This is the second piece in our series about the 4 words that explain the joy of wine: Magic, memory, food, culture. And on this topic there are 4 elements of memory and wine to explore.
1. Flavour recall
You know that feeling when you are trying to place an actor you see on screen in some other role? It’s on the tip of your tongue and out of nowhere, the answer is there - the relief is palpable. Identifying flavours in a glass of wine can offer that same sense of fun and achievement, and it can happen a dozen or more times with a single glass. What is that? It’s a fruit… it’s tropical… it was on a breakfast platter in a hotel in Thailand… lychee!! Ok, what’s the next one…
As we wrote in our last piece, “Wine is Magic”, this takes a bit of practice, but identifying all of the aromas and flavours in a glass against your own personal encyclopaedia built up from a lifetime of experiences can be genuinely fun, mindful, and social. Give yourself a head start by considering whether you detect anything from the major primary flavour groups (floral, fruit, spice).
2. Flavour time and place
This is closely related to flavour recall, but some of the flavours you can detect in wine are so unique they will transport you to a time and place in your life where you last smelled it. That link between smell, taste and memory is well proven, and we get a lot of joy out of it. The “dead ant” smell referenced in Wine is Magic? That always takes me back to the cement tennis court we had on the family farm I grew up on. It was terribly cracked, with weeds growing out of the tram lines, and at least half a dozen ant nests built into the cracks at any given time. By the end of a game, hundreds of unfortunate ants would be scattered over the court, and the smell of the formic acid was always so intense. The most common times I have smelled it since then is in the occasional glass of Margaret River cabernet. My research tells me it can be indicative of a fault, but I love it. It transports me to those childhood tennis games in vivid detail. The same happens when I detect the aroma of straw - often from a Chardonnay in still or sparkling form. Instant flashbacks to climbing over hay bales with my brothers, the hot sun beating down, and a big smile on my face. This might be my favourite element of wine as memory.
3. Tasting time and place
Another time machine effect of wine. This time not from a single flavour, but from the wine itself. There are some glasses of wine that just stay with you. I call them milestone wines. Not necessarily the usual milestones of life, but milestones in your journey through wine (your Vino Cammino!). Here’s a few of mine, that have created more vidid memories of moments because of the wine I was drinking at the time. We all have our own.
- The first wine I drank and thought “this is actually nice”. I might have been 20. At an Indian restaurant on Rundle Street in Adelaide. Drinking a Clare Valley red, the Peppertree Shiraz from Mitchell. Not a pairing I would recommend now (you need low tannin for spice!), but I’ll never forget it. The spice in the air, the crowd walking past on the street, the warmth of the restaurant on a cool evening.
- The first champagne I drank and thought “this is much more interesting than usual”. It was during the haze of my big firm consulting years. Travelling way too much but offering the small bonus of access to the first lounge where they were serving a Non-vintage Delamotte. I took a photo of it. It started a lifelong interest in the flavours of Champagne, but it also meant that the skew of the tablecloth, the shape of the cutlery, the perfectly sliced chives scattered over the omelette in front of me have stayed with me ever since.
- The first time I felt the power of a great pairing. A friend’s place on the banks of the Murrumbidgee. A pheasant pie. A 2006 Alice Block Shiraz from Greenock Creek. The transformation of the wine as I took my first bites of the pie. I was stunned. How could shiraz, the grape I drank almost exclusively at the time unfurl so many new flavours over the course of a meal? I immediately sourced a dozen to be dispatched from another online wine retailer starting with Vino :) I still remember how my friend brought the bottle to the table, the opener used, how he described his last visit to the winery, how many he had left in the cellar at the time, and the price I paid per bottle to order some for myself.
- More recently, when I tasted the new vintages at Il Colle di Carli in Montalcino. Currently my favourite tasting ever. Only 2 wines, a Rosso and Brunello. Both so extraordinary that every detail of the room is burned into my brain along with their flavours. The slightly ajar wooden door with glimpses of a sunny day overlooking a foggy plain. A slightly uncomfortable bench pulled under a vast oak table Caterina had made herself. The knowing look on her face when I asked if she had passed me the Brunello first when I had actually tasted the Rosso. The musty cellar holding bottles from every vintage the estate had produced down the stairs over my left shoulder. Our kids in their usual cellar position on the floor listening to an audiobook for the 200th time.
4. Vintage time and place
The final joy from wine and memory for me is thinking back to the vintage of the wine and what I was doing at the time. What has happened in my life and the world while this bottle has been lying waiting to be opened. Particularly fun for birth year wines, but any year will work. If you were in or near the region at the time, you might remember the weather of that vintage from personal experience, and taste it in the glass. Another exercise in mindfulness - consider the vintage as a testament to the reward of patience and just being. While you’ve been running around building a career, maintaining relationships, striking out in new directions or whatever has been keeping you busy, the wine has just been there, waiting to give you a few moments of pleasure. Consider thanking it :)