Monthly Archives: November 2010

There are several different chemical components of a wine, and though they might not seem overly important on first glance, each of these forms an integral part of wine.  As such, it is important to be able to recognize them so that they might be properly analyzed and described.

Acidity

This is arguably the most important characteristic of a wine, especially when you are pairing wine with food. Acidity is literally the acid content of the wine. You can feel it right when you swallow a mouthful – it causes a rush of saliva towards the front of your mouth that would make you drool if you left your mouth open. (Which has been known to happen, on occasion.) If you aren’t quite sure of this sensation, envision biting into something really sour, like a lemon – that puckery sensation and rush of spit is the same thing caused by acid in wine.

On a side note, wine mostly has malic acid – the tart acid present in apples. However, sometimes wines can go through a secondary fermentation that converts the malic acid into lactic acid – the acid present in milk. In winemaking this is referred to as malolactic fermentation, and as you might expect, it gives a wine a creamy, buttery, milky mouthfeel. Chardonnay, especially in California, is commonly subjected to malolactic fermentation, and that buttery mouthfeel is a signature marker of California Chard.

Pictures of wine components tend to be extremely boring, so instead I offer you a set of snapshots of my various wine adventures. Think of it as an alternative storyline to this blog post. Or whatever. Pictured above is Hall's vineyard in the Napa Valley, which I visited in 2008. It's purty there.

It’s important to note that you can’t smell or taste acidity – it doesn’t have a flavour. Rather, it is a tactile sensation. A wine might smell a certain way to make you think it smells acidity (such as having aromas of lemons or vinegar) but you aren’t actually smelling the acid; you’re smelling something that is acidic, which can make you conflate the feeling of eating that substance with its smell. So tread carefully with the descriptors you toss about, and never say “Ooh, this wine smells really acidic.” Because it doesn’t. It is not physically possible.

Generally speaking, the more acidity in the wine, the dryer it is – although in some really crazy (and friggin’ delicious) wines, acidity exists alongside sweetness; I’ll discuss this more in the section on sugar.

This is Hall's tasting room in the cellar at their Rutherford location. As you can see, it's fucking gorgeous. That chandelier is dripping with 1500 Swarovski crystals. I'm not usually one for wealth and grandeur (hard to tell, huh?) but this place made me swoon.

Tannin

Most of the time, tannin is only present in red or pink wines – tannins come from grape skins and seeds, and since white wines are pressed and the juice runs free, never touching the skins for very long (or at all), white wine doesn’t have tannins. (Well, it doesn’t have grape tannins – tannin can actually come from oak too, so if white wine is aged in new oak, it might have some tannin feel to it, though usually this is very slight.)

Like acidity, tannins are a tactile sensation, not an aroma or flavour. Again, you might conflate the smell of something tannic with the sensation of eating it, but you are never, ever actually smelling tannins themselves. Tannins are essentially the “dryness” of the wine. They suck all the moisture out of your tongue and cheeks and leave your mouth feeling raspy and dry. Envision drinking really dark, over-steeped black tea, and you’ll get an impression of tannins – that drying feeling that black tea gives you is the same as the sensation conveyed by tannic wine. (Because tea has tannins, too.)

Closer to home, we have the Jackson-Triggs vineyard in BC's Okanagan Valley. Not to brag or anything, but the Okanagan is one of the world's prettiest wine regions - even when the hills are shrouded in haze from the ubiquitous summer forest fires.

Very full-bodied, young red wines typically have the most tannin. Certain grape varieties also tend to be higher in tannin than others: Cabernet Sauvignon and Nebbiolo are typically quite high in tannin, while Gamay and Pinot Noir tend to be quite low in tannin.

Because wines with extremely high tannin content are usually not so enjoyable to drink (unless you are alternating big gulps of water and tooth-brushing in between sips), you should take some steps to reduce this quality if you happen to crack open such a wine. Decanting the wine (pouring it into another container, preferably one with a wide, flat bottom) for a few hours is probably the best way to “open up” a tannic wine. You’ll probably also want to pair the decanting with vigorous glass swirling.

