Author Archives: Seema Tikare

Having grown up in the deep South, fall for me conjures up not images of gold and red leaves or apple cider doughnuts, but rather tailgating at football games, being able to be outside again without air-conditioning and lots of barbequing and garden parties.  Fall in the south is what would be considered summer weather in Boston, as the unbearable heat of July and August finally fall to the 80s.

But in New England, September means those first leaves scattered across lawns, pumpkins and chrysanthemums on front porches, the first hints of woodsmoke from fireplaces, and pulling out socks for closed shoes.  But it also means hot days interspersed with cool nights and being outside to enjoy the last lingering days of summer.  

 All of which raises the question, what wines should I be drinking?!  Chilled refreshing whites and lighter reds for the hot days?  Heavier red wines for the cool nights?  Do I want stew tonight or a grilled striped bass with cucumber salad?  That is shoulder season for you.  And honestly, I don’t have any answers.  But that is the beauty of wine – there is an infinite variety to choose from and you should drink what you crave in the moment.  

Our farmer’s market is still going and the Fish Lady (what she calls herself) is still selling some of the freshest fish around.  So, on Wednesdays, we always open a white.  I am a big fan of more muscular whites.  While Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc are both big and bold, there are other wines that bring some variety and adventure but also pure deliciousness.  One of my favorite wines these days is the Louro Godello from Rafael Palacios.  It is a Spanish varietal from the Galicia region and, weighing in at 14% alcohol by volume, it is a hefty wine – redolent of ripe apples and almonds, with a creamy texture and a mineral, almost saline finish. It is a perfect wine for those summer days and autumn nights.

Other evenings, with burgers or sausages from the grill, we might drink a Chianti Classico like a Pian del Ciampolo from the revered Montevertine estate.  It is a vibrant wine full of red fruit, an acid bite and textural tannins that pair beautifully with the smoky, roasted flavors of grilled meats.  Perhaps a Cru Beaujolais from Morgon with pan roasted chicken and veggies.  Or a South African Chenin Blanc like Secateurs with Asian take out.  

In other words, I save the Cabernets and Rhône Syrah, Grenache, Mourvedre blends, the Malbecs and the Merlots for the winter months and explore the rest of the world of wine during these rambunctious months of New England autumn.

I never know what to tell people when they ask me what I do.  My answer tends to vary.  “Wine expert?”  Too pompous, but it gets the message across.  “Wine writer?”  Well yes, but I have not yet written any books or published long form articles, so is that actually true?  “Wine educator?”  I love teaching about wine and thrive in that environment, but I have never really written a test for my students or graded it as such.  I usually end up saying “Wine consultant,” which sometimes seems like the perfect vague answer to say both that I am a scholar of wines but also do a strange mix of work – writing, working in retail sometimes, marketing, teaching and as always, reading, studying and learning.

People do tend to be particular sometimes.  I am often asked, “are you a sommelier?”  That is one question I can categorically say “no” to.  I do not work in a restaurant.  I have never created a wine list or sold wine to suit a client’s meal or mood.  In other words, I do pour wine when I am working as a teacher or in a marketing setting, but I have never “served” wine.  Sommeliers also do not like it when someone like me is called a somm.  I am not sure where that sensitivity comes from, but it exists.  

Basically, there are a few paths through the wine world.  First of course, is being a wine producer.  If you are a vineyard worker / owner, you can study and work in the vineyard, you farm vines, study soils, climate conditions, vine varieties, rootstocks, vine diseases and pests and so forth.  I romanticize this pathway a great deal.  I realize it is hard, back-breaking work, but it seems so visceral and satisfying to dig and cultivate and nurture something in the ground.  And it is also a relatively short distance to working in a winery, which is also a dream job.  I love listening to people talking about the harvest and “the crush.”  They don’t talk about “the ferment” or “the maceration,” it is simply the crush.  And being in a winery during the hustle of receiving grapes, sorting them, putting them through the de-stemmer and crusher, smelling the fermenting juices, watching the CO₂ bubbling up through the detectors – it is all so exciting.

