The Wine on Trial

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Welcome to the Kosher Terroir.
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I'm Simon Jacob, your host for this episode from Jerusalem.
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Before we get started, no matter where you are, please take a moment to pray for the safe return home of all our soldiers.
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If you're driving in your car, please focus on the road ahead.
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If you're relaxing at home, please pour yourself a glass of wonderful kosher wine.
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Sit back, relax, and enjoy Before we started recording tonight, I did something to a bottle of wine that would horrify every marketing department on earth.
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I took away its name.
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The whole bottle is wrapped, capsule to punt.
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The label is there somewhere, suffocating in the dark.
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There's a strip of masking tape where the capsule used to show.
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And that—that is the wine in my glass right now.
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Here's what I'm willing to tell you.
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It's red.
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It costs less than a good pizza, and I bought it in a shop where nobody speaks in hushed tones.
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Off a shelf at hip height, which is by the way, where shops put bottles they don't think they need to convince you to buy.
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Remember that.
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It comes back at the end.
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Here's what I'm going to tell you.
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I'm not going to tell you the name.
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I'm not going to tell you the grape varietal.
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Not the country, not even the vintage, not for five full chapters.
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Because tonight you and I are going to do something the wine world usually reserves for its priesthood.
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We are going to take a wine apart with our eyes, with our nose, with our tongues, and with a notebook, and finally with a scorecard.
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every structured tasting method the wine world has ever devised, in ascending order of seriousness.
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From the three-step glance you can do at a crowded Shabbat table without anyone noticing, all the way up to a deductive grid, so demanding that the exam built on it in its hardest form, has been passed by fewer people than have flown in space.
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And here's my promise By the final chapter, before I say one word from the label, you will know this wine's climate, its grape, or close enough to argue about it Its age within a year or two?
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Not because I told you, because you deduced it.
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Because five frameworks laid one over the other, like transparencies Will have drawn this wine's portrait in the air.
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And when the sack finally comes off, I think some of you are going to laugh out loud, and a few of you, I suspect, are going to be a little annoyed with me.
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Good.
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Both reactions are the entire point of this episode.
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Welcome back to the Kosher Terroir I'm Simon Jacob, and tonight's episode began, like the best ones do, with a question somebody actually asked me A friend at a Shabbat table watching me hold a glass up to the candles.
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He asked, How do you learn to do that?
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Is it a gift?
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Or were you just born with your palate?
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And I gave him the answer that fifty years of drinking wine, from the table side, not the cellar side, have taught me.
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No, nobody is born with a palate.
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There is no gene for detecting cherries.
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What every taster has, from the nervous beginner to the master sommelier, is a framework.
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A fixed order of questions you ask the glass, in sequence, every single time.
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Look before you smell, smell before you sip.
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Structure before flavor.
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Conclusion last.
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Always last.
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The magic trick was never in the tongue It's in the sequence.
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And if that sounds suspiciously unmystical, good, because the idea should feel deeply familiar to us.
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We're a people of Seder, of sacred sequence.
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We have a Seder for prayer.
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We have a seder for Pesach night, a Seder for which blessing comes before which.
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And we have had one for wine for two thousand years.
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The Gemara in tractate Berachot lists the requirements for kos shel bracha, a cup of blessing, how the cup is rinsed, how it's filled, how it's held.
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Where your eyes rest when you hold it.
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Read that page and tell me it's not a tasting protocol.
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The oldest structured framework for paying attention to a cup of wine.
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was not written by the Wine Academy in London.
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It's ours.
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So five chapters tonight.
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five instruments, each one sharper than the last, all of them aimed at the one bottle sweating under the covers on my desk.
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We start with a three-step glance.
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Look, smell, taste, and the single most useful trick in all of wine, the rule of big to small.
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Which will improve your smelling before this episode is over.
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Then the famous S.
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C, Swirl, Sniff, Sip, and Savor.
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and what swirling actually does, physically, chemically to the wine, and to you, and then the tasting journal.
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A British grid used in every serious wine classroom on earth, which turns your scattered impressions into notes your future self can actually use.
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And then my favorite, the detective chapter, the deductive method, where every observation becomes evidence.
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This acidity testifies to a climate.
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This color testifies to an age.
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The glass becomes a witness under cross-examination and it cannot lie.
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And finally, the scorecard, a 20-point system built at the University Laboratory in California.
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Where wine is not a romance, it is a defendant, and every fault costs it points.
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Two invitations before we begin.
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First, go get a glass.
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Any bottle, truly any bottle, these frameworks don't care what they're pointed at That is exactly what makes them frameworks.
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Pause me, pour something honest, and do each chapter along with me on your own.
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By the closing, you will have tasted it five different ways.
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And I promise you, it will not taste like the bottle it was in chapter one And second, a quieter invitation for the very end, because there is one more voice waiting to testify about that.
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the bottle undercovers.
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The halacha itself has already ruled on this wine.
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It ruled centuries before I ever wrapped the label.
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And its ruling was not a compliment.
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Which page of the Gemara, what it said, and why I think that ancient verdict and tonight's tasting need each other That waits for the end.
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After the evidence, after the score, when the covers come off.
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But every trial begins the same way, not with testimony, with a look, the accused, standing in good light.
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First, let me set the stage.
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It's Friday night, a crowded table, yours, or one you've been invited to.
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Somebody's uncle is halfway through a story that has no ending.
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There are children under the table conducting business of their own, and somebody has just poured you a glass of red wine.
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that you did not choose from a bottle you cannot see, because it is somewhere down at the other end of the candles.
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You have maybe 30 seconds of privacy with this glass.
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No notebook, no swirling theatrics.
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You swirl dramatically at that table, and believe me, the uncle stops his story for you.
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Thirty seconds, a glass and a white tablecloth.
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Good news, 30 seconds is enough, because the smallest framework in wine, the one every other framework tonight is built on top of, takes exactly three steps.
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Look, smell, taste.
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That's the whole thing.
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It was invented for tables exactly like ours.
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And tonight it's our arraignment.
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The accused stands in good light and we take our first honest look at it.
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Step 1.
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Look.
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Not at the wine.
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Through it.
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Hold the glass at an angle over something white.
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A napkin, a tablecloth.
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The Shabbat table is the best equipped tasting room in the world.
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It comes preloaded with white backgrounds.
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You're asking two questions.
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How intense is the color?
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And what exactly is the color?
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Here's why it matters.
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Color is one clue a wine cannot hide.
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It testifies mostly about age.
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Young red wine sits In the Ruby family, bright, vivid, a little blue in its purple.
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Old red wine drifts towards garnet and brick fading first at the edges, like a photograph left in the sun.
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So look at the rim where the wine thins against the glass.
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That's where the wine keeps its birth certificate.
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So our defendant over a white napkin is between Ruby and Garnet.
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Bright, clean, as stained glass, and vivid all the way out to the rims, no fading No color of brick, or what they call bricking, at the edges.
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Whatever this wine is, it's not very old.
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Write that down.
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That's testimony, and it's already on the record.
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If you're tasting along at home, pause me.
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Tilt your glass over something white.
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Is the wine ruby or garnet?
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Does it have a vivid rim, or is it fading, or turning brown, or bricking, as we call it?
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Say it out loud.
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That's your first line of evidence.
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Step two.
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Smell.
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And this is where I hand you the single most useful trick in all of wine.
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Put your nose right into the glass All the way in.
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Don't be polite about it.
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And take a gentle whiff.
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Now name the first two things you smell out loud before they evaporate on you.
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First impressions and smelling are like dreams, vivid for about four seconds and then gone.
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But here's the trick, because I know exactly what just happened to half of you You smelled it and your mind went blank.
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It smells like wine.
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Everyone starts there.
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The mistake is trying to leap straight to the bottom of the ladder.
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hunting for wild mountain blackberries.
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Like the critics do.
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Nobody's nose works that way.
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Smell works from big to small.
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So ask the big question first.
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Is it fruit at all?
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Yes or no?
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If yes, is it red fruit or black fruit?
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Red as cherries, raspberries, pomegranates, black as blackberries, plums, cassis Only then, once you've picked a shelf, do you reach for a specific jar.
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In her glass, is it fruit?
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Yes, loudly, loudly, yes Red or black?
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I'd say red.
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Bright red.
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Berries.
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The small, sharp kind, the kind that stain your fingers.
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And behind the fruit, way at the back, there is something that isn't fruit at all.
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Something savory.
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I'm not going to chase it yet.
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It's a whisper.
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And chapter two has the tools for turning whispers up.
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But I heard it, and so does the record.
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Okay, fruit, red, berries, a savory something behind.
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Four words, and that's already a better tasting known than most of us have produced in our lives Because it's built on a ladder.
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A ladder we can climb again tomorrow, on any wine, anywhere.
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Step three, taste.
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Take a small sip, smaller than you'd want to, and before you swallow it Let it actually travel.
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Most of us drink wine the way we drink water.
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Straight down the middle.
