Tag Archives: wine

Cork Forests: Actually, Money Does Grow on Trees

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Think about the last bottle of wine you drank. Was it sealed with a natural cork? A synthetic plastic closure? A screw top cap? Where does cork come from, and what’s with all the buzz about cork trees being endangered? To investigate, we ventured off to Alentejo, a rural region in south-central Portugal, and one of the world’s largest sources of cork oaks. All told, Portugal produces about 75% of the world’s cork, and about 75% of this goes into wine bottle stoppers. About 33% of all cork trees grow in Portugal, and 95% of these are in the Alentejo region.

At Herdade da Maroteira, Philip Mollet guided us on a tour of his 540 hectare farm. Much of the land is forested, with approximately 2/3 covered by cork forest, 1/3 covered by stone oaks, and some cleared land for vineyards and livestock. Mollet is a 5th generation farmer, whose family originally hailed from Britain. As the story goes, in the beginning there were two brothers who were on their way to Australia. They stopped in Porto to make repairs on their boat and look for cork stopper resources. The brothers ended up traveling to Alentejo, where they found this particular cork farm. One brother continued on to Australia, while the other stayed in Portugal. Later on, the brothers arranged for a cultural swap, with one brother sending eucalyptus to Portugal and the other brother sending cork acorns to Australia. However, the acorns that were sent were sterilized—nothing like a little sibling rivalry to help foment family feuds!
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An Introduction to Wine Journalism

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Wine journalism. Is it a public service, or simply pretentious nonsense? What forms does it come in? Does anyone pay attention to this stuff anyway? Who is the target audience?

On this gray November day, we were greeted by the warm presence of Richard Baudains, a wine writer for Decanter who has also contributed to the Arcigolo Gambero Rosso guides Vini d’Italia (Wines of Italy) and Vini del Mondo (Wines of the World). He hails from the Channel Islands (an archipelago between England and France), but has spent the last two decades living and drinking in Italy.

There are many opinions on the role of wine journalism, and we examined a series of quotes from wine writers with varying interpretations of the role. There is the Elitist Expert, who wrote, “I’ve been tasting wines now for over forty years and I like to think that through my articles I can help my readers to appreciate the subtleties of one of the finer things in life.” There is the Public Defender, who said, “Do you know how many chemical additives are permitted in a wine by a European food regulation laws? And what about the illegal additives? Wine writers should be raising awareness of these issues.” There is the Writer of Convenience, who commented, “I used to be on the sports page, but I got fed up with all the travelling and staying up all night to file my copy for the morning editions. Wine is great. A very laid back scene and super hospitality.” And naturally, there is the Passionate Amateur, who enthuses, “I just adore wine, in all shapes and forms. I love tasting it and I love writing about it and I want to share my passion for it through my blog.” People write about wine to affirm their own prestige, to express joy, for money, for free, to spread knowledge, to omit it, and for all sorts of reasons in between.
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Arqua Petrarca: Love, Wine and Petrarch

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Clockwise: the entrance to Petrarch’s home; 13th century Venetian school fresco inside the Santa Maria church; Petrarch’s tomb; pomegranates growing on a roadside tree

Se ti agita sacro amore di Patria, t’inchina a queste mura ove spirò la grande anima il cantor dei Scipioni e di Laura. If you are moved by the sacred love of country, bow down before this wall where a great soul, the singer of Scipio and of Laura passed away.
-Inscription at the house of Petrarch

One of the best parts about living in Italy is that the country has immense historical and cultural wealth, simply by virtue of having advanced civilizations living here for eons. You can drive into almost any random small town in Italy and discover a Baroque church, a medieval castle, a Renaissance marble sculpture…try doing that in the United States and you’ll find a McDonald’s parking lot. Thus, I am often afflicted with country-envy when I speak to Italians, who don’t even bat an eye as they point out the astronomy tower that Galileo conducted research in, while my jaw drops in excitement. On the other hand, the other day I started grilling Valeria on the history of the Italian republic and it went something like this:

V: You know how every other street is named Garibaldi? That’s because Giuseppe Garibaldi was the one who led the drive for the unification of Italy in 1861.
Me: Oh, 1861? To me, that year signifies the start of the American Civil War. Wait a minute, modern Italy was founded in 1861? Then I shouldn’t feel bad, my country is older than yours after all!
V: …I guess you could look at it that way.

