photo©Philip
White
With pruning comes a change in one's flavour yearnings and I'll bet it's mainly about terpenes
by PHILIP WHITE
Secret
confessions: Whitey thinks his preferred flavours are changing with the season
and it's all to do with the spinning terpene wheel:
Winter's hauling further
in beneath, dragging its chill into the rocks. Not much rain, and none
forecast, but ants and wood ducks seem to be expecting it. A kestrel watched me
from a vineyard post yesterday and the ravens seem to anticipate the placentas
that come with lambing.
March, from The Grandes Heures of Ann de Bretagne ... pruning time
With the autumn rides
winter and her cohorts. They change one's flavour and aroma obsessions. They
come and go like the tides, these seasonal cycles of preferred flavours and
bouquets. New pennants and tags. I think it becomes more precise - or at least
more entertaining - the higher one's mileage if not sheer plumage. Which is
never to say that the old cycle won't surprise you with sudden new yearnings
and the stuff you'll crash into in their pursuit.
Sometimes it's like Mardis
Gras.
In recent weeks I've lost
my hot weather dependence on the crunch of cool fresh salad greens.
Never much of a Savvy-B
gal, I can imagine losing one's addiction to its bracing greenness as the
autumn performs her pretty slaughterhouse job in putting an end to the season
of growth and opening the door to those damned crows feet of winter.
I lose some of my lust for
fresh Riesling about now, and find myself combing the cosmos for flavours with
more fat on their breezy edge. Chardonnays with just the right amount of butter
in their teeth.
This comes when polite bacteria,
in a non-alcoholic, secondary, 'malo-lactic' fermentation, turn the grapes' natural acid
from stainless malic to the chubbier, fleshier, fatty lactic acid of milk. Like
the first thing many of us tasted after birth. Not merely to push onomatopæa,
they're umami flavours.
As far as flavour and
aroma goes round here about now, Picasso knocks off to chase the sun t'wards
Africa; Rubens moves in sideways for winter.
The crumbly dry cheeses of
the heat give way now for precious slices from creamier more mature wheels of Parmigiano
and Pecorino Romano. Just before they harden and the walls grow cold.
At this point I should
reveal that this column is being driven by the beautiful Romney Park Gloria
Adelaide Hills Chardonnay 2012 which is rockin with the Bertinelli M30
Millesimato Grand Cru Parmigianno Reggiano I find in Marino's.
Next thing you know you're
drinking Pinot noir, and then more mature Pinot noir from greater years not far
south of Dijon while you're trying to work out how to explain something along
the lines of where all the money went.
With respect to the great John Prine, "There's a hole in Daddy's throat where all the money goes" ... photo©Philip
White
And why the more you
spend, the older and fresher they get.
Blazed by your own mission
creep. When you eventually hit the Shiraz, you pretend that's the antidote,
like whew that's better and you're all better now.
And the matter of really
good Barolo and the grainy wince of light that brings from some other age is
yet to be addressed.
"Did the season
change?"
"Yep."
"That must be where
the house went."
"Yep."
photo©Philip
White
This all seems quite
logical to me. The yearnings for more comfort as the season chills. To the
point of total dwuggled delusion. Not waving, taking a
selfie.
So it's interesting to
feel a severe list to things bitter and contrasting at the same change of time
as the silk wave. Like beyond even the hops of the lagers through the ales
threshold into the extreme bitterness of the Kuding-cha 'tea' made from the
holly leaf Ilex kaushue 苦丁茶 into the nether regions of wormwood in the form of Artemis absinthium. You'll see a word
you know in there.
An infusion of either of
these is a challenge for anybody with a normal tolerance of bitterness, but
even when I add leatherwood honey to my handful of fresh wormwood tips subsiding
in a pot of fresh-boiled sky water, I don't much alter or filter my yearning
for the refreshing, almost antiseptic, antibacterial nature of that powerful absinthium herb.
I suspect this vicious
bastard of a plant even makes life hard for viruses.
It'll hound gout.
So a simple yearning for
sweet also brings a counterbalancing taste for things more complex in their
bitterness than say the simple grassy methoxypyrazine edge of Kiwi Savvy-B.
In the autumn.
I keep thinking of Cherry
Heering, the bitter black cherry aperitif liqueuer of the Danes. Squash black
cherries into big oak vats, commence ferment, drown in strong white spirit,
keep five years with herbs and spices in smaller oak, bottle, wait, drink.
I've not had a bottle of
this for years, but lately its memory is fresh in my sensories. Its infusion of
herbs always make me suspect juniper and wormwood.
Which leads me to terpenes.
These natural volatile oils and compounds give to many fruits, berries and
leaves their most impressive and helpful ingredients. They all bounce happily
through the plant books together, giggling across that short cut from hemp to
red wine.
I read in my tides a seasonal
mood swing away from the stimulating limonene of summery citrus rinds, juniper
and mint toward three other turpenes: humulene, linalool and myrcene, which are
still sort of citrussy but in a more complex and woody way. More spicy. A wider
range of woody lignins.
Citrus by the fire. Cedar in the pot belly; citrus and ginger
marmalade in the pot. Wearing a peat lug tweed.
The earthy humuline is an
appetite suppressant found in hops and coriander, a bitterness pathway I
suspect may lead to wormwood eventually. Wurmud, vermuth, wormwood: it's in my
bones.
Linalool, my USA guide
suggests, is easy found in lavendar, laurel, birch and rosewood. It's a step
beyond the juice of citrus into the juice of citrussy timber. Sedative chill
out. I could rub some rosewood oil into the waist of my old guitar and we'd
flavour out together.
Myrcene's in mango,
citrus, lemongrass, thyme and bayleaves and is more chill out dragon's milk
nowness if you must.
photo©Philip
White
Stack all this up and it
looks to me like I'll be tolerating more burnished woody spice in my reds this
winter. And my fruits. It'll be interesting to see where that takes us but I'll
bet I can never afford it and it's from either the French or Italian side of
the Alps.
Silly thing is the list of
terpenes I've quoted comes from the USA marijuana business journal Leafly, from their terpene flavour wheel
explaining which strands of pot are rich in what. Terpenes are the building blocks of wine flavour.
Still awaiting a terpene
wheel from the wine biz. Gimme science please.
In the meantime I'm doing
a comforting seasonal shift of gastronomic produce, wondering which last waves
of fruit may come through before it's time for the juicy cutlets of spring.
Oh yes. As the season
changes I find myself eating meat much less frequently. It's not squeamish,
sanctimonious or religious. I just seem to be losing another addiction.
But also true to season, I
gluttonised on Marino Hot Cacciatora last night. A retreat from meat does not
bar this most exquisitely complex smoked pickle of it. Not even when the
weather takes a turn like this.
Or have I dreamt up a
phantom freeze to justify the pig-out? Contrary to their local human, my magpies
act like this might already be spring.
Okay then. Yes, I'd love a
ten-year-old Clare Riesling, with its touch of the autumn burnish. Thankyou.
Thankyou.
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