German Catalog 2006 USE THIS ONE.qxp - Michael Skurnik Wines

approaching cold front” (I no longer represent that
agency), but mostly I fell victim to my own affect.
And of course I still do, because words hold me in a
certain sway, and wine acts on my feelings. But I have
begun to feel that writing tasting notes is sometimes like
pausing to describe the giddy ecstatic running of a dog
to whom you’ve just thrown a stick. The grinning beast
lopes back to you with some big ol’ drool-covered stick
in his slobbery maw, and he’s looking at you as if every
scintilla of his happiness depends on your throwing that
stick again, and what are you doing? You’re writing! Put
down the pen and throw the damn stick, man.
It’s an odd business, this tasting and conveying
through words. It makes a wine into a precious object of
attention excluding the rest of the world. Who bloody
cares if it’s white peach or yellow peach or peach pit or
peach skin or the BARK from the peach tree? That plus
it’s fruitless (pun intended!) because it’s tautologous:
when you describe flavors in terms of other flavors you
eventually hit a wall. “This wine tastes like peaches.”
Fair enough. What do peaches taste like???
I’m pretty sick of the macho business of “getting”
more things than the next guy does, not to mention the
desperate striving for original associations (“The wine
boasts a compelling nose of beer-battered kiwi fritters,”
that sorta stuff). At one point we thought we’d go entirely
non-verbal, and created a sequence of pictures of
spontaneous reactions to wines which really says it all.
I’m into atavism. Let’s return to those halcyon days of
snorts and grunts.
One also has “good-writer-days” and “lousy-writerdays”
(I have the latter with distressing frequency); on
the good days thoughts and images flow and dance. I
read what I’m writing and think “Good; this conveys it,”
but on the bad days it’s just “Oh crap, must I again write
‘slate and apples’ for the umteenth time?”
I’d rather not try to grasp or apprehend a wine. I try
to summon a kind of calm. To forget myself. If impressions
form words, I record them. If the words are sweet
then I’m happy. But I am in the middle of this process,
still fumbling. I’m just starting to know the difference
between “flavors” and Flavor. Some days I almost get it.
Other days I’m shuckin’ and jivin’.
Image is fine. Some might think it twee, but I’ll happily
crawl out on that limb. Feelings of texture are fairly
easy to describe, and texture is at least as important as
flavor. And associative language can be useful, especially
if it’s a genre of wine we’re describing. Signature flavors
are helpful to know.
Those blasted chefs have discovered a damnably
cunning zen concept for elusive flavor; umami. As best I
can capture the concept, umami is an interior flavor you
don’t taste as a discrete taste but is deeply present on
your tertiary palate, especially as you exhale. Certain
foods (such as mushrooms) are generous with umami,
and certain kinds of preparations (long slow braising)
encourage it. It’s present in wine also, especially in wines
whose flavors aren’t carried on swift currents of acidity.
Umami has crept into a few of my notes so you should
know what I think I mean by it! It’s the taste of yourself
tasting.
I hit a hot streak once in which I bulls-eyed something
like five consecutive old vintages we’d been tasting
blind. It’s the one time on these trips that I don’t have to
assess a wine in terms of “does it make the cut?” nor am
I obliged to describe it. In other words, I can relax. Wine’s
a sometimes shy dog; you grasp at it, it runs away. You
wait patiently for it, it’s curiosity gets the best of it, it
comes to you. If you’re anxious (Oh shit, will I get it
right?) it reads your fear and keeps its distance. If you’re
simply receptive, there it is, laying at your feet and smiling.
Usually you “get” the wine with the first impression.
Your guess is correct. You get all the samolians. The others,
well, they get an edition of the “Mosel Wines Of The
‘60s” board game, plus the bitter memory of having been
bested by some zen galoot.
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