What the rock actually is

The name breaks into three parts:

• Kimmeridgian is from the Late Jurassic, roughly 150 million years ago. It takes its name from Kimmeridge, a village on the Dorset coast where the layer is exposed. Back then much of northern France sat under a warm, shallow sea.

• Calcareous means rich in calcium carbonate, made from discarded seashells over millenia. The Kimmeridgian layer is packed with fossils of tiny comma-shaped oysters.

• Marl is a crumbly mix of clay and limestone. The clay holds water through dry spells; the limestone keeps the soil cool and well drained.

The Champagne most people picture, around Reims and Épernay, sits on chalk. That chalk is Cretaceous, laid down tens of millions of years later. It is soft, white and porous, and the famous cellars are carved into it.

The Côte des Bar has no such chalk. Its slopes are Kimmeridgian marl capped with harder Portlandian limestone. That is the same sequence you find in Chablis, an hour’s drive south, and in Sancerre in the Loire. Geologically, the Côte des Bar is a cousin of Burgundy that happens to make Champagne.

Closer to Chablis than to Épernay

The Côte des Bar sits around 150 km south of Épernay, clustered around two towns, Bar-sur-Seine and Bar-sur-Aube. Chablis is much closer than the heart of Champagne.

That distance matters in a region that spends most years trying to get grapes ripe. Champagne is one of the coldest places on earth to grow wine grapes commercially. A bit further south means a bit more warmth can be captured on the steep, sun-facing slopes of the Aube.

The result is that Pinot Noir ripens more reliably than in the more northern villages of Champagne. The Côte des Bar now accounts for roughly a quarter of all Champagne vineyards.

The village of Les Riceys even makes a still pink wine, Rosé des Riceys, which only works if your Pinot Noir gets properly ripe.

Written out of Champagne

In 1908, the French government drew the first legal boundary around Champagne, and the Aube was on the wrong side of it.

The decree of 17 December 1908 limited Champagne to vineyards in the Marne and Aisne. That left out the Aube, and with it Troyes, the historic capital of the Champagne province. This would be similar to Napa being left out of a Californian designation.

The timing was brutal. Growers across the region had just spent years and fortunes replanting after phylloxera, and had a run of terrible harvests. Some of the big houses were increasing their volumes with cheaper grapes from outside the designated zone, including from the Aube, and everyone was feeling cheated. The Northern growers felt the competition lowering the prices they could command, and the more Southerly growsers felt they should be given the respect and recognition of being a part of the Champagne region.

In 1911 there was literal riots. Northern growers were blocking shipments of grapes from outside the region, leading to a new law barring the use of grapes not grown in Champagne. In the spring, growers protested the continuing exclusion of the Aube region from Champagne, saying:

Champenois nous fûmes, Champenois nous resterons

”Champenois we were, Champenois we will remain”

On the other side, the growers in Champagne protest the inclusion of the Aube, and they start attacking the merchant houses importing those grapes. These protests and counter protests continue until a compromise is reached giving the Aube recognition as a second zone. Its not until 1927 that a new law formally recognizes the region as part of Champagne.

Paid by the percentage

Getting back into Champagne did not mean getting paid like Champagne.

For most of the twentieth century, grape prices ran on the échelle des crus, a ladder that rated every village by percentage. Each year a benchmark price per kilo was set, and growers were paid their village’s share of it:

• Grand cru villages would receive 100%

• Premier cru villages receive 90–99%

• Everyone else would see 80–89%

The Côte des Bar has no grand cru or premier cru villages, so its growers sat at the bottom of the ladder, selling some of the region’s ripest Pinot Noir at a discount.

The percentage system was dropped as a pricing tool in 2010, and grape prices are now negotiated more freely. The cru labels survive, though, and the Côte des Bar still has none. A wave of grower Champagne from the Aube has since made the case on its own labels.

Different rock, different climate, different history

The rock says Burgundy. The climate says reliably ripened Pinot Noir. The law said “not Champagne” then “fine, Champagne”. The price ladder kept it at a discount for decades after that.