Eating food (especially red meat) with a tannic wine will also help alleviate some of the drying effect. Be liberal with the salt, as salt reduces the impression of tannin on your palate. I’m not really certain of the science behind this, but I’m very certain that it does work – if you don’t believe me, try dabbing some salt on your tongue and then sipping a very tannic wine. It’s like magic!

If you're ever in the Osoyoos area of the Okanagan, you must visit the Nk'Mip winery. It is set in the desert hills overlooking Lake Osoyoos, and the view from their patio is spectacular. They make good wine too.

Alcohol

Just like acid and tannin, you cannot really “smell” alcohol. Rather, alcohol is perceived as heat – booze that’s high in alcohol will quite literally burn your nostrils. (And anyone who has let their nose remain stationary over a glass of cask-strength scotch for too long can verify this.)

Similarly, when you taste a wine that’s high in alcohol, it will leave your mouth feeling hot and burn-y. Appropriately, the term “hot” is used to describe a wine with high alcohol content – but only when the alcohol is out of balance with the rest of the wine’s components. Quite unlike applying this term to humans, describing a wine as “hot” is usually pejorative; it means something is out of sync. It is quite possible for a wine to be high in alcohol and perfectly pleasant, so long as the other components balance the heat.

The other cool thing about visiting Osoyoos is that you're in Rattlesnake Territory. Who wouldn't like that?

Hot wines tend to come, appropriately, from hot climates (California, Australia, southern France, southern Italy). In these regions, grapes ripen extremely well and have correspondingly high levels of sugar. Since sugar is the driving force behind fermentation (yeast consumes sugar and alcohol is created as a by-product), grapes with high sugar content will ferment into wine with high alcohol content.

Alcohol is also sweet, so a wine with a higher alcohol content will often give the impression of sweetness on the palate; it also makes a wine feel like it has a fuller body, something that you’ll again experience on the palate.

Other great Okanagan attractions include witty semi trucks...

Sugar

All wine has residual sugar in it, though in dry table wine this is in such a small amount that it doesn’t make the wine seem sweet to your palate – or at least, not the same degree of sweetness in milk chocolate or Coca-Cola. I don’t think I need to describe what sugar tastes like, since out of all the components in a wine, it is probably the most familiar to people.

In wine, it is important for sweetness to be counterbalanced by acidity – otherwise the wine will be cloyingly sweet and leave your mouth feeling unpleasantly fuzzy. (Remember that feeling you got as a child after eating way too many Skittles? That’s what unbalanced sweet wine is like, à la White Zinfandel and Blue Nun. Blech.)

...Butt Road...

Though sweet wines used to be highly favoured by the North American palate, in the last few decades the trend has swung in the complete opposite direction, and now the majority of people prefer wines that are quite dry. Similarly, I’ve often noticed that many people equate sweet wines with low quality, when this isn’t necessarily the case at all – some of the world’s best wines are sweet. (If you don’t believe me, you need to try some 2001 Sauternes or 30-year-old vintage port or aged German Riesling.)

This stereotype does make sense, however, especially in North America – the first wines produced by American and Canadian winemakers were invariably sweet, high-alcohol concoctions. Furthermore, sweet wines aren’t nearly as popular as dry table wines, so many people simply haven’t tried any good ones. It’s easy to fear the unknown.  Still, it’s absolutely worth it to seek out sweeter wines, as many pleasant surprises await you.

...and Santa Claus on summer vacation.

