The Wine Savant: A Guide to the New Wine Culture Read Online Free Page B

prefer to go with texture . All wines have texture—some are silky, others chewy, still others borderline syrupy. How we react to a given wine depends in no small part on the tactile sensations we perceive, and that varies from person to person. For instance, I find that I’m almost allergic to Pinot Noirs that display any hints of syrupiness. I want Pinot that’s crisp, in which the fruit almost seems crunchy. So much of the discussion about wine focuses on aroma, but the feel of a wine as it moves about the mouth is a hugely important factor in determining whether we like a given bottle.
    I won’t deny that being a wine writer has its perks, and one of them is that you occasionally get to taste some very special wines. And like many wine obsessives, I not only take detailed notes on those wines, but I add them to a permanent greatest-hits list that I maintain. (Much to my wife’s chagrin, I also have a habit of keeping the empty bottles of great wines I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing; it’s a trophy case, you might say.) On the chance that it might interest you—and because we grape nuts are always looking for an opportunity to talk about our conquests—here is my greatest-hits list, and long may it continue to expand:
    â€¢Â 1947 Château Cheval Blanc
    â€¢Â 1996 Domaine J.-F. Coche-Dury Corton Charlemagne
    â€¢Â 1990 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti La Tâche
    â€¢Â 1990 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Romanée-Conti
    â€¢Â 1971 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti La Tâche
    â€¢Â 1989 Château Haut-Brion
    â€¢Â 1961 Château Haut-Brion
    â€¢Â 1959 Château Haut-Brion
    â€¢Â 1961 Château La Mission Haut-Brion
    â€¢Â 1982 Château Mouton Rothschild
    â€¢Â 1989 Château Pétrus
    â€¢Â 1982 Château Lafleur
    â€¢Â 1988 Krug Champagne Clos du Mesnil
    â€¢Â 1974 Heitz Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon
    â€¢Â 1963 Quinta do Noval Vintage Port Nacional
    â€¢Â 1959 Henriot Champagne
    â€¢Â 1991 Domaine Chave Hermitage Cuvée Cathelin
    â€¢Â 1990 Trimbach Riesling Clos Ste. Hune
    â€¢Â 1795 Barbeito Madeira Terrantez
    T HE C OST OF A W INE E DUCATION
    If you are unmarried and free to spend your money however you wish, you can skip this next section. If you are married, engaged, or otherwise in a serious relationship and your partner is not as besotted with wine as you are, you should read it. Wine can cause pain in a relationship—or, to be a bit more exact, spending lots of money on wine can cause problems. That’s particularly true if the money is being spent furtively. Take it from me: an incriminating receipt will turn up at some point, and you don’t want that (mine was discovered while I was boarding a flight home from Paris; the phone conversation while I was on the tarmac was not an especially cheery one, nor was the face-to-face discussion when I arrived home). One possible solution to this issue is to try to convert your significant other into a fellow wine zealot, but that could wreak havoc on your household finances. It’s better just to exercise a little restraint. Drink as well as your budget permits doesn’t mean busting your budget. It’s easy to get carried away, to think that you absolutely must have this or that wine in your cellar. Actually, you don’t, and the sooner you realize that, the better off you’ll be—and here, too, I’m speaking from experience.
    T ASTING N OTES
    This may be stating the obvious, but the key to becoming a smarter, more perceptive taster is practice. In his best-selling book Outliers , Malcolm Gladwell claimed that to become an expert in any given field requires a minimum of 10,000 hours of practice. I suspect that if a person spent 10,000 hours drinking wine, the result would be a badly pickled brain. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that the best way to become truly knowledgeable about wine and to get to