Next time a Champagne label says Aube, Les Riceys or Côte des Bar, you are drinking from the southern edge of a very old sea, and from the losing side of a very long argument that turned out to be right.

Sources

• Champagne Riots (Wikipedia)

• When the Right to Bottle Champagne Detonated Riots (The Daily Beast)

• The Champagne Riots (VinePair)

• Wine Folly on the Côte des Bar

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The colour was a dark gold (strike one), the nose was hazelnuts (strike two), which could have been forgiven if it had the rich, long lasting palate experience like a sherry or Jura Vin Jaune (this one was sour from the get-go — strike three).

Don’t get me wrong — I love an oxidative style. Classic white Rioja made from Viura is one of my favourites because it lends itself beautifully to that style. It’s gold and nutty, but the finish is as delightful as the style is deliberate.

Not so with accidental oxidation. It’s hard to say what went wrong with this particular bottle, but knowing this producer, I have pretty high confidence that the fault is limited to this particular bottle. I examined the cork and couldn’t find any obvious flaws or mold. It was stored in the same conditions as all the other wines from that year living in my cellar. So what went wrong?

Not enough Sulfur Dioxide? Oxygen is very destructive to the flavour and aroma compounds that make wine taste and smell fresh and fruity. Wine makers add trace amounts of sulfur dioxide throughout the winemaking process because sulfur dioxide can effectively remove the harmful effects of oxygen by binding it tightly.

Maybe this particular bottle didn’t get its correct dose of SO2 before it was sealed up, leaving the free O2 molecules to wreak havoc.

No inert gas flush? Before bottling, winemakers will typically flush the bottle with an inert gas in order to remove more of the free oxygen available to prematurely age the wine. Could something have happened on the bottling line to skip one bottle during this protective treatment?

Incorrect storage conditions? Corks need humidity in order to maintain a good seal on the bottle. I don’t have a record of when this bottle entered my cellar, and I like to think that we treat every bottle with respect. Maybe this bottle was stored upright a little too long, causing the cork to dry out and allowing more oxygen to enter the bottle while it was sitting.

Bad cork? Natural cork can introduce a chemical compound (Trichloroanisole, or TCA) to a wine through a reaction with natural fungus. The impact on white wine is similar to red: a wet cardboard smell, and a lack of fruity or floral flavors. Not really the case with what seems to be premature oxidation, but we can’t rule it out entirely. Even a technically sound cork varies bottle to bottle in how much oxygen it lets through over time, so two bottles from the same case, stored identically, can age at different rates.

It could be any, all, or none of these reasons. Not even the wine makers could know what might go wrong with any single bottle. I do know that wine makers would prefer to know — and to remedy — if you receive a bottle that doesn’t carry the quality they expect to deliver. We’ve previously (and sheepishly) brought a bottle back to a winery when it was obviously corked and they were so grateful we did. Wine makers have little control over the experience of their product once it leaves their facility, so knowing if/when their wine is not meeting their quality standard can help them make different decisions for the future.

We aren’t bringing this bottle back, but I know they would gladly replace it if we did. We have collected a good amount of wine over the last decade, and we’ve been lucky to have encountered problems like these so rarely. Chalk it up to experience with the complexity of enjoying and collecting wine.

Take, for example, Tempranillo.

My WSET Level 2 textbook describes Tempanillo as a medium- to full-bodied wine, with medium acidity, medium tannins, and with red and black fruit flavors. Technically accurate, yes, but not particularly interesting or even unique – the same notes apply to many Merlots.

Nick Jackson’s book Beyond Flavor, written to help people become better tasters, says that the defining characteristic of Tempranillo is chalky tannins you feel in your cheeks. I know this information will be very helpful for my tasting exams, and it’s more useful than “medium tannins,” but I’m still trying to figure out what it means.

On the complete other end of the spectrum, I once had the pleasure of taking an online class on wine and culture from a well-known industry leader who described Tempranillo as tasting like what it feels like to be at a bull fight on a hot day in Spain, surrounded by sweaty men oozing with testosterone. Even as a queer woman who takes no pleasure in animal cruelty, I gotta say, that’s electric! Memorable! I want to taste what’s in that glass!