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Nothing touches the sides.
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Tonight, let it reach everywhere.
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Because your mouth is not one instrument.
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It's three.
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And they sit in different places.
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Sweetness announces itself first, right at the tip of your tongue.
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Acidity you feel at the sides.
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It's whatever makes your mouth water after you swallow An tannins, antennas, the grape skin dryness you feel on your gums that faint suede glove dragging across your teeth, kind of like what you get with strong tea.
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Our defendant then.
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Sweetness?
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None.
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Absolutely bone dry.
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The tip of my tongue got nothing.
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Acidity, oh yes.
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My mouth is watering right now as I talk to you.
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This is a fresh wine, a bright one, a wine with its posture straight up.
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Antannins, present but polite, a soft, dusty grip on the gums, suede, not sandpaper.
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It doesn't sit heavy either.
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This is not syrup somewhere in the middle for body, and nimble with it.
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Thirty seconds of attention, three steps, and look what we already have on record Not old, the rim swore to that.
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Bright, red, berry fruit with a savory shadow Bone dry, fresh enough to make your mouth water, gently gripping, medium built.
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At half the dinner tables on earth, that sentence makes you the most informed person sitting there And nobody saw you do anything except glance at your glass and enjoy it.
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And notice what we have not done.
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We have not named a country.
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We haven't named a grape.
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If somewhere in the back of your mind a candidate is already forming, good.
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Hold it loosely.
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The evidence gets a vote before you do.
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But I'll tell you a secret about these 30 seconds.
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We cheated our defendant out of half its testimony The glass never moved.
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We just sat there, still, answering only what it was asked.
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And a whine, like a witness, tells you far more once you've shaken it up a little.
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Chapter 2.
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Good news first.
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You can now swirl.
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The uncle is gone.
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The children have been paid off.
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It's just you and me, the defendant.
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And in this chapter, we stop being polite with it.
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Because everything we did in chapter one, we did to a wine standing still.
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And a still wine is a witness answering only the questions it's asked Yes.
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No.
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Red.
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Dry.
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This chapter is about motion.
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It's built on the most famous memory trick in wine.
00:18:59.000 --> 00:19:04.500
the one you've heard at every guided tasting you've ever attended.
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The S.
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See, swirl, sniff, sip, savor five of them in the classic version.
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Six if you add the one nobody admits to practicing in private.
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And we will.
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Seven if you count the quiet step at the beginning that most people skip and shouldn't.
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And I want to teach you the S's the way almost nobody does.
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not as choreography, but as machinery.
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Every one of these rituals does something, physical, chemical.
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Once you know what each one does, you'll never again feel silly doing them.
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Because you're not performing.
00:19:49.319 --> 00:19:58.380
You're operating equipment Starting with the skipped step, the quiet one, preparation.
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Two things before the glass is ever raised.
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temperature and the glass itself.
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Temperature first, because around here it's personal.
00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:18.240
Room temperature for red wine is a rule written in a cold northern room about 200 years ago.
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It did not anticipate a Jerusalem apartment in August.
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Serve a red wine at our summer room temperatures, and the alcohol shouts over the fruit like a bad wedding band.
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Too cold and the aromas sulk They simply refuse to climb out of the glass.
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The working answer, cool your reds slightly, twenty minutes in the fridge before a meal.
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That's it.
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It's the single cheapest upgrade in all of wine.
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And the glass, a bowl that narrows at the top.
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Not because it's elegant, because it's a funnel.
00:20:59.900 --> 00:21:03.099
The wide bottom gives the room wine to move.
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The narrow rim gathers everything that rises off it and delivers it exactly to one address.
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Your nose.
00:21:11.660 --> 00:21:15.740
That proper glass is a chimney over a fireplace.
00:21:15.740 --> 00:21:25.880
Tonight our defendant gets a fair chimney Okay now, C, but quickly, because chapter one did the looking.
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But there's one thing we haven't done yet, and it needs a first swirl to happen Give the glass a turn and hold it up.
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Watch the walls, those slow, clear droplets sliding back down, or called legs.
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Or tears.
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And here I have to break something too gently, because somebody at some table has told every one of us with great confidence.
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Look at those legs.
00:21:56.759 --> 00:21:59.398
That's a quality wine.
00:21:59.398 --> 00:22:00.759
No, it isn't.
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Legs are not quality.
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Legs are mostly alcohol and some physics.
00:22:06.200 --> 00:22:11.700
Alcohol evaporates off the wet film faster than water.
00:22:11.700 --> 00:22:18.500
The film surface tension shifts and the liquid gets pulled up and weeps back down.
00:22:18.500 --> 00:22:29.960
The physicists even have a name for it, the Marangoni effect, which I mentioned mainly so that you can retire somebody's leg speech forever at a Kiddush.
00:22:29.960 --> 00:22:36.759
But legs do whisper one true thing, roughly how much alcohol is in the glass.
00:22:36.759 --> 00:22:39.640
Heavy, syrup-slow tears.
00:22:39.640 --> 00:22:41.480
You're in blockbuster territory.
00:22:41.480 --> 00:22:43.519
15% and up.
00:22:43.519 --> 00:22:45.200
Thin and quick.
00:22:45.200 --> 00:22:46.720
Something light.
00:22:46.720 --> 00:22:48.880
Hours unhurried.
00:22:48.880 --> 00:22:50.558
Nothing like syrup.
00:22:50.558 --> 00:22:52.558
Kind of middle of the road.
00:22:52.558 --> 00:22:55.240
I'd say we're in the mid-13s.
00:22:55.240 --> 00:22:56.599
Write it down.
00:22:56.599 --> 00:23:00.519
Our defendant is no bruiser from a scorching valley floor.
00:23:00.519 --> 00:23:01.798
Moderation.
00:23:01.798 --> 00:23:04.038
Entered into evidence.
00:23:04.038 --> 00:23:08.940
Which brings us to the S the whole chapter is named for.
00:23:08.940 --> 00:23:10.140
Swirl.
00:23:10.140 --> 00:23:12.700
Here is what it actually does.
00:23:12.700 --> 00:23:16.140
And once you hear it, you'll never skip it again.
00:23:16.140 --> 00:23:23.859
A wine sitting still in a glass exposes a circle of surface about the size of a coin.
00:23:23.859 --> 00:23:33.240
That coin is the only place where the wine meets air the only open window that the aromas can leave through.
00:23:33.240 --> 00:23:44.140
Now swirl and the wine climbs up the walls and paints them, and suddenly the surface isn't a coin, it's the hole inside of the glass.
00:23:44.140 --> 00:23:55.559
You've thrown open every window in the house at once And the oxygen you folded in starts loosening aroma compounds that were sitting there, tight-lipped.
00:23:55.559 --> 00:23:58.519
Swirling is not showing off.
00:23:58.519 --> 00:24:01.400
Swirling is turning up the volume.
00:24:01.400 --> 00:24:10.579
So let's ask our witness again, properly this time, and sniff like this, short, gentle whiffs.
00:24:10.579 --> 00:24:14.919
Two or three, not one long heroic drag.
00:24:14.919 --> 00:24:24.740
Your nose is a sprinter, not a marathoner A few seconds into the deep inhale, it simply stops reporting.
00:24:24.740 --> 00:24:28.259
What you're going for is little sips of air.
00:24:28.259 --> 00:24:32.839
Okay, that's a lot louder.
00:24:32.839 --> 00:24:36.519
The berries from chapter one are still in front.
00:24:36.519 --> 00:24:44.038
But they've gone from the berries to wild berries, darker edged, brambly, less polite.
00:24:44.038 --> 00:24:52.079
And that savory whisper in the back, remember the one I refused to chase It's just stepped forward.
00:24:52.079 --> 00:25:00.640
I can name it now Balsamic, that sweet, sour, dark glaze shadow at the edge of the fruit.
00:25:00.640 --> 00:25:06.640
The whisper became testimony It just needed the windows opened.
00:25:06.640 --> 00:25:11.200
One more layer of listening while the glass is still awake.
00:25:11.200 --> 00:25:17.179
When you smell a wine, you're hearing up to three voices at once.
00:25:17.179 --> 00:25:20.859
The fruit, that's the grape itself speaking.
00:25:20.859 --> 00:25:26.819
Vanilla, toast, butter, that's the barrel speaking, if the wine ever slept in one.
00:25:26.819 --> 00:25:32.019
Leather, earth, dried leaves, that's time speaking.
00:25:32.019 --> 00:25:33.740
Years in the bottle.
00:25:33.740 --> 00:25:37.819
Our defendant, the grape, is doing nearly all the talking.
00:25:37.819 --> 00:25:39.900
If the barrel is in there.
00:25:39.900 --> 00:25:41.160
At all.
00:25:41.160 --> 00:25:49.880
It's a murmur, the faintest vanilla, maybe at the very back, and I'm honestly not ready to swear to it.
00:25:49.880 --> 00:25:51.799
And time.
00:25:51.799 --> 00:25:55.319
Time is talking very, very slightly.
