New Year Resolution

No doubt some of us still nursing New Year hangovers today have made a resolution to cut down on drinking. I would like to encourage an alternative, more positive stance—make a resolution to start really appreciating wine drinking and exploring the world of wine.

There are so many labels on the wine shelves, and this confuses a lot of people, so they usually retreat into buying just the regions, grape varieties and brands they are familiar with. If you are one of them, you’re missing out on a lot of fun. To begin discovering the wine world, the key hurdle we need to cross is to understand what we mean by ‘quality’ and how to judge it. So let’s take a look at that (and bear in mind that good quality wine exists at all price levels so it doesn’t need to break the bank).

Professionals judge wine quality by four criteria: balance, length, intensity and complexity (BLIC for short). Start with balance: the three components that form the backbone of white wine are acidity, alcohol and sweetness, with red wine having a fourth, tannin, which can be from either grape or wood. These components must be well integrated with the fruit and no one of them should jump out above the others. If you immediately feel the heat of alcohol in a wine, it is out of balance. Similarly, if all you can taste is wood or tannin, again it is out of balance. Some people shun German Riesling because of a perceived sweetness, but a good quality one will have enough acidity to support the sweetness and will not be cloying.

Length, the second criterion, is the pleasant aroma—not the drying tannin—that stays in the throat after you swallow. The longer you can feel the wine, the better quality it is. This after taste usually lasts from a good 4-6 seconds to well over 30 seconds. Some wine may be pleasant to drink but its aroma disappears as soon as you swallow: its length is short, indicating lesser quality.

Intensity is probably the most difficult criterion to understand. It is not about the intensity on the nose, but on the palate. Take a wine designed for ageing, like a Barolo. When young, such a wine may be closed (ie, you can’t smell anything) but you should still be able to feel the concentration and density on the palate. This, together with the length and the balance, is the clue that the wine has the potential to develop and open up later.

The final criterion, complexity, is about the group of aromas that you can taste. Fruit aromas include citrus, apple, floral, white fruit, yellow fruit, tropical fruit, red fruit and black fruit, and these can be complemented by secondary characters such as herbal, spicy, nutty, raisiny and vanilla. Someone may impress you by saying they can taste blackberries, blackcurrant, blueberries and black cherries in a wine. Well, just remember that those are all black fruits, so there’s really only one aroma class and therefore that wine is not complex! On the other hand, if you can feel black fruits, spices and vanilla, that’s already three categories of aroma and the wine is reasonably complex.

For me, balance is the most important element. A wine can be simple, with just some citrus and apple aromas and a 3-5 second aftertaste, but if it is balanced and costs less than HK$150/bottle, it is a good quality entry level wine. Some Chardonnays from Casablanca, Chile fit the bill. In contrast, some wines that cost $500-600 per bottle may exhibit four or five types of aroma and have a good length yet somehow the oak or alcohol stand out; they are not balanced and I would not consider them as good quality for what they cost.

Armed with this technique, you can begin to get out of the comfort zone and start exploring different wine regions and grape varieties and what styles of wine you like best. In fact, you don’t need to confine yourself to only one style of wine as there are different styles for different occasions and food pairing.

Hong Kong is not short of wine tasting courses, ranging from the basic to the advanced. Many people like to take one of two courses to give them a head start. WSET (Wine and Spirits Education Trust) is the biggest wine education provider in the world and has developed a series of qualifications for the wine trade and wine consumers. WSET pioneered the Systematic Tasting Approach, which is a good framework for wine appreciation. There are over 20 WSET providers in Hong Kong. There are also courses aimed at wine lovers with a less formal yet still structured approach. Whatever courses you might choose, it is important to learn from enthusiastic lecturers. While I don’t know all the wine lecturers in town, I do respect JC Viens and Ian Symonds. Not only are they professional, they are passionate, which I think is the essential attribute for a lecturer. Remember we all enjoyed our Mathematics or Chemistry at school more if the teachers were excited about the subject? Wine, likewise, is a subject that needs a passionate teacher or mentor to unlock its mysteries.

Nevertheless, attending wine courses is not mandatory to appreciate wine. All you need is confidence and trust in your palate. The BLIC quality formula will guide you through the maze. If you taste one grape variety or region a week from now, you will have tried 52 wines by  the end of the year. And you’ll appreciate wine a lot more than if you just guzzle 52 bottles over Christmas.

Abridged version was published in the South China Morning Post on 03 January 2013

Tasting with experts

I was really fortunate to have attended Jancis Robinson MW’s ‘Beyond Bordeaux’ and Robert Parker’s ‘The Magical 20’ tastings at Winefuture, and, on each occasion, to have sat next to other eminent experts, Michel Bettane and Dr Tony Jordan respectively. After listening to all four, and later talking to yet more experts, all passionate in their views and yet sometimes holding completely opposing opinion, I began to wonder how they can all be right.

