February 7, 2001
Sauvignon Blanc...springtime fresh, like a Salem cigarette!Remember when Salems were springtime fresh? Wine descriptions are akin to verbal flatulence. As a wine writer, I disdain reviewing wines. The words, the buzz words, wine writers use to describe wines are a farce. Occasional descriptors make sense, but nine times out of ten, wine writers are doing their readers and consumers a disservice with their verbal pontifications.
Two decades ago when we interviewed the late Andre Tchelistcheff at the Casmalia Hitching Post when I was the program director of KTMS FM in Santa Barbara, Andre referred to wine as an "artistic beverage." It is! No two vintages are ever exactly alike. No two vineyards ever produce exactly the same fruit. The farming, the soil and climate, and the winemaker's experience and skills will all affect the outcome of the wine. Making wine is not done by formula; making wine is not like making Coca Cola.
Image Shakespeare describing the Mona Lisa! Words can't do justice to art. A wine writer's words can seldom, if ever, do just to a winemaker's art, the stuff in the bottle.
As the wine columnist for The Times, now going on eight months, I am more challenged and intrigued with wine issues (for example, taxation), wine politics (appellations and government rules and regulation), food and wine matching, beyond wine (martinis), and social responsibility with regard to drinking and driving, and singing the praises of Santa Barbara County and Santa Maria Valley wines, so to review a wine, for me, is a real anomaly.
Several months ago, Don O'Neill, a good friend of mine who works for Zaca Mesa winery, shared a bottle of the winery's 1998 Zaca Vineyards syrah, with two percent viognier blended with the syrah, a practice, by the way, which is permitted in Cote Rotie, in the extreme north portion of France's Rhone valley.
Like with people, first impressions count!
When I tasted the wine, my immediate reaction was, "this is damn fine syrah." I say this with no trepidation because I know (or at least I think I know) what good clean syrah fruit, well made into wine is supposed to taste like. And this particular bottle of wine really fit the bill.
I suppose, too, selling wine and writing about wine, it's easy to become jaded. There are many wonderful wines-even great wines-to drink, share and even write about. And every now and again, a wine comes along that really knocks your socks off. I felt this way about Zaca Mesa's current release syrah and decided to write about it in this column.
Last week, I got another bottle of the wine from Don and drank it over three occasions-with a burger and fries over at Charlie's in Los Alamos; the next night (after the wine had had a chance to breathe for about 24 hours) at home with a homemade burger, steak fries and Texas-style chili beans, in a larger 20 ounce bulbous burgundy-shaped wine glass; and the next afternoon, I tasted what was left with a winemaker friend who produces syrah in regular eight ounce wine glasses. Even the winemaker who will remain anonymous thought the Zaca syrah was quite exemplary.
In wine tasting-casual or formal-the label is worth a thousand words. In blind tastings, tasters don't know what they are tasting so one cannot be prejudiced by the label. So, in this case, the winemaker knew what he was drinking; he may have had misgivings about the label and the winery (a fact that I don't know or care about, actually), but he liked the wine a lot.
Each time I tasted the wine last week, I would give it an "A." It was delicious when it was first opened. The next night it was still delicious; it may not have improved appreciably with the exposure to oxygen (which is what breathing a wine is), but it certainly didn't deteriorate either. And too, it might not be fair to compare the two nights either because the glasses I drank from were so different.
Wine glasses are all so different. Wine out of an eight ounce Libby glass can taste so different from the same wine out of a larger Riedel glass or a glass of a different shape. I have learned over the years, pouring for customers, or teaching wine classes, that everybody must (must in italics) use the same glass for a standard point of reference. This kind of stuff is not hype and flatulence. This is cognitive science and based on sound principles of sensory evaluation.
If you pin me to the wall and say, "what does this wine smell and taste like?" I would say it's damn fine syrah-what syrah is supposed to smell and taste like, with good tannins and mouth feel-something that you actually enjoy drinking. The suggested retail price is $20.
The French have an axiom: "The wine is made in the vineyard." Andre Tchelistcheff echoed this sentiment, describing the winemaker as the midwife in this artistic process of winemaking.
The back label on the Zaca syrah gives credit where credit's due-to Ruben, who "daily walks the vineyards, guardian of our harvest."
Bob Senn lives in the Los Alamos Valley and owns the Los Olivos Wine & Spirits Emporium.