00:25:55.319 --> 00:25:59.559
This wine isn't very young, but it's also not old.
00:25:59.559 --> 00:26:02.500
The rim told us in chapter one.
00:26:02.500 --> 00:26:05.700
The nose just confirmed it under oath.
00:26:05.700 --> 00:26:15.759
And now the sixth S, SIP, the one for behind closed doors, the slurp.
00:26:15.759 --> 00:26:23.859
Take a sip, hold it on your tongue, purse your lips, and draw a thin stream of air through the wine.
00:26:23.859 --> 00:26:36.180
Yes, that noise.
00:26:36.180 --> 00:26:38.420
Practice alone and I mean that.
00:26:38.420 --> 00:26:41.380
Here's why it's worth the indignity.
00:26:41.380 --> 00:26:45.819
Most of what you call taste doesn't happen on your tongue at all.
00:26:45.819 --> 00:26:49.740
That tongue does five blunt things.
00:26:49.740 --> 00:27:01.839
Everything else Cherry berry spice happens when warmed aromas rise from the back of your mouth, up into your nose from behind.
00:27:01.839 --> 00:27:06.000
The slurp is you aerating the wine a second time.
00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:12.180
inside your own mouth and fanning those aromas up the back stairs.
00:27:12.180 --> 00:27:13.779
And there it is.
00:27:13.779 --> 00:27:17.778
On the nose, it was wild berries.
00:27:17.778 --> 00:27:23.058
Through the backstairs, it sharpens into red cherry.
00:27:23.058 --> 00:27:26.380
Fresh, bright, almost snappy.
00:27:26.380 --> 00:27:36.079
The acidity we met in chapter one is carrying the fruit forward like a tray And then the last S.
00:27:36.079 --> 00:27:38.559
Spit or Savor.
00:27:38.559 --> 00:27:47.519
If you're ever tasting through a dozen bottles, a wine fare, a less serious flight, spitting isn't an insult to the wine.
00:27:47.519 --> 00:27:52.679
It's how professionals keep a working palate past glass number three.
00:27:52.679 --> 00:27:59.240
But one glass at your own table, On a Shabbat afternoon, savor.
00:27:59.240 --> 00:28:04.920
Spitting on a Shabbat afternoon is a sin against the afternoon.
00:28:04.920 --> 00:28:14.000
Savoring is its own instrument anyway Swallow, go still, count what lingers.
00:28:14.000 --> 00:28:37.980
Our defendant lingers politely, cleanly, with a few strong elements of cherry and that mouth watering freshness and then it bows out without a single stumble Look at the file we're building, not old, twice confirmed.
00:28:37.980 --> 00:28:41.900
Wild red berries with a balsamic shadow.
00:28:41.900 --> 00:28:51.759
If there was a barrel, it's a murmur at most Alcohol levels and mid-13s, moderation, not muscle.
00:28:51.759 --> 00:28:58.079
Fresh red cherry through the finish, which is clean and better than decent.
00:28:58.079 --> 00:29:05.599
That is a real portrait, and we haven't named a single grape or drawn a single border.
00:29:05.599 --> 00:29:15.039
But be honest with me, of everything we found in two chapters the rim, the berries, the balsamic, the legs.
00:29:15.039 --> 00:29:18.559
How much will you still have tomorrow morning?
00:29:18.559 --> 00:29:21.759
Because I know what I'll have.
00:29:21.759 --> 00:29:23.220
It was nice.
00:29:23.220 --> 00:29:26.740
Impressions evaporate faster than aromas.
00:29:26.740 --> 00:29:47.819
Every serious taster in history has hit this exact wall, and every one of them climbed it the same way with a notebook or how to write down a wine so that your future self can drink it again I want to show you the most useless document I own.
00:29:47.819 --> 00:29:49.579
It's a notebook.
00:29:49.579 --> 00:29:58.940
I bought it a year ago with real intentions to write down the wines of my life And I have it open in front of me right now.
00:29:58.940 --> 00:30:01.099
Here's an actual entry.
00:30:01.099 --> 00:30:02.779
I'm not exaggerating.
00:30:02.779 --> 00:30:04.220
I'm reading.
00:30:04.220 --> 00:30:05.740
Purim.
00:30:05.740 --> 00:30:09.099
The one with the label.
00:30:09.099 --> 00:30:10.779
Incredible.
00:30:10.779 --> 00:30:13.099
Three exclamation points.
00:30:13.099 --> 00:30:16.940
No name, no year, no description.
00:30:16.940 --> 00:30:30.659
Somewhere out there, there's a wine I apparently loved more than any other, and all I kept from it was my own enthusiasm Impressions evaporate.
00:30:30.659 --> 00:30:34.740
We prove that at the end of the last chapter.
00:30:34.740 --> 00:30:38.980
But here are the harder truths this notebook taught me.
00:30:38.980 --> 00:30:42.619
Writing things down doesn't save them either.
00:30:42.619 --> 00:30:47.740
Not by itself, because the enemy was never forgetting.
00:30:47.740 --> 00:30:50.779
The enemy is inconsistency.
00:30:50.779 --> 00:30:53.339
Incredible compared to what?
00:30:53.339 --> 00:30:55.819
Smooth, meaning what?
00:30:55.819 --> 00:31:00.539
A note you can't compare to your other notes isn't a record.
00:31:00.539 --> 00:31:10.579
It's a mood with a date on it Which brings us to the third framework of the evening, and it's time to start naming names.
00:31:10.579 --> 00:31:17.859
In the introduction I promised you a British grid used in every serious wine classroom on earth.
00:31:17.859 --> 00:31:39.319
Here it is, the systematic approach to tasting, the SAT, built by the Wine and Spirit Education Trust in London, the WSET If you have ever met anyone with wine letters after their names, odds are these are the letters.
00:31:39.319 --> 00:31:42.038
And you have to understand the problem.
00:31:42.038 --> 00:31:45.220
The SAT was built to solve.
00:31:45.220 --> 00:31:47.619
Because it's not a romantic one.
00:31:47.619 --> 00:31:51.298
WSET teaches enormous numbers of students.
00:31:51.298 --> 00:31:57.880
All over the world in dozens of languages, and it has to grade their tasting notes.
00:31:57.880 --> 00:32:06.539
Grade them, which means a note written in Tokyo has to be comparable To a note written in Tel Aviv.
00:32:06.539 --> 00:32:09.500
You cannot grade incredible.
00:32:09.500 --> 00:32:12.220
So they did something radical.
00:32:12.220 --> 00:32:23.398
They banned poetry The SAT is a fixed ladder of questions, appearance, nose, palate.
00:32:23.398 --> 00:32:26.960
Conclusions always in that order.
00:32:26.960 --> 00:32:30.400
Answered from a fixed menu of words.
00:32:30.400 --> 00:32:34.400
Almost everything lands on one little scale.
00:32:34.400 --> 00:32:36.599
Medium minus.
00:32:36.599 --> 00:32:37.558
Medium.
00:32:37.558 --> 00:32:39.240
Medium plus.
00:32:39.240 --> 00:32:41.720
Going up to pronounced.
00:32:41.720 --> 00:32:42.759
That's it.
00:32:42.759 --> 00:32:46.519
It sounds like it would flatten wine into a spreadsheet.
00:32:46.519 --> 00:32:57.119
It does exactly the opposite, because when two tasters on two continents both write acidity, medium plus, they mean the same thing.
00:32:57.119 --> 00:33:05.519
And suddenly notes can talk to each other across a room, across years, across a life.
00:33:05.519 --> 00:33:08.720
The ban on poetry is the gift.
00:33:08.720 --> 00:33:12.319
So let's do it right now, on air.
00:33:12.319 --> 00:33:15.920
Our defendant's formal disposition.
00:33:15.920 --> 00:33:25.779
Everything, the first two chapters found, taken down properly In the grid's own words, notebook open.
00:33:25.779 --> 00:33:31.299
If you're tasting along, this is the chapter to actually write with me.
00:33:31.299 --> 00:33:34.119
Six slots, one line.
00:33:34.119 --> 00:33:36.038
Okay, here goes.
00:33:36.038 --> 00:33:39.720
Appearance clear, brilliantly clear.
00:33:39.720 --> 00:33:41.220
Ruby.
00:33:41.220 --> 00:33:43.700
Intensity of color medium.
00:33:43.700 --> 00:33:46.660
Rim, vivid, youthful.
00:33:46.660 --> 00:33:47.619
Done.
00:33:47.619 --> 00:33:51.140
Two seconds and notice no adjectives were harmed.
00:33:51.140 --> 00:33:59.880
Nose, condition, clean, no mustiness, no vinegar sting, nothing broken.
00:33:59.880 --> 00:34:04.179
Intensity, medium Characteristics.
00:34:04.179 --> 00:34:10.340
Here, the grid lets our findings in, but makes them stand in a row.