Though colour, taste and mouthfeel are all very important aspects of wine analysis, a wine’s aroma is really where its identity shines through (with some exceptions, of course). Aroma is not just a wine’s fingerprint, it is the very essence of the wine itself – so when tasting, you should pay special attention to analyzing the wine’s aromas. (See this post for a thorough explanation of the proper wine tasting method.) Though wine aromas can vary wildly even amongst similar wines (such as wines made from the same grape or in the same region), there are a set of characteristic aromas that mark each type and variety of wine. (For example, South African Pinotage smells like road tar and smoked sausage, while Alsatian Gewurztraminer typically smells like roses and lychee fruit.)

those weird eyeball things are lychee fruits, a common gewurztraminer aroma

When analyzing a wine’s aromas, it is best to start general and then move to the specifics. There are three main categories of wine aromas: fruity, oaky and earthy. I like to think of this as the holy trinity of wine aromas; think of them as three huge umbrellas under which all of the aromas in a wine are grouped. Your first step is to decide which of these three categories are predominant in the wine and work downwards from there.

Fruity Aromas

This is probably the category that you’ll pick most of the time as a starting point since most wines tend to smell fruity – which makes sense, since wine is made from fruit. Still, it’s quite astonishing when you stop to consider that one single fruit, the grape, is made into a substance that can exhibit the aroma of every single other fruit on the face of the earth. (But usually not all at once, thankfully).

Once you’ve decided that your wine smells fruity, you need to determine the category of fruit. Here is a breakdown of some basic fruit categories, though this is by no means official or complete – add or subtract to it as you wish:

• Tropical Fruit – pineapple, guava, melon, passionfruit
• Citrus Fruit – lemon, orange, lime, grapefruit
• Tree Fruit – apple, pear
• Stone Fruit – cherry, plum, peach, nectarine, apricot
• Berry Fruit – strawberry, blueberry, blackberry, raspberry

Select one or two of these categories, and then start picking out specific examples from that category. From there, you could attempt to classify the “form” of the fruit: is it like fresh, dried or canned fruit? Fruit jam or juice? Fruit-flavoured candy?

you know what an apple smells like...right?

Let’s look at a specific example. You sniff some wine; it smells fruity. You take another sniff, and decide that it smells like tropical fruit, maybe with something citrusy in there as well. You keep sniffing, and are able to pick out pineapple and melon as the specific tropical fruits, and orange as the citrus fruit. After a few more inhalations, you realize that the pineapple is similar to the smell of dried pineapple, the melon smells just like fresh ripe honeydew and the orange smells like orange marmalade. Voilà! You’ve gone from the vague description of “fruity” to the very specific description of “dried pineapple, fresh honeydew and orange marmalade.”

If you’re doing a blind tasting, this is when you think back upon all the wines you’ve tasted and/or read about that tend to have similar aromas. Even though I just made up this example randomly, if I smelled pineapple, honeydew melon and orange marmalde in a wine, I would guess that it was probably a late harvest or dessert wine, possibly from the New World and/or from a warm climate. Maybe an Australian late harvest Muscat?

eating all those (fresh, local) BC cherries paid off - I know now the precise smell of a BC-grown bing cherry

Oaky Aromas

When a wine smells oaky, it usually doesn’t usually smell like a freshly hewn two-by-four…though it might. Rather, oaky aromas and flavours are reminiscent of things like vanilla extract, toasted bread, toasted wood, smoke, caramel and butterscotch – think sweet, toasty baked goods. An oaky red wine is also typically more tannic than one that isn’t, as oak imparts some tannin too. (I will discuss tannins and the other components of wine in a subsequent post.)

There are two main types of oak used for wine, American (Quercus alba) and French (Quercus petraea and robur). American oak gives wines a signature vanilla aroma – and if the wine is heavily oaked, it can smell almost candied. Lot of Californian wines are dosed with tons of American oak, especially Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, causing  them to smell just like a bottle of fake vanilla extract.

