TRAVESSIA Winery Blog

Wine Label: Request for Opinion

I'm preparing the label for my new red wine which we plan to release at the end of September. As I usually do with all my wines, I shipped a sample to a wine laboratory for final chemistry analysis.  This time I also sent a sample to a sensory panel that evaluates the wine for a series of color, aroma, and taste/flavor attributes. I don't think that this type of evaluation is critical but it's interesting to learn what an objective panel constituted by a number of professional tasters thinks about your wine.

One of the comments I received as part of this sensory evaluation was:

<Perfect for poker night with the guys or as a companion at an elegant dinner>

Honestly, I could have never come up with something like this. I don't play poker and elegant dinners are few and far between for me. It''s an accomplishment that my family is able to sit down at the end of each day for dinner, most often cooked by ourselves, never mind elegant dinners.  But I digress...

The description fits the wine quite well.  So I'm contemplating using it on the back label description. But this sort of "communication" is uncharted territory for me.  As I often do when in doubt, I turned to my twitter friends and asked for an opinion:

 

Feedback came in quickly and swiftly. Following are two of the several responses I received:

My friend Sally from across the pond who has one of the funniest twitter pages I've seen, says...

 

Fellow winemaker Ian who is launching his own winery here in MA says...

 

So there you have it!  Would you care to share your opinion as well?  Leave me a comment.  You may just find yourself on the receiving end of one of these bottles....

Boston Wine Expo

I had a wine-filled weekend.  It begun Saturday evening with a dinner gathering of Gary Vaynerchuk, his close family and a few Vayniacs from the Boston area.  The food at Grill 23 was great as was the wine that everyone brought.  There was a bit of everything, from sparkling whites to full-body reds.  There was even a very expensive bottle of corked wine and a surprising magnum sized bottle of Cristal offered by someone who was sitting at the bar next to us.  I could not believe it when I saw the waitress walk into our dinning room with the Cristal in hand.

Then on Sunday I drove back up to Boston for the Wine Expo.  First I attended the “One Hour Wine Expert” seminar with Kevin Zraly.  This was a very basic seminar, sort of an introduction to wine and included a tasting flight of six different wines.  I didn’t learn much new there, but Mr.Zraly is a great speaker, keeping the entire presentation extremely fun and interesting.  Highly recommended especially for someone who is just getting into wine.  Check out his book “Windows on the World Complete Wine Course".

From there I went on to the “Grand Tasting” floor at the Seaport World Trade Center.  Upon entrance it was exactly what I had expected.  Thousands of people, each with a glass in hand tasting wines from all over the world.  Events like this are hardly a good way to appreciate a wine.  Imagine someone pours you a half-ounce, you swirl it around, sniff it, and put it into your mouth.  You drink or spit the wine and within a minute you move one to the next wine.  You can try to speak with the person pouring the wine, ask a few question about how the wine was made or why it tastes like it does, but for the most part they don’t have time to speak with you.  Their goal is to pour to as many people as possible.  I was told there were 8,000 visitors on Sunday.  I spent an hour on whites before moving on to reds which proved to be a good strategy.

The disappointment – Portugal
For the last few years I’ve been reading and hearing about the Portuguese wine industry putting a lot of effort into promoting their wines to an international audience.  The idea is that Portuguese “non-Port” wine is finally going to break into the international scene.  Judging from what I saw at the Boston Expo… it won’t happen.  Not now and not anytime soon.  If Portuguese vintners want to play in the big leagues they must turn the words into action and step up to the plate.   I wanted to see welcoming signs like the one Châteauneuf-du-Pape producers had to invite people to taste wine from their region.  I wanted the best and most unique wines from DOURO, ALENTEJO, VINHO VERDE, etc.  Where were the wines of the Douro Boys?  Where were the reds of Dirk Niepoort?  Where were the Alvarinhos of Anselmo Mendes?  If it was not for New Bedford-based importer and distributor Grape Moments and a few other small importers, the Portuguese presence at this event would have been embarrassing to say the least.  I admit that my data sample is small but don’t blame me for reaching this conclusion based on what I saw at one of the world’s largest wine expos.