00:34:10.340 --> 00:34:24.920
Red berries, red cherry, a balsamic note, primary aromas, nearly all of it, the grape speaking, as we said, development, not old Palette.
00:34:24.920 --> 00:34:27.320
Now the six dials.
00:34:27.320 --> 00:34:29.000
One at a time.
00:34:29.000 --> 00:34:31.800
Sweetness, dry.
00:34:31.800 --> 00:34:41.219
acidity, medium plus, that mouth watering brightness that has been with us since the first sip.
00:34:41.219 --> 00:34:52.239
And it's the loudest structural voice in the glass Tannins, medium, present, fine-grained, that suede grip.
00:34:52.239 --> 00:34:57.119
Alcohol, medium, the legs already testified to that.
00:34:57.119 --> 00:35:04.280
Body, medium, flavor intensity, medium, finish, medium plus.
00:35:04.280 --> 00:35:07.000
It lingered politely, remember?
00:35:07.000 --> 00:35:11.079
And now lingered politely has a proper name.
00:35:11.079 --> 00:35:25.460
Now listen to the whole deposition red, bright, clear, medium ruby, youthful rim, clean nose, medium intensity, red berry, red cherry, balsamic.
00:35:25.460 --> 00:35:27.920
Not old.
00:35:27.920 --> 00:35:30.960
Dry acidity medium plus.
00:35:30.960 --> 00:35:33.199
Tannin medium.
00:35:33.199 --> 00:35:34.880
Fine-grained.
00:35:34.880 --> 00:35:36.619
Alcohol medium.
00:35:36.619 --> 00:35:38.219
Body medium.
00:35:38.219 --> 00:35:40.460
Flavor intensity medium.
00:35:40.460 --> 00:35:42.539
Finish medium plus.
00:35:42.539 --> 00:35:44.300
thirty-odd words.
00:35:44.300 --> 00:35:46.619
That's the entire wine.
00:35:46.619 --> 00:35:48.239
Portable.
00:35:48.239 --> 00:35:56.798
Next year, on the far side of a hundred other bottles, I could read that back and this glass would stand up again.
00:35:56.798 --> 00:36:00.760
That's what my Purim Entry never learned to do.
00:36:00.760 --> 00:36:06.119
But the SAT's last rung is the one that separates it from a shopping list.
00:36:06.119 --> 00:36:07.480
Conclusions.
00:36:07.480 --> 00:36:15.679
The grid makes you commit to a quality judgment, and it gives you four honest tests to do it with.
00:36:15.679 --> 00:36:17.039
Balance.
00:36:17.039 --> 00:36:21.900
Do the parts agree with each other, or is something shouting?
00:36:21.900 --> 00:36:23.179
Length?
00:36:23.179 --> 00:36:25.338
Does the finish hold?
00:36:25.338 --> 00:36:26.780
Intensity?
00:36:26.780 --> 00:36:28.960
Does the wine speak up?
00:36:28.960 --> 00:36:30.400
Complexity.
00:36:30.400 --> 00:36:33.679
How many voices are there in the room?
00:36:33.679 --> 00:36:37.920
Balance, length, intensity, complexity.
00:36:37.920 --> 00:36:45.579
Four questions, then you must choose a word from a short, unsentimental list.
00:36:45.579 --> 00:36:54.059
that runs from faulty through acceptable and good up to very good and outstanding.
00:36:54.059 --> 00:36:59.980
So regarding our defendant, balance, yes, genuinely.
00:36:59.980 --> 00:37:03.798
Acid, fruit, tannin, alcohol.
00:37:03.798 --> 00:37:05.318
Nobody is shouting.
00:37:05.318 --> 00:37:07.079
Nobody is missing.
00:37:07.079 --> 00:37:07.960
Length.
00:37:07.960 --> 00:37:09.719
Medium plus.
00:37:09.719 --> 00:37:13.559
Better than its price class has any right to promise.
00:37:13.559 --> 00:37:16.260
Intensity, medium.
00:37:16.260 --> 00:37:20.739
It speaks clearly at a conversational volume.
00:37:20.739 --> 00:37:30.699
Complexity, modest, one voice, the grape, doing nearly all the talking The barrel, a murmur.
00:37:30.699 --> 00:37:33.900
Time, almost silent.
00:37:33.900 --> 00:37:35.019
Verdict?
00:37:35.019 --> 00:37:36.059
Good.
00:37:36.059 --> 00:37:37.579
Not very good.
00:37:37.579 --> 00:37:39.260
Not outstanding.
00:37:39.260 --> 00:37:43.420
Good, balanced, clean, honest, ready.
00:37:43.420 --> 00:37:46.460
A drink now, wine, not a keeper.
00:37:46.460 --> 00:37:52.940
And I want you to notice something about this moment because the whole episode leans on it.
00:37:52.940 --> 00:37:55.340
The grid just told the truth.
00:37:55.340 --> 00:37:58.139
It had smaller words available.
00:37:58.139 --> 00:38:05.760
and bigger ones, and it shows the middle, because the middle is what's in the glass.
00:38:05.760 --> 00:38:11.840
A framework that only ever says outstanding isn't a framework.
00:38:11.840 --> 00:38:14.119
It's a greeting guard.
00:38:14.119 --> 00:38:25.318
The SAT earns our trust in the next two chapters, precisely because, in this one, it declined to flatter our defendant.
00:38:25.318 --> 00:38:36.019
And I promised in the introduction that this impulse, a fixed protocol for paying attention to a cup of wine, did not start in London.
00:38:36.019 --> 00:38:45.840
The Gemara and tractate Berachot lays out the requirement for a kos shel bracha, a cup of blessing.
00:38:45.840 --> 00:38:50.239
Listen to what it asks, and count the steps.
00:38:50.239 --> 00:39:09.298
The cup is rinsed, inside and out, filled, generously full, received in both hands then held in the right, raised a hand's breadth above the table, and your eyes stay on the cup the whole time.
00:39:09.298 --> 00:39:24.059
Eyes on the cup That is a systematic approach, sight, touch, elevation, attention, prescribed, ordered, repeatable, 2,000 years before anyone in London.
00:39:24.059 --> 00:39:27.179
thought to grade a tasting note.
00:39:27.179 --> 00:39:32.940
And then the Gemara adds, the step no wine school ever wrote.
00:39:32.940 --> 00:39:47.380
When you finished, the cup is sent on around the table to your household, so that the blessing lands on someone else's lips too structured attention that ends in sharing.
00:39:47.380 --> 00:39:58.260
Hazal understood something the wine world is still catching up to Attention is not complete until it's handed to somebody.
00:39:58.260 --> 00:40:01.539
That's what a tasting journal really is, by the way.
00:40:01.539 --> 00:40:07.380
Not a diary, a misorah, a tradition of your own palate.
00:40:07.380 --> 00:40:18.239
Attention written down and handed forward, even if the person you're handing it to is just you, a year from now, standing baffled.
00:40:18.239 --> 00:40:23.320
in a wine shop, my puramentry, handed me nothing.
00:40:23.320 --> 00:40:33.320
The thirty words we wrote tonight, those are an inheritance So here's the file as it stands.
00:40:33.320 --> 00:40:35.559
One more time.
00:40:35.559 --> 00:40:40.840
Young, medium ruby, red-berried, balsamic.
00:40:40.840 --> 00:41:02.260
edged, dry, bright, fine-grained, medium-built, finishing longish, clean, quality good Every phrase calibrated, every phrase comparable, which means every phrase is now something else An affidavit.
00:41:02.260 --> 00:41:06.420
Because a deposition this clean is wasted on a draw.
00:41:06.420 --> 00:41:17.159
Evidence like this wants a courtroom A method that takes each sworn line and asks the only question we haven't dared yet.
00:41:17.159 --> 00:41:20.358
Not what is in the glass.
00:41:20.358 --> 00:41:21.940
But where is it from?
00:41:21.940 --> 00:41:25.539
And what is it and when?
00:41:25.539 --> 00:41:35.099
Chapter 4, The Detective Somewhere in a quiet room, a candidate is standing in front of six glasses of wine.
00:41:35.099 --> 00:41:56.239
No labels, no hints, a clock is running, in something like twenty-five minutes They have to tell a panel of examiners out loud, glass by glass, the grape, the country, the region, and the vintage of all six, not something Mediterranean.
00:41:56.239 --> 00:41:58.900
The region, the year.
00:41:58.900 --> 00:42:07.380
This is the tasting portion of the Master Sommelier exam, given by the Court of Master Sommeliers.
00:42:07.380 --> 00:42:12.639
And now you know where the number from the beginning of tonight's episode lives.
00:42:12.639 --> 00:42:17.039
299 people since 1960.
00:42:17.039 --> 00:42:25.358
More human beings have left the planet than have walked out of that room with a diploma.
00:42:25.358 --> 00:42:28.960
And here's what everybody else gets wrong about that.
00:42:28.960 --> 00:42:30.039
room.
00:42:30.039 --> 00:42:34.360
They imagine a supernatural palate.