While there were universal opinions about quality—the Brazilian sparkling wine had too much alcohol, the 1990 Burgundy was past its peak, the Turkish Öküzgözü was a well-made, balanced wine and the Ridge Monte Bello 1995 was just perfect—there were widely differing preferences when it comes to style. Most New World experts seemed to like the Lynch-Bages because of its ripe fruit aromas but Michel (very much Old World) reckoned it lacked elegance and the fruit was 'cooked'. Some favoured Le Gay because of its structure; others dismissed it as too herbaceous. Some said the Antinori Tignanello had brettanomyces written all over it, while others considered it complex.

For me, the tastings and discussions were inspiring and confusing in equal measure. I am still on learning curve but after pondering it for a while I was able to distil a conclusion. What I learned is that it's a two step process: quality then style. The quality of a wine is the most important thing—all the experts had more or less the same views on this. The Old World school also focuses intently on integration, especially with oak. Once we know how to tell the difference between a good and a poor quality wine, then we can start to explore the different styles of wine and see what we personally like, be it Old World or New. As I said in a previous article, each of us has his own style preferences, and we should not allow others to dictate what we should drink or like. After all, it is our palate.

Tasting wine

I was inspired to write this after talking to the participants at 'Test Your Palate', an open bottle tasting event for the general public held alongside the Hong Kong International Wine and Spirit Competition. I hope it will help people grasp the few essential points of tasting.

The spectrum of primary fruit flavours in wine depends on the degree of ripeness. For white wine it ranges from green apple (just ripe) and citrus (lemon, lime) to white fruit (pear, peach), yellow fruit (nectarine, apricot), and tropical (mango, pineapple). Generally speaking, wines from cooler climates concentrate the more delicate flavours while warmer climate white wines display the heavier fruit aromas. Similarly, the flavour spectrum of red wine begins at red fruit (strawberry, raspberry, cherry) and extends to black fruit (blackcurrant, blueberry, blackberry). So instead of naming ten different fruits, one can simply say "yellow fruit" or "black fruit" to place the wine in the appropriate position.

Broadly speaking, aromatic white wines have added aromas such as delicate floral (Riesling), grassy and passionfruit (Sauvignon Blanc) or the heavier rose and ginger (Gewurztraminer). Red wine aged in barrels may acquire spiciness (French barrels) or the sweeter scent of vanilla/coconut (American barrels). Earthy and mushroomy notes are likely to be found in aged red wines.

Minerality is a controversial descriptor. Some experts say it’s a reflection of terroir and can only be found in cooler climate (Chablis) while some dismiss it as total nonsense. I was confused by ‘wet stones’ until I realised it referred to the smell of the sea. My own interpretation of minerality is a mixture of savouriness and acidity on the palate; nothing to do with wet stones!

Test your palate, Trust your palate

The Hong Kong International Wine and Spirit Competition, the biggest in Asia, ran for three days in October. One novelty was that each evening, after the official judges had finished their work for the day, the venue opened its doors to wine lovers from the general public. Over the three evenings participants had the chance to taste over 1,600 wines, from the most major to the most obscure grape varieties, and from the most popular to the least known regions. This new event, called 'Test your Palate', was the first of its kind in Asia. The idea was to give the public a chance to try their hand as wine judges, tasting exactly as real judges do in the same setting and giving an opportunity not normally available to the average wine drinker to do in-depth side-by-side comparisons of many many wines for a very reasonable entry fee. Apart from being great fun, there was also the educational side: the official judges were present and participants were free to ask them any questions they had, from viticulture to wine quality.

Being one of the organisers of the event, and one of the judges of the Competition, I stayed for all three evenings and found it enjoyable talking to participants, most of whom were wine students or serious wine lovers. We discussed everything in the wine world from indigenous grapes in Georgia to Australian wine marketing strategies. However, the most common topic was tasting: how can one identify the different aromas; how to detect this and that; how can one smell more things…?

I think people make it too hard, focusing on trying to taste what the 'expert' tastes rather than on what they themselves taste. Some wine experts like to flood their tasting notes with all kinds of descriptors (blackberry, blueberry, blackcurrant, black cherry, black plum), while some may dismiss a non-faulty wine purely on its smell ("too tannic"). But what I tried to explain to participants was that different people (not only experts) have different vocabularies based on their own experience. While one might name 20 different aromas just by sniffing, they can probably all be grouped into seven categories: fruity (from green apple to black fruit), floral, herbaceous/vegetative, spicy, caramelised, smoky and microbial). Tannins, acidity and sugar can only be tasted (not smelled) and they are essential for wine ageing. So don’t be intimidated by all the flowery tasting notes. Develop your own vocabulary and association of aromas. Once you've built confidence in using your own system you'll enjoy your tasting so much more. Don’t let other people dictate what you should drink or like. It is your palate, trust it.

Click here for a few tasting tips.