Rivalries aside, Valeria was kind enough to act as a guide and host her flatmates in Veneto for a few days. Veneto is a region in northeast Italy, where Valeria and several previous generations of her family grew up. It is most famous for the canal-lined city of Venice, but we were taking some time to explore the Colli Euganei (Euganean Hills), known for being a center of moscato wines. We wandered through Monselice and Este, paused to ogle at the castles, and eventually made our way to Arqua Petrarca, so named because it is the deathplace of Petrarch.
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Puglia Food Products: Olive Oil, Capocollo, Wine, Cheese and Seafood

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Grindstone for a 17th century olive oil mill, a thousand-year old olive tree

Though some time was alloted in Puglia for activities not requiring mastication, the bulk of the trip was spent at food production sites, restaurants and agricultural lands. I realize that this must sound like the best foodie vacation ever, but eating rich foods nonstop for a week is not as pleasant as it may seem. Some of us had the added stress of documenting the trip in detail because there is a paper and presentation required after the stage. By the end, we were all thoroughly sick of cured meats, cheeses and each other. A few people actually became ill, though I cannot say whether this was due to food poisoning, general infection, or the stress of traveling and eating from 9 am to 1 am every day. My advice for anyone who goes on these trips is to ingest plenty of fiber and choose your roommate carefully.

Moving on to the actual food. Puglia’s dry, sunny climate makes it difficult to grow many crops, but the hardiness of olive trees in times of drought has resulted in their widespread cultivation. The trees dot the Puglian landscape with their graceful, twisted trunks and branches, akin to a pair of ballet dancers. We were told by one farmer that the trees twist according to the Earth’s rotation, and that olive trees planted south of the equator would twist in the opposite direction, similar to the rotation of water draining from toilets. This is a romantic idea, but since the Coriolis force has been shown to have a tenuous effect on toilet water, I am somewhat doubtful of the tree-twisting claim.

Still, the trees are majestic to behold, knotted and gnarly, reminiscent of the baobab tree in The Little Prince. The one pictured above actually belongs to a Russian who admired the unique shape of its trunk. So, he bought the tree for €5,000. In return, he gets to keep the olive oil milled from the olives of this tree, which comes to 10-15 liters of oil per year. He also comes to visit his tree annually. If you are interested in owning a piece of Italian real estate and having a lifetime supply of olive oil, you too can invest in one of the 50,000 available trees for the low price of €500-1,000 by contacting Olio Cazzetta.
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Wine Snobbery 101

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“Everyone has the ability to taste and analyze wine, you just need to have the vocabulary and focus to do it,” said Ann Noble, a retired UC Davis professor of Viticulture and Enology. With that, we launched into two days of Sensory Analysis classes, an overview of the sensory properties of wine (appearance, aroma, mouthfeel, flavor, aftertaste) and some of the psychological factors that influence the perception of wine. And though her appearance was unassuming, Noble turned out to be a colorful, crusty character full of dry, sarcastic comments such as “You just have a pinot fetish” and “You’re a prostitute when you’re a researcher because you need money!”

Indeed, Noble’s presentation on her research was impressive. Up till now, I had always been skeptical of professional wine tasters. First off, there have been lots of reports that wine ratings are inconsistent, even with repeated ratings from the same judges. Supposedly, lots of experienced wine drinkers can’t even tell red from white wine. Secondly, wine writers and aficionados tend to use ridiculously flowery languages to describe wines, like “Now, that’s a little girl from Morey-St.-Denis! A virgin. She needs to air a bit. Then we can all prod it, taste it and love it as we truly deserve, as God appointed us.” Yeah, okay.

Noble argued that wine experts who conduct labeled tastings are necessarily biased, and that results based on a few individuals are invalid. On the other hand, using a sensory panel of people trained to describe and quantify attributes of wine under ideal conditions (blind tastings, quiet room, no interfering odors) generates in statistically valid results. The panel provides objective, accurate and repeatable measurements. You can then use statistical techniques like principal components analysis to weight the importance of the descriptive variables, or partial least squares regressions to relate sensory data to chemical or consumer preference data. I am pretty sure the rest of the class was tuning out this section, but my inner stats nerd was in heaven. Who knew my stint at the Fed would be useful in oenology??
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