Some wine is good… some wine is incredibly good – 4 Vines Winery
Clearly the all around winner from all the wines I tasted, this winery from Paso Robles, California, brought their best to the show not just some under $10 values.  Their Freakshow brand of wines consists of unique blends of Zinfandel, Syrah, Mourvedre, Grenache, and a few other uncommon varietals.  They also have a 100% Petite Sirah that absolutely blew me away.  The catch… $30+ retail.  Not inexpensive at all but definitely worth that very special occasion.  Believe me, you haven’t had wine until you taste “stuff” like this.  Their Freakshow and Zinfandel 4-Vines (which I did not taste) are widely distributed in Massachusetts; I highly recommend you check their wines out.  I know I will.

In the end...
Besides tasting about 40+ wines, what did I learn that could eventually be useful to me as a winemaker/producer?  In my opinion, one-on-one interaction between winemaker and consumer is critical for the success of a very small winery like the one I have in mind.  The pace and environment of an event like the Boston Wine Expo is not conducive to this interaction.  So, I think the dollars would be better spent in other marketing efforts.  But, I don’t want to take value away from the expo.  It certainly is a great way to showcase a wine region and at least invite people to pursue wines they never had.

Picture:  by Steve Garfield, photographer and video blogger.

Peaches and Cream

I’m often asked about flavors in wine...  “At what point do you add the plums to the wine?  Or… “How do you decide how much black pepper to add to your wine?”  Though at first I was surprised by these questions thinking to myself… is this a trick question(?), a joke(?), I soon realized that this is in fact one of the most common and honest questions that people have about wine.

If you are just starting to drink wine or simply paying more attention to what you are consuming, reading the back labels or descriptions in magazines can be an intriguing and somehow intimidating experience.  Here is a good example from online wine retailer Geerlings & Wade for a red wine from the Languedoc region in France:

<<Deep dark red in color with creamy notes on the nose of ripe black cherry, spicy raspberry fruit and vanillin oak, this is a wine with the character you''d expect from the South of France. Good acidity gives the wine a dose of freshness. Boasting notes of leather, pepper and licorice complemented by red berries and a hint of mint, it is perfect with Mediterranean food.>>

Wow!   Black cherry, spicy raspberry, vanillin oak, leather, pepper, licorice, red berries, and to top it all off… a hint of mint.

Grape varietals are typically evaluated according to a wide range of descriptors which draw comparisons with non-grape flavors and aromas.  So the answer is that no plums, cherries, lemons or pepper are actually added to the barrel.  Zero.  Nada.  Technically a winemaker could add whatever he feels like to the wine, I guess, but that’s not how it’s done and I believe that this practice is prohibited in commercial grape winemaking by most countries.

Ok, so you believe me that no supermarket fruits are added to the wine, but then you ask... do the wines really taste like what these descriptors suggest and if so where do the flavors come from?

The large majority of the flavors that you taste in wine originate from the grape fruit itself and these flavors are a big part of what makes a Merlot different from a Syrah, a Chardonnay different from a Riesling.  There are also other aspects that influence the wine’s flavor profile, such as the winemaker’s techniques/choices during the winemaking process and the “terroir” (Oh no… I used THE French word!!!...more on terroir some other posting).

These natural flavors are one of the main reasons why wine is such a fascinating beverage and like no other (think orange juice, milk, coke, beer).  The fun is in discovering these flavors yourself.  But you need not worry about the back label description.  If you can’t detect any of the described aromas or flavors when you open the bottle and taste the wine, no, there is nothing wrong with you!  What do YOU taste?  Do YOU enjoy it?  This is what really matters.  With more “drinking time”, you will start developing your senses and eventually be able to taste that black pepper in your Syrah.  I've been drinking wine for a while and I'm still working on this... which gives me a great excuse to drink even more wine :-)

Here are some typical flavor descriptions for several grape varietals.  I left the best one for last... and believe me, I have experienced it. Strangely enough... it was one of the best white wines I've ever had.

Red:
Cabernet Sauvignon - blackcurrants, eucalyptus, chocolate, tobacco
Merlot - black cherry, plums, tomato
Syrah - tobacco, black/white pepper, blackberry, smoke
Pinot Noir - raspberry, cherry, violets
Touriga Nacional - blackberries, blueberries, black pepper, wild flowers
White:
Alvarinho - lemon, minerals
Chardonnay - butter, melon, apple, pineapple
Pinot Gris - white peach, pear, apricot
Riesling - citrus fruits, peach, honey
Sauvignon Blanc - gooseberry, lime, asparagus, cut grass, passion fruit, cat urine