French oak, on the other hand, tends to give wine toasty, caramel-like aromas and flavours; it generally makes for a more elegant wine. In theory, anyway.

those Americans love them some oaky wine

Earthy Aromas

Earthiness encompasses a fairly broad range of aromas. Generally, if an aroma is neither fruity nor oaky, chances are it’s earthy. You can often take the description quite literally – earthy wines often smell like soil, rocks, mushrooms and plants – nature smells. I also tend to think of herbal and vegetable aromas as being earthy, so if you detect basil, rosemary, squash or peas, then you could classify those as earthy aromas. However, certain herbal aromas can be a characteristic of certain types of oak – Hungarian oak smells a lot like dill to me, while Canadian oak smells uncannily like fresh marijuana. (Don’t ask me how I know what that smells like.)

Though earthy aromas can be the hardest ones to identify and describe in words, generally speaking, if you sniff a wine and it immediately makes you say, “Whoa – that’s funky!” then there’s likely an earthy component to it. Furthermore, though this is a pretty huge generalization, Old World wines are typically earthier than New World wines. There’s a lot more focus on making wines that exhibit a sense of place (terroir) in countries like France and Italy, while North American winemakers tend to make fruit-forward and American oak-influenced wines.

I told you not to ask.

Aromas that Violate the Holy Trinity

Though the fruity / oaky / earthy trinity works pretty well for most average wines, there are of course other aromas that don’t fit into these categories. Lactic or milky aromas, while uncommon, can be present in certain wines – I often get a lactic sensation on many red Burgundies, believe it or not. Other wines can have chemical or bacterial smells, like petrol or yeast. If you’re trying to identify an elusive aroma that just doesn’t seem to fit in the three main categories, try expanding your frame of reference to include all other aromas.

Sometimes it helps to just clear your mind and go with the first thing that pops into your head – and that might very well be a memory of a situation or a place. Smell is the only sense that isn’t routed through the thalamus (a sort of relay station in the brain); instead, smell goes straight to the limbic system, which is also the seat of long term memory. So it makes perfect sense that when smelling wine (or anything else, for that matter), you can often be reminded of objects, people and places from your past – rather than a shopping list of fruits and vegetables. (Hence my decision to start using flash fiction to describe wine.)

obligatory generic picture of grapes

The Wine Aroma Wheel

Back in the 1970′s, an enterprising young woman developed what has become a godsend for analyzing aromas in wine – Ann Noble’s Wine Aroma Wheel is an absolutely fantastic tool to help you sort out wine aromas and flavours. (Here is a link to a jpeg image of it.) Use the wheel the same way you use the method I just described – start general, at the outside of the wheel, and move inwards as you pick out specifics.

Several different versions of this aroma wheel have since been created, but Ann’s remains the best in my opinion. It’s certainly not an exhaustive list – after all, it is limited by size – but it’s a very handy tool to reference, especially when you’re just starting out. (Or when you just can’t freaking figure out what the hell you’re smelling.)

A friend of mine recently mentioned that she was interested in learning how to “properly” dissect a wine’s aromas and flavours, but was unsure how to go about this. In my experience, the best way to learn pretty much anything is to do the learning hands-on, with some kind of knowledgeable person. I gave her the same advice I’d give anyone – try to find a local wine shop or restaurant that offers wine tasting seminars, or a bunch of friends that want to learn about wine too, and start tasting.

Of course, it’s not always feasible to attend such events, and if you’re cheap (like me) you’ll want to spend your money only on the wine, not on someone who might or might not teach you something about that wine. Happily, you can learn plenty on your own; this is how I’ve amassed the majority of my wine knowledge. It is really quite simple: you just need to pay attention to what you’re drinking. Also, reading about wine helps. A lot.

learning about wine = reading about wine. 'nuff said.

There are plenty of good “wine basics” books out there, and there’s plenty of bad ones, too. I’ll refrain from giving any specific examples of either, as I don’t feel like playing favourites at this point in time.  Instead, I present you with my own version of Wine 101: over a series of posts I will cover the basic areas of wine and wine tasting. If you actually read it, I promise you’ll be comfortable in the tasting room forevermore. (Until you miss the spit bucket, that is.) If you only skim part of it, you’ll probably make an ass of yourself at some point. But don’t worry. It happens to all of us.

