The Trouble With Science

 

I continue to slog through the science of winemaking as best I can.  My issue is essentially having no science background whatsoever.  I think my last science class was at Kent State University which was a bunny intro class called (I shit you not) "Seven Ideas That Shook The Universe".  It was taught by a guy that was a pretty good presenter and would use visually impactful experiments to illustrate his points.  A guy that lived down the hall from me used to get really high and then announce, "I'm ready to go watch Mr. Wizard!' as we would trudge off to class.  That class was at night twice weekly and amongst the students was about half of the football team.  If you're a guy trying to avoid taking difficult science classes and see the starting o-line sitting near you, you're probably in the right place.

Now the downside to that "A" I breezed to in Seven Ideas was that I left university with the same understanding of science as an average 4-year-old.  For example, I just did a dive on enzymes and realized right away that despite having familiarity with the word, I really didn't understand what an enzyme was or why it was relevant.  I was sort of like this woman I used the work with that we called "The Rube" who had moved here from Indiana.  We had gone out to a restaurant as a group and she looked at the menu and over and over, "What about the brie?  Should we get the brie?  What about the brie?  I think the brie looks good!  Let's get the brie!"  There was a pause and then she spoke again.  "What is brie?"  That's sort of where I'm at on chemistry.

After I spend a couple of days grinding on "science shit", I reward myself with blind tasting.  Let's face it, that's the fun part.  I didn't get into this wine stuff to learn about oxygen's impact on color during a wine's aging process.  It's all about trying as many of the interesting wines from around the planet as possible and trying to make some sort of logical sense of it all.  There was an esoteric lineup of wines at my last Blind Wine Wednesday, so it's important to not get down on your abilities when you couldn't identify three Erbaluces made in three different ways when that was only the 2nd, 3rd and 4th time EVER having the grape.  "Fuck, I missed on a bunch of those whites" should be looked at as "Hey, that was a logical conclusion I came to on those unidentifiable Erbaluce".  (I funneled out unoaked Old World cool climate chardonnay and landed on Verdejo based on the oxidative winemaking style of Wine 1/3 and low oxygen/steel tank of wine 2.  Hey, probably enough exam points to stay alive to move to the next question.)

I'm going to do my first timed mock exam in a couple of months.  I got 12 wines selected by John at Lakewood Bottle Shop as I trust his palate and understanding of what is a "testable" wine.  I then corralled Yoda and Hardy to take the exam with me too as it's extremely useful to see if your wine calls are in the same universe as them.  The fact that these guys are spending a few hours of a gorgeous summer day taking a practice test for something they aren't attempting to pass suggests that they might be even sicker than I am.  I truly appreciate the little village that props me up in this endeavor.  

I feel like I will identify the wines reasonably well, but I feel very rusty providing written answers in the approved MW format.  One of the sort of hilarious facets of the program is that going in you are told "answer it how you like, whatever you need to communicate the information".  This loosey goosey vibe is similar to when you start a new job and everybody seems really cool, they smile a lot, and laugh like hyenas when someone from Corporate swings by a meeting.  It's by about Week 3 that you realize that there is a very complicated rulebook with moving goalposts that no one is going to explain to you.  You need to learn by yourself that you NEVER TOUCH JANET'S COFFEE MUG WHEN IT'S IN THE SINK!  I was like a puppy that got smacked in the nose with a newspaper when I called a very natty gamay "hippie wine" despite the fact that it was made by Chilean hippies living off the grid.  SMACK!  "Didn't you mean to say it's a natural winemaking expression of New World cool climate pinot noir which has received little to no filtration with a complex aromatic profile with a whiff of brettanomyces and acidity with degree of volatility?".   I guess so...  yeah... I guess that's what I meant to say.

Science books tucked away.  Let's taste some wine.  I'll report back later with the damage.