Viticulturists and Enologists (the wine makers) of course usually study these subjects in college or grow up on farms and vineyards, do internships, work harvests as seasonal workers and so forth.  I, by contrast, studied economics and political science in my youth and traveled the world over working on international poverty reduction programs.  It was a wonderful vocation and wonderful lifestyle, and it is only to say that I came to wine as a second career.  So, while I would have loved to be in production, it did not seem realistic to me for a mid-career switch with a family.  

Therefore, I went for the more scholarly route with no clear idea of where I would end up, but with some vague ideas about writing, teaching and maybe opening a wine bar someday.  Fortunately for me, I began my wine studies with perhaps the most scholarly of wine experts, a Master of Wine.  It is the Ph.D of the wine world with only fewer than 420 of them in the world.  The Harvard Business School alone has 300 professors, as a comparison.  That was 7 years ago and I have loved every minute of it.  And I still feel like I could (and do) shovel in wine knowledge for decades more.  There are between 5,000 and 10,000 known vine varieties, with thousands more clones and biotypes.  There are hundreds of appellations all over the world with unique requirements, climates, soils and wine laws.  There are tens of thousands of producers, some with very unique approaches to wine making.  There is so much to know – and so much to do.
So, what do I do exactly?  It is actually a great question.  I basically thank the lucky stars that I can have a career in the wine industry and I greedily grab at any experience I can get.  And I occasionally call myself a “wineau.”

When something new comes along – a new show on TV, a new look in clothes, a new food trend – there are always questions.  Should I try it?  Is it worth trying?  What if I don’t like it?  What if I do?  Does that make me a slave to fashion?

Wines have all these same issues.  There are trends in every decade for wine makers.  For consumers, the trends come through every few years. There are trends begun by a movie for example.  The movie, “Sideways,” devastated the market for Merlot even though at the end, the Cheval Blanc the main character savors as he rethinks his life is a Merlot dominant wine.  Sometimes the trends are driven by wine critics like Robert Parker who essentially made everyone question the quality and centuries-old traditions of Bordeaux and drove profound changes in the way people view wine. Most recently, sommeliers or “somms” have been the agents of change – encouraging people to broaden their horizons by taking the comforting favorites off of wine lists and challenging customers to try obscure varietals, new regions and interesting pairings.  

This week, we are exploring one of these trends: volcanic wines.  As the world grows smaller and people become more curious about different cuisines, so do they become curious about what wines go with these cuisines.  I have been to several restaurants now, beginning in Paris, where the appetizer is literally a fancy tin of fish, served on a platter like a delicacy with bread and chutney.  Some of these tins are from volcanic areas like Sicily – and strongly suggest that wines like Carricante from Mount Etna go well with this snack. Soave Classico and Fiano d’Avellino are two other white wines that also show the beautiful character of volcanic soils.

Among red volcanic wines, Sicily’s Mt. Etna provides wonderful choices.  The grape, Nerello Mascalese, is a dark-skinned grape that makes rather light wines.  One reason is that it is often grown at altitudes of up to 1000 meters, which allows the soils and vines to cooldown at night to promote aromatic intensity and acidity to form.  Another choice is Oregon – where the Willamette valley sits at the foot of Mt. St. Helens.  Volcanic eruptions have provided this wine area with their dark, intriguing soils and produce wonderful, intensely flavored Pinot Noir.  

(And thirdly, one can look at Argentina and it’s mighty Andes Mountains.  The Mendoza valley is littered with sandy, rocky soils and sits at an altitude between 800 and 1200 meters, again affording the dark Malbec grape to develop complexity and character without overly ripe flavors overwhelming the palate.)

(Alternate ending:  And thirdly, we can return to the tragically historic slopes of Mt. Vesuvius for a wine made from the extremely underappreciated grape, Aglianico from the Taurasi appellation.  It is called the Barolo of the southern Italy as a compliment, but it does this wonderful dark, brooding wine an injustice.  Where Barolo can be both tannic and ethereal, Aglianico is fruity and leathery and big and recalls a stormy night spent cozy in front of a fireplace.  It is the perfect wine to finish the evening.)

