french wine society annual meeting

it has been a quiet summer for posts, but the next several days should be busy. the annual meeting of the french wine society ended today and we attended, and participated, as civilians. over the coming days i plan on summarizing the topics of the meeting and the wines. this was an enlightening experience for us. it gave us a wonderful opportunity to meet people and learn about a topic we hold dear.

i now have a format for tasting wines. i did not develop this, it was provided by charles curtis, mw (master of wine). i have long thought that there was a need for a standardized language of descriptors for wines and he put it out there. this really becomes an algorithm of aromatics and tastes. this provides logic for the navigation of a realm of sensory overflow, and really emphasizes the importance of one's nose. look at the science of the topic- we have a limited number of taste receptors but an impressive repertoire of olfactory options. always remember, as things age fruit fades faster; acid (h+ ions) is retained but may change in type and thus alter mouth feel which has to be balanced by tannin (astringency) and sweetness.

old wines are not a bad thing. i see no reason to dump an old bottle before tasting it, sometimes one will find a diamond in the rough. this was demonstrated over and over as bottles one would think were beyond their time based upon age were presented and showed amazing range.


dewey markham (the 1855 classification...) used sauternes to beautifully illustrate aging of wine and the evolution of "tastes." sugar balances acid.

of course, the highlight for me was the range of grenache and syrah looking at the rhone and the south of france. we tend to overlook the absolute wonders, and production difficulties, of rose wines; this probably is because of "white zinfandel/merlot/anything else" which is the enologic equivalent of a crime against humanity. these wines have a broad range of styles, and pair wonderfully with a multitude of foods. tavel is king, as louis XIV would agree. it can age marvelously as we saw with a 21 year old offering. kelly mcauliffe did more than justice to the subject of tavel and chateauneuf du pape.

the coming days should be eye opening. my perspective has been influenced. i will try to go through this session by session an pick out the salient points, and list the wines. the key issue here was that most of the wines used (over 120) are available in the states and the real focus is regions and styles. salut!