Wine people! Calling all wine people. I’m compiling a list of original wine descriptors—do you have one you’d like to share? For example, mine are AutoZone and new suede shoe. I smell them in wines on the daily, they make me sound a little crazy, but I have to be honest. Email me at wineisconfusing@gmail.com with your contributions.
Wine 2 Ways
There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and there’s more than one way to describe a wine. Here, let me demonstrate.
Technical: Prounced nose, light yellow color. The nose is tart and tropical: star fruit (I can’t stop naming this fruit, apologies), lemon warhead, honeysuckle. High acidity, medium-bodied, dry, with a long, lemon-y finish.
Personal: Splat yellow. Spunky, adorable, athletic….Sporty Spice? Is that you? It tastes yellow too: sour lemon, lemon warhead, an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka-dot bikini. Acidity so high it’s on its tippy toes, a salty, round mouthfeel and loud fruit aromas make me feel like I’m in a warm climate. Southern France for ya.
Hands On Ur News
Shouting out new research, discoveries, and world-changing people and things in wine. Just knowing it makes you cooler.
Arizona is making headlines, having participated in a blind tasting and chosen over international competitors! I’ve had wine from Arizona a whopping ONE time, and it was a bottle by Maynard James Keenan, the owner of Caduceus Cellars and vocalist for Tool—yes, you heard that right. This isn’t your average celebrity-buys-a-winery story; Keenan is getting his hands in the dirt and putting AZ on the map.
Intellectual humility is making headlines, too. Perhaps after a long wade through the murky waters of Information, we’re starting to place value on intellectual humility as a strategy for sound knowledge. A girl can hope. If you want a refresher on what intellectual humility looks like in action and how you can use it as an asset as you learn about wine, read this article.
And I’m due for an archeological mating call: rectangular fermentation pits were found alongside artifacts and an ancient distillery in Shanxi’s Xinghua village, dating back to the Ming and Qing dynasties. Poetry from the time and place have recorded winemaking here; now we have the cold, hard truth. But remember: the poets knew first.
How To Read A Wine Label
Got a wine label you want decoded? Send me a pic at wineisconfusing@gmail.com.
Notes: Here’s a new grape that benefits from an ancient winemaking process: skin contact. Also known as orange wine, skin contact is the process of fermenting white grapes with their skins on (like jumping in the pool in your clothes), offering texture to perfumed Traminette. Traminette is a hybrid grape, meaning it’s in a different family than the European grapes you may be familiar with. Traminette was made by crossing Gewurztraminer, a European grape, with another hybrid grape.
Have a springy month!
-Kara