The Inside Story from Italian Wine Merchants

The First Taste

A Look into Surface Area

Last year when I lived in Florence, I had the opportunity to taste wine grapes that had just been picked off the vines. This had been a craving of mine for a very long time; I had tasted hundreds of wines but never an actual wine grape. It was one of those few experiences that lives up to its much-hyped hopes.

I was taking a wine class from Diletta Frescobaldi, one of the current owners of the Frescobaldi wine enterprise, who had open access to grapes from the estate’s vineyards.  She presented us all with two grape bunches fresh from the Frescobaldi Estate—one of them was Cabernet Sauvignon and the other Petit Verdot. Without knowing which was which, I found that it was pretty easy to determine their identities just from sight.

Cabernet Sauvignon grapes usually produce a dense, dark and tannic wine, attributes that mainly come from the skins. The berries of this cluster were very small, thick skinned, and tightly packed, and they tasted sweet but with medium acidity.  One flavor stood out in the Cabernet grapes, and that was a strong green pepper taste.  Italian Cabernets tend to develop these green pepper nuances, especially wines from the north. In contrast to the Cabernet, the Petit Verdot berries were much larger, thinner skinned and not densely packed. On the palate they were much more acidic and less flavorful.  Both were downright delicious, and I wish I could find these grapes regularly in the store.

How Are Tastes in Wine Shaped?

Insight from three generations

I started thinking the other day about people’s relationship with wine. Clearly everyone is different, and there are a number of different variables, but what is it that shapes our tastes and habits in the world of wine? It looks to me as if our tastes in wine are shaped much as our tastes in just about everything: by genetics, culture, family tradition and, as I witnessed this past week, generation.

I was eating dinner with my grandparents, who spend most of the year in London and a few months in New York. Upon arrival, my grandmother handed me a glass of Bordeaux. As I sipped it, I discreetly perused their bar and noticed that every bottle of wine stored there was from Bordeaux. I remembered how often I’d drunk this wine in their presence. I continued pondering the Bordeaux connection, and I realized that Bordeaux is all they ever drink—in restaurants and in their home. In fact, it’s a taste that I associate with my grandparents. And I can’t help but think that they’re not the only wine drinkers their age who practice that sort of discrimination.

One school of thought would then be that this predilection for Bordeaux would have been passed on to my mother, and then on to me. However, it’s quite the opposite—my mom’s red of choice is Zinfandel and we rarely drink Bordeaux at family meals. So what is it that drives my mom’s relationship with wine? Could it be that because she is a baby boomer she has the cultural drive to try something different, to redefine traditional values? Does her choice of wine constitute a subtle act of rebellion? Is my mother’s Zinfandel the sign of an infidel? Or does she merely like it better?

I then started to think about my friends from California. While they’ll try anything new and different that they can get their mouths on, when push comes to shove, they’ll show their hometown pride in opting for a big Napa Cab any day of the week. This choice seems to fall clearly into the culture camp. To drink otherwise is not to support the home team.

And then I tried to decipher my own relationship with wine. Although I do have my everyday favorites and some wines that I crave above all others, I am like many people of Generation Y: I’m always searching for the new. Novelty may be the standard in my relationship with drinking wine, a habit I was allowed to develop early on because of my parents’ European love of always having a glass of wine with dinner. However, as much as I love pushing my oenophile envelope, I cannot credit any one thing for shaping my relationship with wine. But then, I’m still young. Maybe by the time I’m my grandparents’ age I too will have found my Bordeaux. (Though I doubt it.)

I’m curious about all of you. What would you say shapes your love of wine? Culture? Tradition? Taste buds? Generation? Or some combination thereof?