Palate Training #3: Memory Games

Regular readers of our Lab Reports know that one of our favorite guinea pigs of late has been the 2006 Bodegas Olivares Altos de la Hoya. It's a Spanish Red made from ungrafted Mourvedre vines in the Jumilla.

During a recent job interview, a candidate for a spot in the Lab's chemistry department noticed the spare bottle of this wine that I was using as a paperweight. He asked me what it tasted like. I figured I'd let the wine answer the question and promptly pulled the cork. But then I had a different thought...

We've had a lot of experience with this wine recently. We used it to test overnight storage methods. We used it to test the effects of refrigeration. I should know what it tastes like. I should have a "palate memory baseline" for this wine.

I decided to turn the young chemist's question into a training exercise. Without checking my old notes, I tried to recall a sensory memory of the wines aromas and taste.

I remembered rich smells of dusty fruit. And flavors of plum confiture and ripe fig, and sharp tannins that smoothed out quickly with air and a lingering, nervy mineral element. With some concentration, I felt I could actually conjure the sensation of the wine on my palate.

When I tasted it, it was close to my sensory reconstruction. The job applicant was impressed at my demonstration of memory. But this wasn't about winning a parlor game. Conjuring the wine before tasting it deepens your appreciation of it, allows you to note changes over time, across vintages. Palate memory is an important tool. It's something to actively develop.

If a cookie can inspire two volumes of lost memories, just think of the potential for a quality Pinot Noir...

More Cold Play

The reasons for doing this experiment were many. But first and foremost is the massive spike in traffic for the Lab website the last time we used "Cold Play" in the title of a post. I'm thinking the next 5 posts will be called "Britney".

But it's also true that after we tested the preservative qualities of inert gas and bottle pumps, we were left with a few unanswered questions. Most notably the one asked by my buddy Gary who wanted to know whether an open bottle of red holds up better in the fridge or on the kitchen counter.

In theory, cold is a useful preservative. Leave some chicken out on the counter for a couple days if you don't believe me. But there's also a persistent belief in some oenological corners that too much cold will deaden the fruit in red wine.

So we went back to the Bodegas Olivares, Altos de la Hoya, Jumilla Monastrell, 2006. It's terrific wine from ungrafted vines and costs as little as a gallon of organic milk, which makes it perfect for experimentation.

We replicated our prior protocols, pouring off 300 ml from each of two bottles. The first we gassed, recorked and left on the counter. The second, we gassed, recorked and put in the fridge. The temperature on the bottom shelf measured a crisp 38°. We let both sit for 5 days. We let both bottles come back to room temperature before tasting.

It was no contest.

The fridged bottle was the best showing of this wine so far (and we've had a fair few at the lab recently). Black cherry, ripe fig and cardamom spice. It was equally impressive in the mouth, energetic, gripping tannins and that ungrafted hallmark: inextricably intertwined fruit and rocks.

Meanwhile, the countered bottle was showing a lot of alcohol volatility and overripe, approaching rancid, fruit. The complexity in the palate had vanished. Whatever excitement this bottle once held had set sail for other ports.

Clearly, much more testing needs to be done. This effort is merely anecdotal. Please feel free to further our cause with your own refrigeration anecdotes.

If we get a big pile of them I can have one of the research assistants compile all of them into a shiny binder. They love making binders.

The Day After

Summer is over and we are back to the grind of full-time science at the Lab.

At a recent planning meeting, several storage issues made it on our agenda. Most noteworthy were several proposed experiments with a focus on storing wine after it has been opened. We plan to test effectiveness of air pumps and inert gas. We also want to see what effect, if any, storage temperature has on already opened bottle of wine.

For our first round of tests, we found a few bottles of 2006 Bodegas Olivares, Altos de la Hoya, Jumilla Monastrell (Mourvedre).

The sandy soils of Jumilla proved inhospitable to our old foe, the Dry Leaf Devastator, and many of the vineyards survived the Phylloxera plague unscathed. So the region is home to some of the oldest, ungrafted vines in the world. The Altos de la Hoya comes from grapes grown in an 11 hectare vineyard with some vines planted as far back as 1872. The importers claim that the 2006 vintage in Jumilla was the best in a decade.

Ungrafted, old Mourvedre from a great vintage. It's astonishing that you can buy this wine for less than $10. It will make you rethink your first growth Bordeaux collection.

Aromas of sweet, smokey plums with background notes of dusty cobblestones and Wrigley's spearmint chewing gum emerge with some time in the glass. On the palate, more plum and rich, ripe figs with hints of campfire and bacon. Underlying this is an amazing core of sweet, chalky minerality. Given their youth, the tannins are surprisingly soft and chewy.

This deep purple-y garnet wine has the lively tension and balanced integration often found in wines made from own-rooted vines (this is also on the Lab's agenda).

We opened a couple over the weekend to test. Results later this week.


(image: © Carlos Sanchez Pereyra | Dreamstime.com)