I went wine tasting with Lynne and my parents over my winter vacation. It was rather educational.
Lynne is the real wine connoisseur here. She knows the lingo, has a fine appreciation for a wide variety of wines, would go out of her way to have wine with her dinner, or afterwards, and can actually use phrases like "a hearty, complex red wine with a light floral bouquet" in conversation with a straight face. My father and I have simpler tastes: sweet wines only, and infrequently. I'm actually all the way down on the "uncultured barbarian" side of the wine snob scale — my response to the notion of a "light floral bouquet" is that it smells like wine, not flowers, and the very idea of a "complex" wine perplexes me.
Despite this, I was willing to learn, and took notes as we went around Carmel Valley tasting wine. Our first stop was at the Heller Estate, a very small winery that went to great lengths to let you know that they were a "100% organic" winery. While I applaud the general goals (no pesticides or other environmentally harmful growing techniques), this label has always bothered me; it seems to imply that if I buy from any place that isn't "100% organic" I'm likely to end up with a fatal amount of heavy metals in my bloodstream, or that Clostridium botulinum is perfectly healthy in food. That aside, at the Heller Estate I tasted a 2002 Chardonnay, a Riesling, a Cachagua Cabernet Sauvignon, an Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, a Pinot Noir, a Merlot, and a Merlot Rose, and discovered that my tastes are even more restricted than those of my father. He claims to like all sweet wines; I discovered that the Riesling, while definitely sweet, was sweet in a syrupy kind of way that I didn't care for (and my father picked up a bottle, among other wines, before he left). The Merlot Rose was very mild, watery, and slightly sweet, which made it tolerable to my tastes, but nothing spectacular. The Cabernet Sauvignons reminded me that I have never liked any Cabernet Sauvignon. They are sour, leave a dry aftertaste in the mouth (dry as in literally a dry-mouth sensation, not simply the "not sweet" definition of dry used in wine tasting), and I can tell them apart only by how strongly I dislike them. The same goes for the Merlot and Pinot Noir, except that there I can add bitter ("tannic") to the list. To show contrasting tastes, though, the Heller Estate Merlot was one that Lynne described as "complex", in a favorable-sounding way. Much more interesting to me than their wines, though, was their collection of salsas and sauces, and they might be worth a return visit some year for closer investigation.
Our next stop, at Chateau Sinnet, was much more to my liking. We started and ended with champagnes. Their Grand Cuvée was slightly sweet, lightly carbonated, and quite good. Their Select Cuvée was more strongly carbonated, and I didn't like it as much. Their Almond Cuvée (which indeed did smell vaguely of almonds, but didn't taste of it at all), was slightly sweeter than the Grand Cuvée, and was also quite good.
It was with the Claret, though, that I started expanding my horizons. Tasted alone, I didn't like it much, although it had a lighter and more tolerable taste than a Merlot or Cabernet Sauvignon. The proprietor brought out some Riesling-marinated garlic, however, and had me try it with that, and they went really well together. I'm not sure how often I would be eating things with a strong enough flavor to make it worth buying a bottle, but I was surprised to discover that there was anything that could actually make me like that kind of wine. The proprietor also brought out a Pinot Noir, which also became better with the strong taste of garlic in the mouth, but not enough so to overcome my general dislike, and a Zinfandel, which was neither very bitter nor very sour, but still not something I enjoyed.
At this point, we got to the really good stuff. Their Cranberry Renoir L'orange was sweet, but not syrupy, you could taste both the orange and the cranberry, and was excellent. Their Blackberry Chagall was even better (though Lynne preferred the Cranberry Renoir L'orange), being slightly sweeter, but even fruitier, reminding me of that glorious hot blueberry wine I had once at a festival in Germany that I am unlikely to ever find again. Also tasted was their Peach Money with Honey, which was too sweet for my taste, to the point of being syrupy and masking the taste of peach. Brought out last was the Concord Mastel, which was something like lightly fermented sweetened grape juice, not too sweet, but also not that great, and certainly nothing in comparison to the Blackberry Chagall.
Chateau Sinnet also has some excellent chocolates (around caramel, dried cherries, dried blueberries, and dried strawberries), and pickled olives that Lynne loved (though I myself don't much care for the taste of olives). We ended up picking up a number of bottles of various things, and a box of assorted chocolates, though sadly we never got around to opening another Blackberry Chagall before I left, and it's not safe to put that sort of thing in your luggage when you have to fly home.
Our last stop for the day was at Joullian Monterey, which specialized in dry wines (with predictable results on my palate) and had a proprietor with a dry sense of humor (which I enjoyed much more than the wines). We went through their Chardonnay (not too dry, but not sweet, either, and with a strong alcohol taste), Chardonnay Roger Rose (again with that strong alcohol taste), Chardonnay Sleepy Hollow (slightly sweeter, but not so much that it actually tastes remotely sweet), Sauvignon Blanc (tannic, dry aftertaste), Cabernet Sauvignon (like all the others of that type, except that again the alcohol came through more strongly), Family Reserve Merlot (tannic, dry aftertaste), a Zinfandel (very tannic, dry aftertaste, and quite a disappointment after the almost tolerable Chateau Sinnet Zinfandel), and the Joullian Cepage Retro Rouge, something I'd never even heard of before, but was, like the rest, tannic with a dry aftertaste. I couldn't even really tell them apart. Despite that, I enjoyed listening to the proprietor, who noted that individual tastes in wine are different and specific enough to be comparable to fingerprints, and that one of the reasons to go wine tasting is to find out what you like, whether or not you agree with "wine experts" about how good a particular wine is.
So maybe I'm not just a hopeless barbarian after all. In addition to a few bottles that she picked up (since she drove, she can actually get away with this) that she intends to let age for a couple years, she also picked up a small book about wines that is supposed to demystify them somewhat without taking away the magic. At some point I should borrow it from her so I can at least follow the conversations.
