Mary Orlin (aka The Wine Fashionista), had a little tutorial on the Huffington Post yesterday entitled “The six aromas you don’t want to smell in your wine.”.
According to the author, the post had its origin in a course T.W.F. took at the Culinary Institute of America called “The sensory analysis of wine,” where students were challenged to identify not just the pleasing aromas in wine but “bad, or off aromas.” Of the six offenders, it was the very first that particularly caught my attention – and not just because it was the only adjective in a list of nouns. “Oxydized” wines, we learn, ” . . . will smell like sherry, and may smell stale, nutty, or even like burned marshmallow or stewed fruit.”
I don’t know whether I would be pleased with something that smelled stale (I’m having trouble conjuring up the sensation) but nuttiness, in my experience, can be very pleasant indeed, and to say that something smells “like sherry” is positively appealing.
It’s true that unmanaged oxidation is almost never good for wine, but it’s equally true that controlled exposure to oxygen is necessary for the development of certain of its potential qualities. Introduced in measured amounts and over time, oxygen smooths out coarse tannins, encourages secondary flavors and aromas, and eventually brings about that charming thing we call bottle age.
Oloroso sherries, Madeira, and the Jura region’s traditional vin jaune derive much of their charm from the deliberate oxidation they are subjected to (aging in roomy, old oak barrels, infrequent topping up, etc.) – but you needn’t resort to the wine equivalent of museum pieces to get a sense of what’s going on. In her informative survey of the world of oxidized wine at imbibe.com, Pameladevi Govinda discusses a number of contemporary winemakers whose experiments with the technique are yielding post-modern wines that combine elements of the traditional and avant garde.
In any case, it’s our experience that a certain amount of oxidation is hardly something to get all hinky about, even when the condition is an inadvertent one. We were reminded of this over the Memorial Day weekend when my friend Don brought a twenty year-old Vernaccia di San Gimignano to a backyard barbecue. The wine likely cost no more than $7 or $8 when it was purchased in 1991,and it was definitely not meant for keeping. Further, the bottle had been stored in a first floor cupboard, not a wine cellar, all these years. He wasn’t sure what prompted him to pull it out.
It showed all the signs of being rather severely oxidized – the color veering toward a pale pumpkin orange – yet the wine itself was as sound as a dollar, surprising fruity with fresh acidity, real charm, and elements of interest it couldn’t have dreamed of when twenty years younger. “Hey, this tastes like sherry,” someone said.
Indeed.
Originally posted on Boston.com