How to “Properly” Taste Wine

It is important to distinguish wine “tasting” from wine “drinking.” Tasting is a process that you use to evaluate a wine’s quality and characteristics; you do it upon first being served a new wine but you don’t do it the entire time you’re finishing the glass (usually). Drinking is, well, self-explanatory. Let’s just say it doesn’t typically employ your critical thinking and analytical skills – though it hopefully involves your capacity for sensory appreciation.

I recommend you follow the following tasting technique every single time you find yourself with a glass of wine in front of you – even if it’s a $10 bottle of generic bulk wine. You will learn something from every glass, even if it’s crap. Actually, oftentimes you’ll learn more from crappy wine than good wine – after all, how are you going to know if a wine has sufficient acidity unless you’ve tasted one with too much acid and one with too little?

SIGHT
The first thing you do with a glass of wine is look at it. Pick up the glass by the stem, not the bowl or the base (unless it’s a stemless glass, in which case you have no other options) and take a peek. Make sure there isn’t anything crazy going on in the glass – no bubbles in a still wine, no giant chunks of suspicious and potentially threatening foreign material.

make sure you eyeball that wine carefully

Now look at the colour. Tipping the glass over a white surface (paper, tablecloth, dinner plate, my pasty white flesh) helps with this. Note the colour variation from the centre of the wine to the rim – the more variation in hue, the older the wine is, generally speaking. All wines turn brown with age, no matter if it’s white, red, pink, or somewhere in between, so if you notice a browning at the edge that is a good indication that the wine is getting older. Now, exactly how much older depends heavily on the style of wine and the grape variety(ies), and that is a topic for another day. Generally speaking though, if a wine has some browning at the rim, it’s probably 5 to 10 years old, and if there’s quite a lot of brown it’s probably over 10 years old.

SMELL
Take a sniff of the wine without swirling. Then twirl your glass around (keep it flat on a table if you’re not confident enough to whip it around in midair) and give it another sniff. Swirling the wine aerates it, introducing oxygen which helps release the aromas and flavours.

get your nose right in there and sniff away

TASTE
Now take a sip of the wine and swish it around your mouth. Don’t judge it on this sip; first you just want to use it to wash out any other flavours that may be lingering on your palate. Think of it as wine mouthwash. Your second sip is when you do that classic wine snob gargling thing: suck in some air while the wine is in your mouth, letting the air flow over the wine and release more aromas and flavours. It’s the same principle as swirling, but this time you’re just aerating the wine while it’s in your mouth, instead of in the glass. Because taste is 75% smell, doing this allows you to gain a fuller flavour profile of the wine.

I don't really have a picture that would make sense here, so instead I offer a picture of my kitty with laser eyes. pew pew pew!

Some people are nervous about this technique, and have visions of dribbling wine everywhere. If that’s the case, you could try practicing in the shower with water, or over a sink. Remember that you aren’t opening your mouth wide, just cracking your lips open a tiny bit. Keep your tongue tensed, but slightly relaxed toward the front of your mouth – the idea is to let the wine pool in the front of your mouth, and then have the air flow through and past the wine. DO NOT try this if you’ve got wine towards the back of your throat, as this will just cause you to choke. Trust me.

EVALUATE
Now comes the fun part! Alright, this part is actually frustrating as hell: you have to make sense of what you’re seeing and smelling and tasting, and try to describe all this in coherent sentences. (Though, sometimes an unintelligible grunt of pleasure – or pain – works just fine.) After you’ve tasted through the wine once and got a basic impression of it, go through these steps again, this time paying attention to specific flavours and components. Stay tuned for my posts on making sense of a wine’s aromas and the components of wine.

Trade shows. I both love and despise them. They give you the opportunity to try a bunch of new wines for cheap (or, in this particular case, free). But most of the wines can be pretty mediocre – and in some cases, downright awful; the shows also have a tendency to become less educational and more…inebriated.

