The Young and the Thirsty: 25 California Wines for the New School Drinker

Wine-tasting: it's junk science

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Professionals distinguish between the balance of these three basic elements and a wine's flavour. And here the chemistry gets more complicated. The flavour of wine — its aroma or bouquet — is detected not by the taste buds, but by millions of receptors in the olfactory bulb, a blob of nervous tissue where the brain meets the nasal passage.

Chemists have identified at least aroma compounds that work on their own and with others to create complex flavours — some appearing immediately on first sniffing, others emerging only as an aftertaste. Most of these are volatiles — aromatic compounds that tend to have a low boiling point and waft away from glasses and tongues towards the olfactory bulb. Some of these, the primary volatiles, are present in the grape.

Others, the secondaries, are generated by yeast activity during fermentation. The rest, the tertiary volatiles, are formed as wine matures in barrels or bottles. Over the last few decades, wine scientists have begun to identify the compounds responsible for some of the distinctive aromas in wine. The grassy, gooseberry quality of sauvignon blanc, for instance, comes from a class of chemicals called methoxypyrazines. These contain nitrogen and are byproducts of the metabolism of amino acids in the grape.

Concentrations are higher in cooler climates, which is why New Zealand sauvignon blancs are often more herbaceous than Australian ones. These include linalool — a substance also used in perfumes and insecticide — and geraniol, a pale yellow liquid that doubles up as an effective mosquito repellent and gives geranium its distinctive smell. The spicy notes of chardonnay have been attributed to compounds called megastigmatrienones, also found in grapefruit juice.

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But I'm a believer that everyone has the same equipment and it comes down to learning how to interpret it. Detecting and finding the right vocabulary may be within everyone's grasp. But when it comes to ranking wines, Hutchinson shares Robert Hodgson's concerns. People struggle with assessing wine because the brain's interpretation of aroma and bouquet is based on far more than the chemicals found in the drink. Temperature plays a big part. Volatiles in wine are more active when wine is warmer.

Serve a New World chardonnay too cold and you'll only taste the overpowering oak. Serve a red too warm and the heady boozy qualities will be overpowering.

Colour affects our perceptions too. Using the typical language of tasters, the panel described the red as "jammy' and commented on its crushed red fruit. The critics failed to spot that both wines were from the same bottle. The only difference was that one had been coloured red with a flavourless dye. Other environmental factors play a role.

A judge's palate is affected by what she or he had earlier, the time of day, their tiredness, their health — even the weather. The wine industry calls them its future. The Young Winos, along with other twentysomething adults across America, are the new driving force in the wine market, says Patrick Merrill, a San Mateo-based wine market researcher. When it comes to wine, they drink more, know more, spend more and enjoy a broader international selection of wines, on average, than any generation before them. He is an Ithaca College graduate.

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And if this love affair continues, they will reshape wine in their open-minded, information-hungry, unpretentious image, according to a growing body of market research. Jesse Porter was a year-old Syracuse University graduate working long hours in L. He had plenty of takers. Every other month a fresh posting on Craigslist brings in new blood. The members are serious about improving their wine IQs, and the Wednesday night meetings rarely disintegrate into parties. But the conversation often wanders from what's in the glass.

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At a recent meeting in Sherman Oaks, Porter ran a hand through his hair as he pushed the group to focus on the subject at hand, a Sutton Cellars Carignane from Mendocino County. What do you smell? The group snapped its attention back to the wine. The cri de coeur of "the most disgusting wine I've ever drunk!

Neither was a winner.

There is a reason these are considered "blending" grapes on their home turf. Ultimately, tastes just differ. Extra-hoppy IPAs that were rarely seen in the s are the premium beers of today. There was a time California wine was scoffed at by the wine-drinking world. Some today are recognized among the best in the world.

Wine-tasting: it's junk science | Food | The Guardian

And who can blame a producer for giving consumers what they want? Got a barrel of 30 year old bourbon sitting in a warehouse? Might as well bottle it up. Someone out there wants it. Why not sell it? Set aside a few barrels to age even longer, bottle it up in a few years and sell it to eager consumers.

For me, the sweet spot is still usually years with a few exceptions either way. He attended the University of Kentucky in the mid to late s. Since college, he has dabbled in beer, bourbon, wine tasting, beer making, and currently works in finance. He has also been published on Liquor. He has conducted various bourbon and whiskey tastings in cities across the country. He is married with two daughters, and lives in east Louisville.

The new folks entering the bourbon scene have not developed a palate, and age is the measure for them to go by. They think that the older it is, the better it must be, the more valuable it must be, and that gets them all excited.

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