On aromas and memories
I love wines that I cannot describe. Readers who know me, know that I tend to prolong the tastings (and I apologize for what may sound exaggerated to some). I love the smells, and to spend a lot of time figuring out what is on the surface and depth of some wines.
But sometimes I can not describe some wines. There are two main reasons why this happens to me. First, when the wine has great quality, and it’s at a point of amazing maturity. In this case, everything is well blended, we cannot distinguish the aromas, we just feel everything – flowers, fruits, woods, herbs, finally …- but we cannot tell exactly where an aroma begins and another ends.
The second case is difficult for me to describe some wines because I have some kind of emotional connection to it, something like “from my childhood”. Let me try to explain: when I started to drink wine, or, even better, when I began to taste wine (because I started drinking wine way before I started paying attention to what I was doing), that means my “wine tasting childhood”, what I drank the most were Spanish wines because I lived, studied and worked in Madrid. As a student, of course, I started drinking cheap wine.Then, with my fellows students from Escuela de Hosteleria, each of us would put in a little money so we could buy better wines. We tasted a lot of wines from Rioja, basically. And, yes, we can talk about different terroirs, grape percentages, producers and all the things that make a difference in the wine style. But, still, today, when I open a bottle of Rioja, it can be from a modern producer, an old school one, a cheap, or expensive, I don’t care: I smell Rioja. And I cannot explain those aromas.
All this to explain that tonight I am drinking Contino Reserva 2004 and I am being teleported to the years of 1996-2000 when I lived in that beautiful and generous country. And, what it seems to me is that those aromas are those of nights out with friends, in wine bars that were starting to get more in fashion, drinking different wines by the glass, trying to smell their differences (it was so hard at that time). I smell the bus travelling to Jerez, drinking wine in disposible cups. I smell the sunset in wintertime when gitanos would sell roasted chestnuts and the aromas of the charcoal would be on my clothes. I smell the paint and the wood shavings at the painting atelier where I used to work for extra money, carving wooden pannels for the artist guy to paint. I do not know, maybe the smell of nuts, perhaps the wood note, or the charcoal, or even all the blended wines by the glass from the bar … maybe I just smell Madrid or maybe Spain.The wines aromas and the mouth feeling with its good acidity, firm tannins, but so fine, this vanilla aftertaste with a hint of cold coffee … maybe those are just the aromas and flavors of good memories of good things.
So the whole question, when tasting wine, and trying to be objective, can become a difficult one when some aromas don't go from our nose to our brain, they go to our heart. Sometimes, trying to describe wines objectively can be a hard task, if we are trying to give objective information to our readers, trying to tell them what are the wines aromas and not if you like them or not. I always thought that my job was to be objective, but now I can accept, in some cases, that my heart gets a little bit in my work. Probably, good writting can be a little bit of both. Thoughts?