00:42:34.360 --> 00:42:43.159
Someone who sips and just knows a party trick scaled up It's the opposite.
00:42:43.159 --> 00:42:53.639
The quartz method, the deductive tasting grid, the fourth framework of our evening, is built on a humbling premise.
00:42:53.639 --> 00:42:56.059
Nobody can taste a country.
00:42:56.059 --> 00:43:00.380
Nobody sips and recognizes a region like a face.
00:43:00.380 --> 00:43:06.460
What a trained taster does is something much closer to home for us.
00:43:06.460 --> 00:43:08.400
They reason.
00:43:08.400 --> 00:43:11.280
Sight, nose, palate.
00:43:11.280 --> 00:43:14.559
Then an initial conclusion.
00:43:14.559 --> 00:43:16.320
Then a final one.
00:43:16.320 --> 00:43:19.480
Every observation becomes evidence.
00:43:19.480 --> 00:43:22.920
Every piece of evidence implies something.
00:43:22.920 --> 00:43:29.079
And the implications, stacked patiently enough, corner the truth.
00:43:29.079 --> 00:43:36.119
I've sat with a lot of pages of Gemara in my life, and I'm telling you what the deductive grid is.
00:43:36.119 --> 00:43:45.880
It's a sugya is a chakla, vitarya, and stemwar, proposition, objection, refinement, conclusion.
00:43:45.880 --> 00:43:50.039
In the yeshiva, we even have a word for the muscles it uses.
00:43:50.039 --> 00:44:02.179
being médaic, squeezing a line of text for what it must imply, not just for what it says Tonight, we squeeze the glass.
00:44:02.179 --> 00:44:05.380
Actually, it's older than the Gemurah.
00:44:05.380 --> 00:44:12.579
The Mishnah, the Tractate Sanhedrin, lays out how a Jewish court examines witnesses.
00:44:12.579 --> 00:44:19.300
The Haki wrote, the mandated interrogations, every witness must survive.
00:44:19.300 --> 00:44:23.539
And do you know what the court's required questions are?
00:44:23.539 --> 00:44:25.239
When and where?
00:44:25.239 --> 00:44:26.440
Which week?
00:44:26.440 --> 00:44:27.559
Which date?
00:44:27.559 --> 00:44:28.838
Which hour?
00:44:28.838 --> 00:44:30.278
What place?
00:44:30.278 --> 00:44:33.798
Pin the testimony to a time and a location.
00:44:33.798 --> 00:44:39.860
because testimony that can't say when and where is not testimony at all.
00:44:39.860 --> 00:44:42.420
Tonight, the glass is our witness.
00:44:42.420 --> 00:44:44.420
It has been deposed.
00:44:44.420 --> 00:44:51.199
Chapter 3 Every Line Sworn Now comes the Hakira.
00:44:51.199 --> 00:44:53.440
When are you from, Wine?
00:44:53.440 --> 00:44:54.719
And where?
00:44:54.719 --> 00:44:56.960
Open the affidavit.
00:44:56.960 --> 00:44:58.239
First line.
00:44:58.239 --> 00:44:59.358
Acidity.
00:44:59.358 --> 00:45:00.960
Medium plus.
00:45:00.960 --> 00:45:04.858
What does bright acid testify to?
00:45:04.858 --> 00:45:07.579
Chemistry, not poetry.
00:45:07.579 --> 00:45:26.880
Grapes hold their acid in cool conditions and burn it off in heat A wine, this mouth watering, was not raised in the scorching valley floor, so a cool climate, or a warm one with a trick up its slip.
00:45:26.880 --> 00:45:28.039
Altitude.
00:45:28.039 --> 00:45:30.599
Height does what latitude does.
00:45:30.599 --> 00:45:38.760
A vineyard at six, eight hundred meters, keeps its nights cold and its acid intact.
00:45:38.760 --> 00:45:42.500
Cross-examine with the next line.
00:45:42.500 --> 00:45:44.900
Alcohol, medium.
00:45:44.900 --> 00:45:54.380
The leg said, mid-13s, back in chapter 2 Alcohol is just sugar that used to be sunshine.
00:45:54.380 --> 00:46:01.179
Moderate alcohol means moderate ripeness, means a grape that was not baked.
00:46:01.179 --> 00:46:04.360
Two independent witnesses, same story.
00:46:04.360 --> 00:46:08.599
Somewhere cool and somewhere high.
00:46:08.599 --> 00:46:10.599
Next, the color.
00:46:10.599 --> 00:46:13.800
Ruby with a tinge of garnet.
00:46:13.800 --> 00:46:15.880
Rim is youthful.
00:46:15.880 --> 00:46:20.679
Time hasn't said a word on the nose either, remember.
00:46:20.679 --> 00:46:26.159
This wine is Two to five years old?
00:46:26.159 --> 00:46:28.320
That's not an impression anymore.
00:46:28.320 --> 00:46:32.400
Between the rim and the fruit, it's established.
00:46:32.400 --> 00:46:34.400
When are you from?
00:46:34.400 --> 00:46:39.699
Pretty recently, not not old.
00:46:39.699 --> 00:46:48.739
Next, tannins, medium fine-grained, that dusty suede, thick-skinned bruiser grapes.
00:46:48.739 --> 00:46:53.960
the big Cabernet family, tend to bring more grip than this.
00:46:53.960 --> 00:47:05.360
Fine powdery tannins at medium strength points towards a medium weight grape And notice what our affidavit does not contain.
00:47:05.360 --> 00:47:08.320
Vanilla never made it in.
00:47:08.320 --> 00:47:33.539
We heard a murmur in chapter 2 and declined to swear to it A wine with this little amount of barrel in it was raised to be drunk, not cellared, stainless steel, old neutral wood, maybe a short nap in a barrel at most A style decision, an early drinking, fruit-first, keep it honest decision.
00:47:33.539 --> 00:47:35.780
And the savory thread?
00:47:35.780 --> 00:47:43.239
That balsamic shadow that's been trailing the fruit since chapter one.
00:47:43.239 --> 00:47:46.039
Pure fruit, polished and loud.
00:47:46.039 --> 00:47:50.079
Is the calling card of the new world style.
00:47:50.079 --> 00:47:57.039
Fruit with a savory edge, acid running the show, moderation everywhere.
00:47:57.039 --> 00:48:00.400
That's the old world accent.
00:48:00.400 --> 00:48:04.260
I say accent and I chose the word carefully.
00:48:04.260 --> 00:48:08.820
Plenty of new world winemakers can fake this accent beautifully.
00:48:08.820 --> 00:48:14.280
But the witness speaks with it, and the grid lets us say so.
00:48:14.280 --> 00:48:16.760
Old world and style.
00:48:16.760 --> 00:48:19.960
So let's bring in the suspects.
00:48:19.960 --> 00:48:28.519
Cool or high, not old, middleweight, restrained oak, savory accent.
00:48:28.519 --> 00:48:31.780
Red cherry down the middle.
00:48:31.780 --> 00:48:37.139
And I know exactly who half of you have in the dock already.
00:48:37.139 --> 00:48:38.900
Go on, say it.
00:48:38.900 --> 00:48:45.380
A Judean Hills Red, a young Galilee something.
00:48:45.380 --> 00:48:46.820
Altitude?
00:48:46.820 --> 00:48:49.480
The Judean hills have it.
00:48:49.480 --> 00:48:55.480
Those vineyards sit high enough that the nights bite, even in August.
00:48:55.480 --> 00:49:01.559
Bright acid, red fruit, a savory herbal edge.
00:49:01.559 --> 00:49:06.699
I have poured you wines like that on this very show more than once.
00:49:06.699 --> 00:49:09.500
It's a reasonable hypothesis.
00:49:09.500 --> 00:49:11.699
I'm not going to argue with it.
00:49:11.699 --> 00:49:13.139
Hold that thought.
00:49:13.139 --> 00:49:19.699
Hold it exactly as tightly as the evidence deserves, and not one finger tighter.
00:49:19.699 --> 00:49:21.480
Chapter 1, remember.
00:49:21.480 --> 00:49:24.920
The evidence gets a vote before you do.
00:49:24.920 --> 00:49:27.079
Who else could be in the room?
00:49:27.079 --> 00:49:29.079
Sangiovese?
00:49:29.079 --> 00:49:32.199
A great red cherry grape from Tuscany.
00:49:32.199 --> 00:49:38.480
High acid check, medium body check, red cherry, emphatically check.
00:49:38.480 --> 00:49:39.840
It's close.
00:49:39.840 --> 00:49:41.920
Here's my hesitation.
00:49:41.920 --> 00:49:46.139
Sangiovese's tannins usually argue with you.
00:49:46.139 --> 00:49:51.579
It's grippier than this, more insistent, especially young.
00:49:51.579 --> 00:49:55.340
Our witness's tannin is fine and dusty.
00:49:55.340 --> 00:49:56.579
polite.
00:49:56.579 --> 00:50:02.019
I won't throw Sangiovesi out of court, but I'm squinting at it.