Saluté!  

“I often cook with wine.  Sometimes I even put it into the food.”  It is clear that wine goes with everything.  Wine and cheese, wine and chocolate, even wine and music.  

Some wines are clearly what we call “food wines.”  Those are wines have some special character to them that makes them particularly suitable for some specific types of food.  They are wines that have a particularly tannic quality for example.  Tannins are chemical compounds that add some bitterness and astringency to wine.  Bitterness of course is a flavor you taste on the tongue.  Astringency by contrast is about mouthfeel.  Astringency is that property in wines that gives one a drying sensation on the mouth.  And it is not just a sensation – tannins actually bind to the proteins in your saliva and draw them out of your mouth such that your mouth is actually dryer after you drink wine than before.  Tannins, as they age or receive micro-oxygenation, also form chains or “polymerize,” allowing fewer bonds to form with saliva and give you additional sensations in the mouth such as a grainy, velvety or even a pebbly texture.  As a result, tannin-heavy wines are said to pair well with fatty, protein-rich foods which allow the tannins to cut through the lipids and complement the umami flavors in food.  

Similarly, acidic wines are said to pair well with lighter foods that may need to be rounded out or fatty foods that require a bit of a palate cleansing – oily fish or rich salad dressings for example.  Perhaps a cream soup or bisque.  Conventional wisdom also holds that one should have a sweeter wine with spicy food to balance out the flavors.  I pair this way for all of my dinner parties – often even planning the menu around the wine I would like to serve rather than vice versa.  

But what about when you just want to sip a good glass of wine?  It does not always matter what food you are meant to eat with it or even if you have to have food with it.  There are lots of wines that are pleasing all by themselves. Choose at will – there is such a variety of high-quality carefully made wine now from every grape and every region of the world.  

So, how does one choose?  Is it based on the weather?  A beautiful chilled Muscadet for a day on the beach, a warm comforting Zinfandel curled up in front of a fire?  Or perhaps on your mood.  A bubbly prosecco while getting ready to go to a party or a brooding syrah for deep thoughts and important decisions?  Maybe you choose your wine based on where you would like to go on vacation next – whether Greece or Chile, Australia or Austria.  It may also be about where you want to go next on vacation.  Or maybe it is just what the wine seller recommended when you went to pick up some sandwich makings at the store and you got pulled into conversation.

However you choose your wine, remember, wine goes with everything – food, yes, but also friends, topics of conversation, television programs, the color of your shoes, anything at all.

Pardon the pun!

While Climate Change is accepted as fact by many, it is still a bit of a mysterious, nebulous idea that floats around the consciousness, disembodied.  Yes, we should reduce, reuse, recycle.  Of course, if we have a chance to switch to wind or solar, we should make the effort.  Drive less, waste less, consume smart, use fewer resources.  

But despite all of these (relatively minor) lifestyle changes, how real it is on a day-to-day basis?  

Unfortunately for France’s vineyard owners, climate change just punched them in the stomach.  Right now, we only have early estimates for the levels of damage done to the forthcoming 2021 grape harvest, but for major regions, this is how it is looking:

Region	Percentage of the Harvest Damaged
Burgundy
Chablis	80%
Pouilly Fuissé	90%
Mâcon        Côte d’or	30%Unknown, less
Bordeaux	30%
LoireRhône	Unknown as yet30 – 40%
Languedoc	50%
Provence	“Extensive”
Southwest France	80%
Jura / Savoie	80%
Overall	30% TO 50%

There is no doubt that this destruction of the grape harvest is directly related to climate change – the spring weather was unseasonably warm, leading the vines to think that warm weather had stabilized.  The buds, which take a year to mature, began sprouting with delicate leaves and the beginnings of a long-gestated beautiful nubs that were destined to be their first born of the year.  Then cruel fate stepped in with temperatures down to 17 degrees Fahrenheit, to freeze these fragile beginnings which in turn shrivel the best fruit the plant could produce this season.  