I found good and bad wines at the recent Rocky Mountain Wine & Food Fest. Scroll down for some brief notes on several of the wines I tried – and please forgive the crappiness of the photos; the camera wasn’t behaving that night.

2008 Tsantali Assyrtiko (Halkidiki, Greece)
Greece is breaking away from its reputation as a producer of only nasty resinated wines (i.e. Retsina), and there are some absolutely delicious bottles coming out of this country – this Assyrtiko is among them. Also, Greek grape varieties and regions are super fun to pronounce.

tsantali assyrtiko

2007 Waters Syrah (Columbia Valley, U.S.)
A great example of what Washington can do with Syrah. Delicious.

waters syrah

2008 Substance “Me” Merlot (Columbia Valley, U.S.)
This is one of the most mediocre wines I’ve ever tasted. Everything about it is medium – medium fruit, medium oak, medium acidity, medium tannin, medium alcohol. In fact, I’m pretty sure the “Me” doesn’t stand for Merlot, it stands for medium.

substance me merlot

The bottle makes for some good photo ops, though. (That is, if I had had the foresight to display the label properly. Sigh.)

At least Amy figured out how to hold the bottle for max effect.

ChocoVine (Holland)
Baileys has nothing on this little gem. Nothing. Red wine mixed with liquid chocolate sounds like a disgusting concept, but it’s actually so good. You just have to look past the tragic label design.

chocovine

2009 KWV Café Culture Pinotage (South Africa)
I have no idea how they got this wine to smell exactly like Columbian Dark Roast, and I don’t want to know. What I do know, however, is that I am deeply suspicious of wine that smells indistinguishable from my morning coffee. It’s just not right.

café culture pinotage

Giffard Poire William Eau de Vie (France)
What’s cooler than a bottle with a whole pear stuck inside? Not many things, I can assure you. This is definitely something to enjoy sparingly; at 53% ABV it was a face-slap between all those wines. Still, this is everything an eau de vie should be: it captures the subtle essence of Pear.

giffard poire william

2007 Dr. Dahlem Riesling Spätlese (Rhine Valley, Germany)
I hadn’t had a good German Riesling in a while, so I was happy to dip into this Dr. Dahlem. Good acidity, a touch of classic Riesling petrol, generous fruit, and just a hint of minerality.

dr. dahlem riesling spatlese

2006 Dr. Dahlem Regent (Rhine Valley, Germany)
I had heard of Regent only in passing before I tried this version; turns out that Regent is a hybrid variety that has, like pretty much all hybrid varieties, become pretty uncommon these days. The “foxy”, wild aromas of this wine certainly put me in mind of Marechal Foch and Baco Noir; I wouldn’t seek this wine out, but I also wouldn’t turn down a glass if offered one.

dr. dahlem regent

Mad Housewife White Zinfandel (California, U.S.)
I’ve seen a slew of these types of wines recently, which are clearly marketed towards middle-aged women who know little to nothing about wine. I find them rather insulting, but I couldn’t resist trying this because of this label. As expected, it tastes more like a wine cooler than actual wine.

mad housewife white zinfandel

2007 Louis Jadot Pouilly-Fuissé (Burgundy, France)
Everything a good white Burgundy should be: lightly fruity with a backbone of minerals and high acidity. Yep, nothing is amiss here.

louis jadot pouilly-fuissé

“It’s very possible his film will be better than my book.”
- Rex Pickett

To cite the common adage: truer words were never spoken. Sideways is one of those rare exceptions in which the film is far better than the novel.

I saw the film Sideways a few months after it was released in 2004, and I loved every minute of it. I had just started getting into wine at the time so it was wonderfully relevant for me, and I reveled equally in Paul Giamatti’s fine performance and the darkly humorous story.

