The Dreaded P3 Exam

 

One of the tasting exams is the P3, which is the "mixed bag" paper.  This means in theory that it could be anything, but this tends to be sparkling, rose, and the sea of sweet/fortified wines that get the geekiest of wine geeks fully erect.  I find the sweet wines to be the most challenging for the simple fact that I, like almost every other person on the planet, never drinks them.  I am starting a focused effort to get a better grasp of these, and as a result I will likely be battling diabetes in about 45 days.  While the onset of diabetes will be a bit of a drag, I will be offering a massive boost in market share to some of these obscure wine styles.  After I order a couple bottles of Bonnezeaux, I can see a French winemaker looking at his sales reports screaming at his importer, "Nous sommes en hausse de 200 % dans le nord-est de l’Ohio.  Pourquoi n'installez-vous pas des présentoirs au bout des allées dans toutes leurs épiceries merdiques ?" which translates to "We are up 200% in Northeast Ohio.  Why don't you have end aisle displays up in all of their shitty grocery stores?".  

I have so many of these obscure wines in my house right now, feel free to swing on by and knock back a vin santo whenever you'd like.  The upside is that I can do practice exams at a moment's notice.  A guy in my Wednesday blind group asked me, "How do you approach these wines?  I have no idea what to do."  First of all, you'd better start each morning with a nice Domaine Zind Humbrecht Pinot Gris Vendange Tardives just to get yourself in the spirit, but mostly just try to focus on the structure of the wines.  The wines fit into some basic categories, so if you can get a good reading on the alcohol level, if it's fortified, the level of sugar in the wine, and if there is botrytis, you have a fighting chance.  Here's a recent pair I just did and how I approached them.

Wine #1   

The wine is a medium lemon color.  Medium nose of tree fruit, citrus and a little floral/funk.  Medium body, high acid that asserts itself on the finish, alcohol 12%.  Concentrated golden apple/citrus.  Rich body.  Sweet.  Little funk in there.  Seems like a touch of botrytis.  110g/l?  Long finish.  Very high quality.

So right away I can get rid of any fortified wines with the ABV being 12%.  It feels Old World to me as the fruit character doesn't have a bright persistence that I'd expect from Australia/NZ/Cali.  The acid is high, so I have to consider riesling, chenin, furmint, and semillon.  There's a little botrytis here but it's not the star of the show.  I'd be getting more candied orange peel and honeyed notes if this was Sauternes or Tokaji.  That puts me into two wine types for consideration.  This could be a late harvest style riesling from Germany, Alsace or maybe Austria.  It doesn't feel very Teutonic in character.  There's some funk here, so I've got to consider Alsace.  It could be a Vendage Tardives Alsace riesling.  I also have to think about Chenin here.  It could be one of those Loire sweet wines which can have sugar levels all over the place between 100-200 with this kind of acid.  On my note, I wrote the following... "The ascending persistent high acid, apple nose and flavors, 110 g/L of RS with 12% ABV points directly to Quarts de Chaume as Bonnezeaux and Coteaux du Layon typically would have lower alcohol and not have the rich concentration and complexity (Primary tree fruit/marmalade) of wine #1.".  The palate is confusing to me as it could be a late harvest Alsace wine, but not with this much sugar and alcohol.  A Selection de Grains Noble would have more botrytis and probably even more sugar, (and I know I never bought one of those so it can't be that... OK, that's cheating!).  Chenin is an alcohol/sugar machine so I think my chenin call makes sense here regardless of what it turned out to be.

Wine #2

The wine is medium gold/copper.  The wine is medium + nose with candied orange peel, citrus and maybe apricot?  The wine is very rich and sweet.  Medium + acid.  180g/L.  Alcohol is a little low, 11%.  There's some vanilla here pointing to new oak.  Super concentrated and long finish.  Dessert in a glass.

Immediately I'm considering if this is Tokaji or Sauternes.  It's got that candied citrus peel that points to botrytis.  It's very high quality, so if this is French I'm thinking one of the better properties and probably not Barsac.  The new oak use has me leaning to Sauternes, but the alcohol is a little too low.  I can be counted on for reliably mixing up tokaji and Sauternes so I taste it again.  It's really rich, probably too rich for Sauternes.  And with the alcohol at 11% that really points to tokaji.  Another piece of evidence is the slight copper color which is confirming botrytis with that orange peel on the nose/palate.  Yeah, I'm in.  Let's say since the sugar is 180g/L it's a 6 puttonyos Tokaji.  I write a detailed tokaji note.

The Results.  

OK, so I got Wine 1.  That was a Baumard Quarts de Chaume.  I whiffed on wine #2 though, which was an Inniskillin Gold Vidal Icewine.  Fuck, I forgot Icewine even existed in my rush to write an answer on what I concluded in about 12 seconds.  Stupid mistake.  What was worse on my part was misjudging the sugar.  I thought it was 180 g/L, but it was actually 272 g/L!!!  The alcohol was only 9.5%.  Either one of those data points should have led me out of my conclusion, but the sugar miss was really bad.  The sheer richness of the body should have taken me to Icewine or maybe even a Aussie sticky.  Assessing the RS in these wines is challenging, but as I practice more with them I'll dial it in.  

Ah well, tomorrow is a new sugar filled day.  If you'd like a nice glass of cream sherry, stop on by.