The farmers are devastated.  It has been declared a national emergency by the French Government and 1 Billion Euros in aid has been released.  And this is not the first time in recent years frost has damaged the grape crops.  The same has happened in three of the past 5 years.  It is now a pattern and we can see for the first time the high end of our market directly affected.  It will hit us wine drinkers in the pocket book.  As scarcity of fine French wine increases, so will prices.  

But scarcity is not the only effect.  European or “old world” wines are prized because they have historically been grown in difficult climates.  The weather could be cool, the sun sometimes reluctant to put in an appearance, rain could soak the vines and increase disease pressure, and the seasons could be short.  When grapes ripened, they generally ripened in an adverse environment, preserving their aromatic intensity and delicate flavors while not becoming fat with sugar.  However, climate change has meant an increase in late frosts, hot temperatures, even heat waves, during the summer and longer growing seasons.  All this means that sometime sugars collect in the grapes before they reach true “phenolic” ripeness.  The tannins, acids and flavors that create a well-rounded wine are sometime dominated by the sugar, resulting in high alcohol levels like less valued wines.  

There is a reason for example that wines grown in the hot, fertile Central Valley of California are sold as bulk wine while the fine wines are grown on the stony, limestone rich, foggy and cool slopes of Monterrey, Sonoma and Napa.  The wines are simply more fragrant, more vibrant, more balanced.  As a consequence of a warming and more unpredictable climate, French vignerons are now planting vines on the northern slopes of their vineyards and seeking more varieties that retain their acidity and flavors in hotter climes.  Higher altitude wines are becoming more popular as they become more reliably drinkable.  And the traditional great wine areas are beginning to worry about how to deal with wines that no longer hover in the ideal 12.5% – 13.5% alcohol range and now are reaching the intoxicating levels of 14% and above.

Climate change is unfortunately concrete in the wine world and therefore, it is more urgent than ever for us to take action.  In the meantime, stock up and Santé!

I ‘fess up.  The first time I tasted a Barolo, I hated it!  Everyone I knew raved about the cherries and the roses and tar, the ethereal scents, the big, bold flavors, the fine-tuned balance, the long and lovely finish.  I tasted it and I thought – what?? I was so disappointed.  It was sour and astringent and while it smelled wonderful, on my palate it felt like a layer of skin had been taken off.  

But there are reasons for my experience.  Barolo is not a wine for a novice.  It is, first of all, expensive.  The area of Barolo is small compared to other wine regions.  The grape from which it is made, Nebbiolo, is finicky and has been found to thrive in few other areas outside of its home in Piedmont, Italy.  The limestone-rich soils in the area come in two varieties.  Tortonian, which is more fertile and compact, and Helvetian, which is poorer and looser. Both produce this distinctive wine, but the Tortonian allows more perfumed, fruitier and softer expressions, while the Helvetian lends itself to more powerful, weightier versions requiring more aging.  

My initial experience was with a Barolo that was only a few years old – I am not sure what producer or vintage it was at this point – and it was not for the untutored palate.  I should have had it when I had either more information about it or when I had a guide with whom to taste it.  Only after years of developing my palate did I come to understand how people could wax so poetic about it.  It is a wine that requires long aging to soften the ferocious tannins and to integrate the high acidity with the beautiful floral, fruit and herbal tea aromas.  Barolo, by law, must be aged 38 months before release, with at least 18 months in barrel.  Barolo riserva requires a gargantuan 62 months of aging.  And the aging is necessary – a young Barolo benefits neither the drinker nor reputation of the wine.  

While aging 10 years or so after release is certainly warranted, aging longer can bring out an amazing complexity, which is the also the beauty of Barolo.  I recently had the privilege to try some older Barolos – a 1990, a 1978 and a 1971 – from the cellar of my guru, Bill Nesto. Listening to him speak about the wines is always educational, but also often captivating.  The lesson I have learned from tasting such old wines is that younger wines are like younger people – more exuberant, with an unrefined vibrancy and greater vigor, but perhaps with less depth and subtlety.  Older wines, by contrast, take a bit longer to get to know.  They are more reticent to reveal themselves, but once they open up, they reveal complexity and a layered set of expressions.  Every sniff brings a new aroma – cherries, black tea, orange blossoms, bergamot, mushroom, perhaps a bit of jam and dried violets on the finish.  And every sip fills your palate from front to back with sensations and flavors, velvety mouthfeel, a bit of acid bite still, but smoothed out by all the integrated fruit and herbs.  