00:50:02.019 --> 00:50:16.159
Grenaccia, Grenaccia, if you like red fruit warm-hearted but it's usually runs riper and hotter than the mid-13s strike one against.
00:50:16.159 --> 00:50:20.079
And so we come to a quiet candidate in the corner.
00:50:20.079 --> 00:50:21.840
Tempranillo.
00:50:21.840 --> 00:50:23.760
Red Cherry at the center.
00:50:23.760 --> 00:50:24.559
Check.
00:50:24.559 --> 00:50:28.559
Savory, almost leathery, balsamic edge.
00:50:28.559 --> 00:50:29.760
Check.
00:50:29.760 --> 00:50:32.400
Medium everything worn comfortably.
00:50:32.400 --> 00:50:33.519
Check.
00:50:33.519 --> 00:50:38.480
And that exact tannin, fine, dusty, suede gloved.
00:50:38.480 --> 00:50:39.599
Check.
00:50:39.599 --> 00:50:41.519
The evidence leans.
00:50:41.519 --> 00:50:44.559
I want to be more precise about what I'm saying.
00:50:44.559 --> 00:50:45.679
It leans.
00:50:45.679 --> 00:50:47.519
It has not yet landed.
00:50:47.519 --> 00:50:52.960
So here is our initial conclusion, exactly as the grid demands one.
00:50:52.960 --> 00:50:59.300
This is an old world-styled red from a cool zone or an elevated one.
00:50:59.300 --> 00:51:01.380
Three to five years old?
00:51:01.380 --> 00:51:03.059
Modest oak.
00:51:03.059 --> 00:51:13.699
built middleweight and fruit first, most likely Tempranillo, or a close cousin, with Sangiovese still seated in the courtroom Room.
00:51:13.699 --> 00:51:20.659
And yes, that young Israeli red some of you refuse to release.
00:51:20.659 --> 00:51:21.539
Fine.
00:51:21.539 --> 00:51:23.219
The grid doesn't mind.
00:51:23.219 --> 00:51:27.460
The grid has room for every suspect that survives the episode.
00:51:27.460 --> 00:51:28.280
evidence.
00:51:28.280 --> 00:51:32.760
And now the grid turns to me and demands the last box.
00:51:32.760 --> 00:51:34.840
The final conclusion.
00:51:34.840 --> 00:51:39.159
Country, region, vintage, producer.
00:51:39.159 --> 00:51:41.639
Commit it says out loud.
00:51:41.639 --> 00:51:46.860
That's the whole point of the room with the six glasses.
00:51:46.860 --> 00:51:49.820
The courage of the last box.
00:51:49.820 --> 00:51:52.780
Nope, not yet.
00:51:52.780 --> 00:52:04.059
Not out of cowardice, but out of order, because deduction, for all its brilliance, answers only the Mishnah's question.
00:52:04.059 --> 00:52:07.139
When and where and what.
00:52:07.139 --> 00:52:17.000
It has nothing whatsoever to say about the question Your Bubby would ask first, is it any good?
00:52:17.000 --> 00:52:20.838
A wine could pass its entire cross-examination.
00:52:20.838 --> 00:52:22.659
and be mediocre.
00:52:22.659 --> 00:52:25.139
The grid can identify.
00:52:25.139 --> 00:52:27.300
It can't evaluate.
00:52:27.300 --> 00:52:41.280
For that, there's one instrument left The coldest one we own, a laboratory scorecard out of 20 points where every fault has its price and sentiment.
00:52:41.280 --> 00:52:43.699
is not admissible.
00:52:43.699 --> 00:52:47.380
The final box can wait one more chapter.
00:52:47.380 --> 00:52:50.980
It's waited since 1969.
00:52:50.980 --> 00:52:54.320
Chapter 5, The Scorecard.
00:52:54.320 --> 00:52:56.800
No tablecloth in this chapter.
00:52:56.800 --> 00:52:58.320
No candles.
00:52:58.320 --> 00:53:04.639
Just a bench, a bright white lab light, a row of numbered glasses.
00:53:04.639 --> 00:53:14.019
And a printed card with boxes on it, because the last instrument of the evening doesn't come from a dining culture at all.
00:53:14.019 --> 00:53:22.619
It comes from a laboratory The University Laboratory in California, I promised you at the beginning.
00:53:22.619 --> 00:53:29.980
The University of California at Davis, the place where American winemakers go to school.
00:53:29.980 --> 00:53:39.159
And you have to know why this card exists, because nobody builds something this cold for fun.
00:53:39.159 --> 00:53:46.980
Mid-20th century California wine is rebuilding itself from the rubble of prohibition.
00:53:46.980 --> 00:53:57.719
Vineyards replanted, wineries reopening, and an enormous amount of wine coming out of them was, to put it kindly, broken.
00:53:57.719 --> 00:54:04.159
The professors at Davis needed a tool, not a poem, a tool.
00:54:04.159 --> 00:54:09.440
Something a panel could use to separate sound wine from spoiled wine.
00:54:09.440 --> 00:54:14.420
quickly, repeatedly, without anyone's feelings getting a vote.
00:54:14.420 --> 00:54:23.460
So they built a scorecard, 20 points, divided across 10 boxes Every box has a price.
00:54:23.460 --> 00:54:26.260
Every floor pays it.
00:54:26.260 --> 00:54:32.860
The journal we built in chapter 3 asks What is this wine like?
00:54:32.860 --> 00:54:37.340
The grid in chapter 4 asks, what is this wine?
00:54:37.340 --> 00:54:41.500
The Davis card asks the coldest question of the night.
00:54:41.500 --> 00:54:43.500
What is this wine worth?
00:54:43.500 --> 00:54:46.539
Not in money, in points.
00:54:46.539 --> 00:54:54.039
Wine as a defendant, with then the sentence to follow So here's the card.
00:54:54.039 --> 00:54:56.199
All ten boxes.
00:54:56.199 --> 00:54:58.599
Clarity is one point.
00:54:58.599 --> 00:55:00.599
Color is two.
00:55:00.599 --> 00:55:05.239
Aroma and bouquet, the big one, four.
00:55:05.239 --> 00:55:16.059
Acidity, two, sugar balance, one, body, one, flavor, two, astringency.
00:55:16.059 --> 00:55:19.818
That's our tanon, two.
00:55:19.818 --> 00:55:22.778
Freedom from faults, too.
00:55:22.778 --> 00:55:26.778
And last, general quality, three points.
00:55:26.778 --> 00:55:36.500
The judge's discretion, the only place on the entire card where the wine can earn something for being more than correct.
00:55:36.500 --> 00:55:44.318
If you're scoring along at home, one rule, and it's the whole game, be stingy.
00:55:44.318 --> 00:55:47.358
This card doesn't reward love.
00:55:47.358 --> 00:55:58.380
It rewards the absence of error Every point starts in the wine's pocket, and the wine keeps only what it defends.
00:55:58.380 --> 00:56:01.338
So let's apply it to our defendant.
00:56:01.338 --> 00:56:10.539
Starting with box one, clarity, brilliantly clear, has been since the first look over the napkin.
00:56:10.539 --> 00:56:14.960
Full point one Box two.
00:56:14.960 --> 00:56:16.079
Color.
00:56:16.079 --> 00:56:18.079
Correct garnet.
00:56:18.079 --> 00:56:21.278
Correct intensity for this dry wine.
00:56:21.278 --> 00:56:22.639
Vivid rim.
00:56:22.639 --> 00:56:25.039
Both points three.
00:56:25.039 --> 00:56:28.519
Box 4, Aroma and Bouquet.
00:56:28.519 --> 00:56:35.800
Four points on the table, the heaviest box, and here comes the card's first honest bite.
00:56:35.800 --> 00:56:44.739
Clean, completely, pleasant, genuinely red berries, cherry, and balsamic shade.
00:56:44.739 --> 00:57:05.920
But the card wants layers, aroma and bouquet, grape and barrel and time, voices in harmony We've known for three chapters this wine sings in mainly one voice, clearly at conversational volumes.
00:57:05.920 --> 00:57:11.079
Two of the four, tally five.
00:57:11.079 --> 00:57:22.679
Box four, acidity, bright, balanced, alive, the spine of everything, this wine does well Both points seven.
00:57:22.679 --> 00:57:25.880
Box five, sugar balance.
00:57:25.880 --> 00:57:28.199
Dry, clean, correct.
00:57:28.199 --> 00:57:31.000
It gets a full point eight.
00:57:31.000 --> 00:57:35.039
Box 6, body.
00:57:35.039 --> 00:57:37.599
Medium and honest about it.
00:57:37.599 --> 00:57:40.000
Nothing padded, nothing thin.
00:57:40.000 --> 00:57:42.239
It gets the point nine.
00:57:42.239 --> 00:57:47.960
Box 7, flavor, two points available here.
00:57:47.960 --> 00:57:52.199
The flavor is agreeable, fresh, true to the nose.