I always meant to read Rex Pickett’s novel, since most of the time the novel is much better than the movie; I had grand expectations. Though the book slid under my radar for a few years, last week I stumbled across a second-hand copy. You can’t get much for 99 cents anymore, and given that this was a book I really wanted to read – and that I had previously considered paying the full $20 cover price for it – I thought it was a steal.

Turns out, I’m glad I only paid a buck for this book. I really couldn’t have justified paying much more. Put simply, the novel is terrible. Its prose is horribly prosaic and bland; though Pickett does include the odd colourful expression or snippet of witty banter, his language is mind-numbingly dull, enlivened only by profanity and a few awkwardly recited, serial romance sex scenes.

The many references to wine, while a novelty at first, quickly grow just as tired and dull as the rest of the prose. Miles’ discussions of wine range from trite, clichéd ululations of a snobby alcoholic attempting to justify his consumption, to painfully technical descriptions that I swear were lifted straight from the Oxford Companion. How different this is from the screenplay; though the film does sidestep the wine motif to some degree – wine becomes more of a backdrop than a main focus of the movie, though this happens in the book as well – the vinous references it does include are well-chosen and articulated.

The pinnacle of the film’s discussion of wine is the honest, thoughtful conversation between Miles (Giamatti) and Maya (Virginia Madsen), in which Pinot Noir is deftly employed as a metaphor to develop these two characters. My consternation with the novel was complete when, as I sluggishly neared the end of the novel, I realized that this scene is wholly absent – it was the creation of screenwriters Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, not Pickett.

Indeed, Payne and Taylor should be commended (nay, exulted) for their Herculean feat of turning such a drab, pointless story into an engaging, meaningful script. (And it turns out that actually, they did receive this commendation, in the form of an Academy Award for Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay.)

The first halves of film and book follow each other fairly closely, but then the novel careens wildly off into an increasingly nonsensical series of neurotic, depraved escapades. Payne and Taylor did a marvelous job reigning in this mad bull and stitching together a coherent, streamlined plot from these torrid fragments.

Aside from prose and plot, the film also mercifully diverges from the book on several other fronts as well, such as the completely different characterizations of Maya and Terra. (In the case of the latter, even her name is altered). While the film is very successful in providing substance to these characters and drawing out the audience’s sympathy for them, throughout the duration of the novel they remain static and inscrutable; the reader’s ambivalence towards them is total.

Another major alteration that needs to be considered is Miles’ prize bottle: a 1961 Cheval Blanc in the film and a 1982 Latour in the book. Both are prestigious Bordeaux, which in itself seems strange for Miles’ character, given his ardent love for Pinot Noir – why wasn’t he holding on to a bottle of 1985 DRC?

The Latour is a First Growth and therefore higher on the Bordeaux totem pole than the Cheval Blanc; it would also be more readily available than the legendary ’61. Owing partially to its age and corresponding rarity, the Cheval Blanc is a cult wine, and only hardcore wine geeks (or the extremely wealthy) would own a bottle. I suppose this could be the reason for the film’s choice of this bottle over the Latour: they wanted something that would speak to Miles’ resolute wine geekhood, and the ’61 fits nicely with his depiction in the movie. However, the novel’s choice of the ’82 Latour also makes sense with Miles’ character: in the novel he is presented as a man masquerading a serious drinking problem with an interest in wine; he could have easily picked up an ’82 Latour one drunken night at the wine shop in an attempt to impress his fellow oenophiles.

Interestingly, the difference between Miles’ Bordeaux is the only instance in which the film’s version isn’t clearly the better of the two.

I could continue to rant about the book’s many faults, but I’d really rather just start the process of forgetting about it. Incredulously, it almost feels unfair pitting the novel against the film; they are on such different levels. I’ll leave off by stating that my predisposition towards liking this novel made it all the more shocking that I ended up hating it so much.

There remains only one thing for which I must blame the film, even though it’s really not the film’s fault this happened: to this day, it seems that people still can’t write about Pinot Noir or Merlot without making a fucking Sideways reference.