To me Tempranillo tastes like my first wine trip to Spain, especially our visit to Bodega Pago de Carraovejas in Ribera del Duero. We took a tour, and then sat down to an incredible lunch with wine pairings. When we found out that there was a wine we couldn’t taste because 100% of the production went to a restaurant in nearby Segovia, we rerouted our trip to visit that restaurant. I’ve been to Spain a couple of times, and Tempranillo tastes like everything I love about it – the landscape, the architecture, the history, the people, the food – it tastes like happiness. If I had to pick a last-meal wine, I’d take a Tempranillo from Ribera del Duero.

I study wine, and I’m working on the technical vocabulary and learning to identify what’s in my glass. But I try not to lose sight of the other half (or, honestly, the other 90%) of what I like about wine – the pleasure, the emotional charge, the ability for it to transport you to a very specific place and time. Almost any wine can taste incredible in the right company. And almost any wine is hard to enjoy – hard even to taste – if you’re stressed, exhausted, or down. No amount of technical excellence in the bottle can make up for that.

I work at a small urban winery in Portland, OR, and we get a wildly mixed crowd. Occasionally, people want the technical version: the production process, which vineyards we source from, what kind of oak, etc. Or to talk tasting notes: fruit, tannin, acid. But most just want to enjoy a good glass of wine in a comfortable environment. My job is to figure out which version of the conversation each person wants. Usually, if someone asks for a recommendation, I point to my favorite Pinot Noir and tell them it tastes like curling up in front of a fireplace with a good book. It’s not the kind of description you’ll find in any textbook, but it’s true.

The first Valpolicella Ripasso I remember drinking was many years ago in Montreal, when someone brought a bottle to our monthly poker game. At that point, my wine knowledge barely extended beyond “red or white.” I don’t remember exactly what Valpolicella Ripasso it was, but I liked it, and that was about as far as my analysis went.

Last week, for Wine Wednesday (which is just what Katie and I call opening a bottle midweek and working through the WSET Systematic Approach to Tasting together), we opened a bottle of 2019 Terre Molin Valpolicella Ripasso Superiore.

Here are my notes:

• Appearance: Medium ruby trending to garnet – still bright, but starting to have a brick color

• Nose: Pronounced intensity (Katie thought medium+, but I could smell it across the table)

• Palate: Dry, medium+ acid, medium- tannin, medium alcohol (it’s actually high: 14%), medium body, medium flavor intensity, medium+ finish

• Aroma / flavor characteristics: Cinnamon, star anise, black cherry (nose), red cherry (palate), cooked strawberry, prune, stewed fruit, white pepper, a touch of tobacco, something a bit vegetal (Katie suggested oregano). Neither of us detected much oak (while this type of wine is usually aged in oak, the importer notes I found for this particular bottling only mention steel and concrete).

• Conclusions: Good quality. You don’t have to drink it now, but I wouldn’t hold it much longer – 7 years is smack in the middle of the drinking window for this style. Still bursting with fruit.

So, what is Valpolicella Ripasso?

I’ve heard it called a “junior Amarone” or “baby Amarone.” I’d happily drink Amarone all the time, but it’s too expensive, so this is a good budget-friendly alternative.

Valpolicella Ripasso DOC is in the Veneto region of Northern Italy. The DOC was established in 2009 with production rules taking effect in 2010. The principal red grape varieties are Corvina and Covinone, along with Rondinella and, optionally, Molinara.

Ripasso means “re-passed,” and that’s exactly what happens. To make Ripasso, finished Valpolicella wine is combined with the drained, unpressed grape skins (called pomace, or marc) left over from making Amarone della Valpolicella or Recioto della Valpolicella. This triggers a secondary fermentation, which must last a minimum of 3 days. This process adds flavor complexity, richer color, and a bit more alcohol. The wine then must be aged for at least a year, often in oak barrels, before release. For the Superiore designation, the alcohol level must be at least 13%.