00:57:52.199 --> 00:57:56.039
It says just one thing, but it says it well.
00:57:56.039 --> 00:58:01.000
One of two points, ten.
00:58:01.000 --> 00:58:02.519
Box eight.
00:58:02.519 --> 00:58:12.519
Astringency Fine-grained, ripe, polite, tannins doing exactly what a drink now red asks of it.
00:58:12.519 --> 00:58:21.699
Both points were up to twelve Box 9, Freedom from Faults, 2 points available.
00:58:21.699 --> 00:58:27.539
And before I award them, let me tell you what the card is even looking for.
00:58:27.539 --> 00:58:32.719
Because faults is a technical word, not an insult.
00:58:32.719 --> 00:58:36.400
The lift of vinegar where the fruit should be.
00:58:36.400 --> 00:58:47.400
wet cardboard of a corked bottle, barnyard where there should be berries, a bruised apple flatness, of oxidation.
00:58:47.400 --> 00:58:55.960
These are the criminals the Davis card was built to catch, and I've been hunting them for five chapters in this glass.
00:58:55.960 --> 00:59:00.420
Nothing, not a trace, not a shadow.
00:59:00.420 --> 00:59:05.380
This wine is clean the way a freshly washed window is clean.
00:59:05.380 --> 00:59:07.079
You forget it's there.
00:59:07.079 --> 00:59:10.280
Both points, 14 in total.
00:59:10.280 --> 00:59:17.159
But I want to sit inside this box for one more minute, because there's a prejudice here worth naming.
00:59:17.159 --> 00:59:27.219
There are people in the wine trade, lovely people, knowledgeable people, that would glance at a bottle from that hip-height shelf.
00:59:27.219 --> 00:59:33.199
in its price class and just assume the processing shows.
00:59:33.199 --> 00:59:36.480
Assuming it's been roughed up on its way to you.
00:59:36.480 --> 00:59:43.300
Heat in particular has a terrible reputation in wine And a deserved one historically.
00:59:43.300 --> 00:59:51.460
Boil a wine, and you cook away the very compounds we spent chapter two coaxing out with a swirl.
00:59:51.460 --> 00:59:56.619
But here is what the last few decades actually built.
00:59:56.619 --> 01:00:09.300
And I've stood next to some of this equipment with the winemakers I've partnered with on my own handful of wine Asking my thousand amateur questions.
01:00:09.300 --> 01:00:13.300
Modern thermal treatment is not a cauldron.
01:00:13.300 --> 01:00:20.460
It's a plate exchanger The wine flashes across a heated surface for seconds.
01:00:20.460 --> 01:00:22.539
Seconds, not hours.
01:00:22.539 --> 01:00:40.820
Up and immediately down, cold again, before the aromatics know what happened The industry uses heat all over the place now, in ways drinkers never see, stabilizing juice, taming rough lots, protecting wines.
01:00:40.820 --> 01:00:44.539
that have to cross the ocean in a container in July.
01:00:44.539 --> 01:00:54.880
Done crudely, yes, it flattens the wine, and the card would catch it right here In this box, two points gone.
01:00:54.880 --> 01:00:56.559
Done well?
01:00:56.559 --> 01:01:05.400
You just watched a wine walk through every test we own, and surrender nothing to the box at all Hold that thought.
01:01:05.400 --> 01:01:07.159
I mean it this time.
01:01:07.159 --> 01:01:10.440
Hold it all the way to the end of the episode.
01:01:10.440 --> 01:01:15.940
The last box, number 10, general quality.
01:01:15.940 --> 01:01:18.980
Three points for distinction.
01:01:18.980 --> 01:01:27.298
For a wine that is not just correct, but memorable layered, a wine with a second act.
01:01:27.298 --> 01:01:32.900
Our defendant is balanced, honest, and knows exactly what it is.
01:01:32.900 --> 01:01:35.800
That is worth something real.
01:01:35.800 --> 01:01:38.039
One point of three.
01:01:38.039 --> 01:01:40.199
It loses two.
01:01:40.199 --> 01:01:43.159
And notice what it lost them for.
01:01:43.159 --> 01:01:45.159
Not an era.
01:01:45.159 --> 01:01:46.440
Ambition.
01:01:46.440 --> 01:01:51.480
Nowhere on this card did our wine lose a single point for a mistake.
01:01:51.480 --> 01:01:54.739
Total, 15 out of 20.
01:01:54.739 --> 01:02:03.539
17 and up, outstanding wine of distinction.
01:02:03.539 --> 01:02:22.338
13 to 16, sound, standard, free of defects, which means the laboratory in its cold arithmetic just said precisely what the London Grid said in its careful vocabulary two chapters ago.
01:02:22.338 --> 01:02:24.900
Good, sound, true.
01:02:24.900 --> 01:02:34.960
Two systems built 70 years and 10,000 kilometers apart, one to grade students, one to audit an industry.
01:02:34.960 --> 01:02:41.719
Different questions, different math, no knowledge of each other, same verdict.
01:02:41.719 --> 01:02:46.199
And we, of all people, know what to call that.
01:02:46.199 --> 01:02:49.900
The Torah's oldest rule of evidence.
01:02:49.900 --> 01:02:53.338
A matter is established by two witnesses.
01:02:53.338 --> 01:02:56.778
Tonight, the defendant has them.
01:02:56.778 --> 01:03:00.778
So here's where five frameworks leave us.
01:03:00.778 --> 01:03:04.559
We know what this wine is like.
01:03:04.559 --> 01:03:10.320
The journal holds its portrait in 30 calibrated words.
01:03:10.320 --> 01:03:15.599
We know within a hair what it is.
01:03:15.599 --> 01:03:33.659
Not old, cool-raised, or high-raised middleweight, Tempranillo or its cousin, Old World in its accent, and now we know what it's worth on the coldest card ever printed.
01:03:33.659 --> 01:03:40.340
fifteen out of twenty, sound and clean, docked only for dreaming small.
01:03:40.340 --> 01:03:42.820
But look at the card one more time.
01:03:42.820 --> 01:03:48.260
Ten boxes, and not one of them, for what happens next.
01:03:48.260 --> 01:03:56.039
There is no box for the table it lands on, no box for who lifts it or what they say over it.
01:03:56.039 --> 01:03:59.519
or what it means that they say it.
01:03:59.519 --> 01:04:03.679
The scorecard stops at the rim of the glass.
01:04:03.679 --> 01:04:21.920
Tonight we don't The grid from chapter four is still waiting, patient as the page of Gemara, its last empty box, country, region, vintage, name the courage of the last box.
01:04:21.920 --> 01:04:25.440
That's the entrance fee to the final chapter.
01:04:25.440 --> 01:04:28.239
And there's only one way to pay it.
01:04:28.239 --> 01:04:37.440
Time to commit All night I've told you what that room with six glasses really examines.
01:04:37.440 --> 01:04:40.960
Not the palate, the nerve.
01:04:40.960 --> 01:04:44.559
Anyone can gather evidence forever.
01:04:44.559 --> 01:04:55.360
The exam begins when you have to sign your name to a conclusion out loud knowing you might be wrong in front of everyone.
01:04:55.360 --> 01:05:00.500
So, in front of everyone Country, Spain.
01:05:00.500 --> 01:05:02.260
Region, Rioja.
01:05:02.260 --> 01:05:04.739
Grape, Tempranillo.
01:05:04.739 --> 01:05:14.460
Vintage, 2022 Ramón Cardova Rioja, 2022.
01:05:14.460 --> 01:05:16.539
So let's read the label.
01:05:16.539 --> 01:05:24.440
Ramón Cardova Rioja 2022, 100% Tempranillo.
01:05:24.440 --> 01:05:37.000
The grid landed clean, and one more number, the one I made you remember from the very first minute I paid about $20 for this bottle.
01:05:37.000 --> 01:05:39.320
Hip height.
01:05:39.320 --> 01:05:41.960
A shop where nobody whispers.
01:05:41.960 --> 01:05:45.719
Now, I know what just happened out there.
01:05:45.719 --> 01:05:50.940
Because two rooms of you are having two very different evenings right now.
01:05:50.940 --> 01:05:53.099
Let me visit both rooms.
01:05:53.099 --> 01:06:08.460
I owe each of you a debt, and I intend to pay in full First, everyone who has been holding on to a Judean Hill's red since chapter 4, open your hand You can let it go now.
01:06:08.460 --> 01:06:10.059
And please hear me.
01:06:10.059 --> 01:06:12.380
You were never wrong to hold it.
01:06:12.380 --> 01:06:15.579
Altitude, bright acid, savory herbs.
01:06:15.579 --> 01:06:19.900
Everything you reasoned was true reasoning.
01:06:19.900 --> 01:06:22.219
Go back and listen again someday.
01:06:22.219 --> 01:06:24.699
You'll find I never denied it.
01:06:24.699 --> 01:06:29.219
It simply was never this wine.