At our tasting, we debated whether one should have food with these wines, or savor them on their own.  The group was an experienced set of wine tasters, yet we all came to different conclusions. All of us agreed that the subtleties and nuance could easily be lost if you were not paying attention.  

So now that I understand Barolo a bit better, here is my advice to you dear consumer.  Wait.  Buy it and treasure it.  It will cost a hefty bit – usually in the $80 – $100 (or more) range for a good, recent release.  And it might tempt you to drink it right away – after all it will have been aged for at least 3 years already before release.  But still, wait.  As long as you possibly can.  This is definitely a wine that improves with age.  And it will be worth it.

When you are just ordering or buying wine, you probably just want something you enjoy.  The variety or provenance are probably not as important as just having something drinkable.  That is still my first priority when I go some place I am not familiar with or that doesn’t have anything I recognize on the wine list.

But what are the differences between varieties?  I thought it would be interesting to go over two of the most ubiquitous whites there are: Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.  They are both widely grown in many different countries and regions of countries and they are widely available on most restaurant menus and most definitely in retail shops.  Yet, they are very different in their flavor profile, their price points and how they are paired with food.  They even come in differently shaped bottles – Chardonnay in slope-shouldered bottles, Sauvignon Blanc in square-shouldered bottles.  

Chardonnay is usually a light to medium straw or lemony yellow.  It is a non-aromatic grape that is very versatile and can pick up different characteristics from fermentation (butter, yeast, pears, apples) and from oak aging (vanilla, caramel, honey).  It only has medium to medium high acidity which is balanced by medium high levels of alcohol, so it often soft in the mouth but can be made more crisp by picking early or sourcing from cool climates to maintain higher acidity.  Its origins lie in Burgundy, an offspring of Pinot Noir and an ancient variety called Gouais Blanc and is possibly named after a town called Chardonnay in the Mâcon region of southern Burgundy.  It makes wonderful still wine and is the backbone for many sparkling wines.  

Sauvignon Blanc on the other hand tends to have a light silvery or green hue to its very pale straw color, has high acidity and medium high alcohol.  It is an aromatic variety that has a distinctive herbaceous nose to it, with notes of cut hay, “grass,” “nettles,” and fruity notes like gooseberry and grapefruit.  While Chardonnay, being more neutral, has some differences depending on its terroir, Sauvignon Blanc can be have vastly different characters.  Sancerre from the Loire Valley, thought to be its original home, is usually crisp, with subtle herbaceous notes, grapefruit and is more aromatically restrained.  Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand though, is almost unrecognizable as the same variety.  It is lush and “pungent,” with not just the fresh grassy, cut hay aromas but also passion fruit and a musky gooseberry scent.  It is softer – usually with slightly lower acid and much more viscosity due to high alcohol levels from the riper grapes.  It is mostly vinified by itself now, but is also commonly vinified with Semillon for both dry wines in Bordeaux and for sweet, dessert wines like Sauternes. 

So, which to order next time you must choose?  It all depends on your mood, what you are eating and of course, your budget.  A nice oaky California Chardonnay or a fragrant New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc will give you a softer, more rounded set of flavors and will likely be a bit easier on the budget.  A crisp, precise Chablis (Chardonnay) or a bracing, rich Sancerre (Sauvignon Blanc) will often have more complexity and a more pleasant finish, but will also be a bit more expensive, especially given the price of land, and the level of care taken in both harvesting the grapes and fermenting the wine.

I have often found that people end up definitively preferring one to the other or choosing either the new world or old world styles.  But either way, they are deservedly planted and beloved world-wide.

