a little towards the rim will direct all those aromas right to your nose. The glass itself should not be dense or thick, and a glass without a rolled lip will not make you purse yours. The sensation of wine hitting the middle of your tongue will be fuller and more pleasing. There is glassware specifically designed for almost all beverages, but if you have neither $$ or cabinet space you can get away with a set of good quality all-purpose stems. Flutes for sparkling wine service are very elegant, however many pros prefer to enjoy fine Champagne from a standard white wine glass in order to better appreciate the aromas.