01:06:29.219 --> 01:06:34.420
This wine came from the other end of the Mediterranean, from Spain.
01:06:34.420 --> 01:06:41.139
And some of you, the regulars, know why that word lands heavy on the show.
01:06:41.139 --> 01:06:46.500
You've heard me tell the story of the co-op in Catalan Hills.
01:06:46.500 --> 01:06:54.699
where a Jewish community walked in one day and asked for something Spain had not produced in 500 years.
01:06:54.699 --> 01:07:06.199
Five hundred years from the expulsion until living memory, there was no kosher wine in Spain, because openly in Spain there were no Jews.
01:07:06.199 --> 01:07:10.719
What survived those centuries survived hidden.
01:07:10.719 --> 01:07:21.019
Names folded away, candles lit behind shutters, an identity wrapped in a covering Waiting.
01:07:21.019 --> 01:07:24.619
So think about what you actually witnessed tonight.
01:07:24.619 --> 01:07:40.519
A kosher wine of Spain stood in front of every court the wine world owns wrapped, unlabeled, its name in the dark, and answered every single question truthfully.
01:07:40.519 --> 01:07:50.340
And when the covering finally came off, it was still itself, still standing, still kosher and still Spain.
01:07:50.340 --> 01:07:53.880
We didn't invent that story tonight, friends.
01:07:53.880 --> 01:07:55.079
We just poured it.
01:07:55.079 --> 01:07:58.679
In the second room, the connoisseurs.
01:07:58.679 --> 01:08:03.400
You've seen the label, and something in you said, that wine?
01:08:03.400 --> 01:08:05.320
The Kiddush shelf?
01:08:05.320 --> 01:08:09.000
Because you know this bottle's other secret.
01:08:09.000 --> 01:08:13.239
And for everyone else, it's time to turn the bottle around.
01:08:13.239 --> 01:08:21.979
Back label, small print, one word mevushal, cooked, flash pasteurized.
01:08:21.979 --> 01:08:33.380
In the introduction I told you, the halacha had already ruled out tonight's bottle Centuries ago, and that that ruling was not a compliment.
01:08:33.380 --> 01:08:37.939
Here is that page, the Gemara in tractate Avodah Zarah.
01:08:37.939 --> 01:08:52.560
rules that cooked wine steps outside the intimacy laws of wine, precisely because cooking changes it, diminishes it, in the law's own logic.
01:08:52.560 --> 01:09:08.399
mevushal wine is wine that has lost standing, and on that ancient foundation, a very modern snobbery built its penthouse Serious tasters don't take mevushal seriously.
01:09:08.399 --> 01:09:12.079
Longtime listeners, you know this page.
01:09:12.079 --> 01:09:19.380
We spent a whole evening on it once But here is what I did to you tonight, and I confess it freely.
01:09:19.380 --> 01:09:27.539
In chapter 5, I taught you exactly what flash pasteurization is, the plate exchanger.
01:09:27.539 --> 01:09:32.279
Seconds, not hours, the aromatics untouched.
01:09:32.279 --> 01:09:44.119
You listened to that whole explanation calmly, fairly, nodding along, because you didn't know Whose biography I was reading to you.
01:09:44.119 --> 01:09:46.359
It was this bottle's.
01:09:46.359 --> 01:09:52.680
You just heard it without prejudice, because the prejudice had nothing to grab.
01:09:52.680 --> 01:09:58.000
So understand what the bottle covering was really for.
01:09:58.000 --> 01:10:02.000
It was never protecting the wine from us.
01:10:02.000 --> 01:10:21.819
It was protecting us from ourselves For 50 minutes you couldn't see the price, the shelf, the word on the back label, so you had to do the one thing the wine world finds hardest You had to actually taste the wine.
01:10:21.819 --> 01:10:23.420
And you did.
01:10:23.420 --> 01:10:24.859
And it stood.
01:10:24.859 --> 01:10:26.939
15 out of 20.
01:10:26.939 --> 01:10:30.939
Every point it lost, it lost to ambition.
01:10:30.939 --> 01:10:33.500
Not one to error.
01:10:33.500 --> 01:10:36.220
Good, said London.
01:10:36.220 --> 01:10:38.460
Sound, said Davis.
01:10:38.460 --> 01:10:41.979
Two witnesses, the verdict holds.
01:10:41.979 --> 01:10:45.359
The trial was never about the wine friends.
01:10:45.359 --> 01:10:47.920
The wine was just the witness.
01:10:47.920 --> 01:10:51.520
The defendant was the way we look at labels.
01:10:51.520 --> 01:10:58.640
And tonight, for one hour, blindfolded, we were acquitted.
01:10:58.640 --> 01:11:00.960
Five frameworks tonight.
01:11:00.960 --> 01:11:04.560
Three steps at a crowded table.
01:11:04.560 --> 01:11:07.619
Five S's and their physics.
01:11:07.619 --> 01:11:09.939
A journal that banned poetry.
01:11:09.939 --> 01:11:14.020
A detective's grid older than it knows.
01:11:14.020 --> 01:11:24.140
A cold card from a California laboratory Underneath their different vocabularies, they are all the same technology.
01:11:24.140 --> 01:11:27.500
They are machines for paying attention.
01:11:27.500 --> 01:11:41.579
attention that doesn't care what it's pointed at, that gives the same 30 seconds of honesty to a $20 bottle of Rioja as to a first growth.
01:11:41.579 --> 01:11:48.039
And in our language, sustained attention that doesn't check the price tag first has a name.
01:11:48.039 --> 01:11:50.840
It's called Kavod.
01:11:50.840 --> 01:11:55.880
The scorecard had no box for what happens next.
01:11:55.880 --> 01:11:58.859
So we go where the scorecard can't.
01:11:58.859 --> 01:12:08.779
The Gemara in the tractate Berachot, chapter 3 of our evening, laid out how our tradition honors a cup of wine.
01:12:08.779 --> 01:12:44.020
So the glass, rinsed inside and out, filled generously to the brim, the Gemara likes a full cup received in both hands and settled into the right, raised a hand's breadth off the table, no more, and the eyes, the eyes stay on the cup 2,000 years ago, we wrote a framework that says, before this wine touches your lips, it deserves the whole of your attention.
01:12:44.020 --> 01:12:48.359
Nobody asked what the wine cost.
01:12:48.359 --> 01:12:51.880
Nobody even asked what it scored.
01:12:51.880 --> 01:12:56.520
Nobody asked chas v'shalom whether it's mevushal.
01:12:56.520 --> 01:13:00.500
The cup in your hand is the cup you honor.
01:13:00.500 --> 01:13:04.500
That was always the whole Torah of this episode.
01:13:04.500 --> 01:13:12.658
Everything else was commentary in 20 points or less That's a good wine.
01:13:12.658 --> 01:13:16.738
It was a good wine at $20 an hour ago.
01:13:16.738 --> 01:13:20.578
It's a good wine with its name showing now.
01:13:20.578 --> 01:13:24.020
The only thing that changed tonight was us.
01:13:24.020 --> 01:13:29.920
And the Gemara's last requirement for the cup of blessing.
01:13:29.920 --> 01:13:35.520
Remember it, the cup doesn't stay with the one who blessed it.
01:13:35.520 --> 01:13:40.399
It's sent on around the table to the household.
01:13:40.399 --> 01:13:44.880
So consider this episode, my cup, sent to yours.
01:13:44.880 --> 01:13:47.439
Here's what you do with it.
01:13:47.439 --> 01:13:51.679
This Shabbat, take the humblest bottle in your house.
01:13:51.679 --> 01:14:01.340
The one at the back, the one that never gets asked And before Kiddush, give it the full trial.
01:14:01.340 --> 01:14:11.100
Thirty seconds of looking, a real swirl, six honest words in a notebook Ask it when and where.
01:14:11.100 --> 01:14:13.658
Be stingy with the points.
01:14:13.658 --> 01:14:16.140
And then find me.
01:14:16.140 --> 01:14:22.300
You know where I am, and tell me what it was and what it became.
01:14:22.300 --> 01:14:31.859
And if one quiet evening you want the strangest proof of what we did here tonight, play this episode again, knowing the name.
01:14:31.859 --> 01:14:35.140
Every word will still be true.
01:14:35.140 --> 01:14:42.039
That's the thing about frameworks in wine and in everything else that matters.
01:14:42.039 --> 01:14:45.479
They're how you tell the truth in the dark.
01:14:45.479 --> 01:14:48.119
This has been the Kosher Terroir.
01:14:48.119 --> 01:14:52.039
The defendant is free to go, preferably to your table.
01:14:52.039 --> 01:14:53.159
La Chaim.
01:14:53.159 --> 01:15:09.079
This is Simon Jacob again, your host of today's episode of the Kosher Terroir.
01:15:09.079 --> 01:15:16.359
Please subscribe via your podcast provider to be informed of our new episodes as they are released.
01:15:16.359 --> 01:15:21.760
If you're new to the Kosher Terroir, please check out our many past episodes.