This all works because Amarone is made using the appassimento process. In this method, the grape clusters are harvested and then dried inside on racks or mats for a few months, losing water weight and concentrating everything else: sugar, acid, and flavor. Even after fermentation, the leftover skins still contain a high concentration of unfermented sugars and active wild yeasts, which kicks off the second, shorter fermentation of the base Valpolicella. So, basically, to get a Valpolicella Ripasso, you have to first make a regular Valpolicella and an Amarone. All that work for a wine you can typically get for under $30!

If you’ve never tried one, Valpolicella Ripasso is a delightful entry point to Italian reds. It’s rich enough to feel like an occasion, but priced right for a random Wednesday (the bottle we drank runs about $20). If it showed up at poker night these days, I’d still enjoy it just as much. But I’d be insufferable, explaining the whole process to the table while everyone waits for me to hurry up and deal the cards.

Why?

Here’s the context: There were four of us. We had a bottle of Champagne from Paul Déthune, one of my favorite producers, then opened (but didn’t finish) a Rhône blend from TOP, a sparkling Nero d’Avola from Day Wines, and a Sauvignon Blanc from a home winemaker here in Oregon. With dessert, we had a 2017 Kika, which is a late-harvest Chenin Blanc from South Africa. The wines were delicious, and I’m already looking forward to revisiting the bottles. But I don’t want to revisit the headache!

So what caused it?

It wasn’t overconsumption or dehydration

With the exception of the Champagne, we just had small pours. I estimate that I had about a half bottle total of still and sparkling wine combined, plus an ounce or two of the dessert wine. This is not an unusual amount of wine for me, as Katie and I often share a bottle with dinner. I’m also careful about hydration, and I drank water all night. So, my experience doesn’t line up with the most common cause of wine headaches: dehydration and acetaldehyde buildup from overdrinking. I also didn’t have any other hangover symptoms.

Not sulfites

There is a long-standing misconception that sulfites cause wine headaches, especially for red wines. It’s part of what drives the natural wine movement to tout “no added sulfites” on the label. But the sulfite-headache link is largely a myth.

All wine contains some level of sulfites because they’re a natural byproduct of fermentation. Most winemakers also add sulfur dioxide (SO2) to wine at various stages because it protects the wine, acting as an antioxidant as well as an antimicrobial agent.

The legal limit for sulfites in the US is 350 mg/L, and most wines come in way below that. Reds usually contain around 50-75 mg/L, whites around 100 mg/L. Many processed foods, like dried fruit, contain significantly more sulfites than wine. Note that whites generally contain more sulfites than reds, which undercuts the idea that red wine headaches come from sulfites. Sweet wines can have even higher levels, but still well below the legal limit.

Any wine over 10 mg/L must be labeled “contains sulfites,” because a small percentage of people with asthma do have a genuine sulfite sensitivity. But their symptoms are usually respiratory, not headaches. Also, I don’t fall into this group.

Maybe the opposite – not enough sulfites?

A few years ago, Master of Wine Sophie Parker-Thomson set off a storm when she published research showing that a lack of sulfites in wine might actually be a bigger problem. She found that biogenic amines, which include the compound histamine, may be to blame for the symptoms associated with wine intolerance, including headaches.

Biogenic amines are produced by bacteria that are highly sensitive to SO2. So, a wine made without SO2 is actually the ideal environment for them. Parker-Thomson found that adding a small amount of SO2 at the right time – as little as 30 ppm before alcoholic fermentation – kept biogenic amine levels very low. But wine made with no sulfites, or with sulfites added only later in the process, showed high enough levels to trigger reactions in some people.

Could I be one of them? I don’t think so. I’ve consumed plenty of “no sulfite added” wines with no issues.

A strange pattern

There is one wine in my history that’s given me an immediate, next-day-lasting headache, more than once, from just a small pour.

It was a Ridge 2013 Lytton Springs Syrah. The first time I had it was at the winery. It was our first tasting of the day, so definitely not an overconsumption problem, and the headache came on almost immediately. It happened again when a friend opened a bottle she had purchased the day we tasted at the winery. I haven’t dared try another vintage, because I don’t want to lose my whole day to a headache. It’s a shame, because the wine is delicious, and I have no trouble with other Ridge wines.