Cheers!

I know it is cliché, but in the (in)famous of Lily Bollinger of the venerable House of Bollinger: 

“I drink Champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I’m not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise, I never touch it―unless I’m thirsty.”

Not to compare us to such an august personage, but she does have a point.  Champagne makes everything better.  

First a bit of disambiguation.  What is Champagne and how is it different from the other sparkling wines like Prosecco, Cava and Crémant?  Champagne is a wine made in the Champagne region with 3 varieties of grapes:  Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier.  The technique is very specific.  The grapes are vinified into a low alcohol “base wine” which is then put into the final bottle in which it will be sold.  This base wine then gets a little boost of sugar and yeast (tirage) and is capped for minimum of 12 months and often much longer, so that the yeast can work its magic in a sealed environment by adding the bubbles or the “mousse,” increasing the alcohol and perhaps most importantly, adding the yeasty, pastry, buttery flavors characteristic of high-quality Champagne.  The dead yeast or “lees” are then disgorged, a bit of additional reserve wine is added to top up the bottle and sometimes a tiny bit of sugar is added to balance flavors (dosage).  Brut, for example, probably the most common level of sweetness, has 6 to 12 grams of sugar per liter.  Finally, the bottle is corked, “caged,” labelled and shipped off.

It is a complicated process, but one that is followed by winemakers in many other regions of France and in many other countries.  It is called “Methode Traditionelle” or “Methode Classique” and is used in Burgundy, Alsace, Loire, etc to make “Crémant.”  The only differences between Champagne and Crémant are their region of origin and sometimes, the grapes used.  California sparklers for example use both the methode traditionelle and the same blend of grapes, but are not allowed to use the trademark word “champagne.” Similarly, South Africa is not allowed to call its traditional method, traditional variety sparkling wine Champagne, so they call their wines, “Cap Classique,” and are a great bargain.

Cava, by contrast, uses methode traditionelle, but they use a blend of grapes that is uniquely Spanish.  I love the names of grapes so I will include them:  Xarello, Macabeo and Parellada.  The grapes can add a bit of minerality and citrus flavors that are distinct to Cava.  These days, in order to appeal to the international market, Cava makers are including more Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in their blends to blur these distinctions.  But in almost all cases, Cava is much less expensive than Champagne, as is Crémant, despite the complex processes followed.

Prosecco, however, is a whole different story.  It was originally the name of the grape and the wine.  However, as it skyrocketed in popularity, other regions of the world began imitating it and calling their wine Prosecco also.  What is a poor Italian vigneron to do?  The ingenious vintners in Italy realized that they too had a product which needed protection similar to Champagne.  So, they cleverly renamed the grape “Glera,” and designated the area of its production in Italy’s Veneto region, “Prosecco.”  Voilà!  They had a unique product with global popularity and brand recognition in one fell swoop.  Prosecco does not, despite its popularity, use the traditional method.  Instead, the base wine is put into a pressurized wine tank along with sugar and yeast (tirage) to produce the second fermentation.  Then, again under pressure, it is bottled after this second fermentation, ready to be sold.  Prosecco does not age on yeast, so it lacks that brioche richness of traditional method wines.  And it does not have any minimum aging requirements, so it is fast and relatively easy to produce.  Not only does this help keep costs down, it also helps to satisfy the enormous market for this very cheerful, celebratory product.  Italy also has some very highly sought-after traditional method wines, from Franciacorta and TrentoDOC.  Few sellers regularly carry them, but they are worth a little splurge.

So, returning to our original discussion, when does one drink this spritely, fizzy tipple?  Most people reserve sparkling wine for special occasions – for good reason – the pop of the cork, the fizz of the bubbles when it is poured out, the flutes used for toasting –  are all designed for a cheer.  But if you pour some traditional method wine into a white wine glass and just savor the mousse and the flavors, it can both warm you on a cool day or cool you down on a warm day.  Furthermore, it is a chameleon that can be paired with just about any type of food, from salad to steak to dessert. So long as you are thirsty, it is always perfect. 

Saluté!