Ridge uses minimal intervention but still adds sulfur. According to the tech sheet, there was 30 ppm added at crush and 130 ppm over the course of aging. Based on Parker-Thomson’s research, this should have been enough to keep the biogenic amines at an inconsequential level, even if I did have a sensitivity to them. Katie is convinced that there’s something about this specific vineyard that disagrees with me.

Other possible culprits

Tannins (found in grape skins, seeds, and stems) are sometimes blamed for headaches, though the evidence is mostly anecdata. In any case, I drink enough red wine to say with confidence that this is not my problem.

Quercetin is a phenolic compound in grape skins that’s more prevalent in sun-exposed red grapes. There is some evidence that quercetin disrupts the body’s metabolism of alcohol, which can cause headaches. But, again, I drink plenty of red wine without issue, so I don’t think this explains it.

Chemicals and additives also seem unlikely. None of these were the kind of lower-quality wine where that’s typically a concern. The one wildcard is the homemade Sauvi B, but it was made by a wine lover who has a fairly sophisticated setup, so I doubt there were any strange additives.

Sugar? In the cocktail world, a lot of people report worse headaches from sugary drinks. But this is mostly because the sweetness makes the drinks go down so easily you lose track of how much alcohol you’re actually consuming. But sugar, like alcohol, can also be dehydrating. I didn’t feel like I had a ton of sugar last night, but I did indulge in a rather large slice of my freshly homemade lemon meringue pie.

So maybe I just didn’t drink enough water after all.

Saint-Romain sits a little apart from Burgundy’s famous villages. It’s higher up the slope than neighbors like Meursault and Puligny-Montrachet, so it is cooler and a bit overlooked. This bottle was the 2022 Vieilles Vignes, and as luck would have it, they printed their tech sheet on the back:

• ~2K ha of vines at a density of 10k vines/Ha

• 161-49C root stock of 55 year old vines

• 376m in elevation at a 10% grade (!) on clay/limestone soil

• 100% Malo-lactic conversion

• it was picked on a Fruit day (for the biodynamic nerds among us)

In the glass it was pale lemon, with aromas of lemon, cream, yogurt, hay, toasted biscuit, and honeysuckle. On the palate: candied lemon peel, marmalade, pear, yellow apple, all riding on acid that stayed high straight through a medium-plus finish. By WSET standards it landed as “very good” quality, with real years still ahead of it.

The back label mentioned the wine had gone through 100% malolactic conversion. Everything I associate with full malolactic conversion (thick, buttery, movie-theater-popcorn flavor) was nowhere in this glass. The wine was racy. Creamy around the edges, sure, but nowhere near a butter bomb.

What malolactic conversion actually is

If the term is new to you: malolactic conversion (often called malolactic fermentation, even though it’s bacteria at work rather than yeast) turns malic acid into lactic acid. A YouTube explainer I found puts it about as simply as I’ve heard it: think about biting into a green apple, sharp and electric. Now think about a spoonful of Greek yogurt, tangy but soft and round. That’s the shift from malic to lactic. Bacteria, usually a strain called Oenococcus oeni, eat the sharper acid and convert it into the softer one, and along the way they produce compounds that add body and a creamier mouthfeel.

They also produce diacetyl.

Diacetyl, and why full conversion doesn’t mean full butter

Diacetyl is the compound behind that classic buttery Chardonnay smell. According to MasterClass, at low concentrations it reads as nutty or toasted. At higher concentrations, it becomes that unmistakable butter-popcorn character. How much of it ends up in the glass depends on citric acid levels, sulfur dioxide, temperature, oxygen exposure, and pH during the process.

I’d always assumed butter was the destination, the final form a wine reaches once malolactic conversion finishes. A winemaker actually has to intervene in order to retain the buttery character of a Rombaur because diacetyl is a mid-state. If the process runs its full course, the same bacteria that produced the diacetyl start consuming it again, converting it into other, less opinionated compounds. Stop the process early, right at the peak of diacetyl production, and you lock the butter in. Let it run all the way through, and the butter can fade right back out.

A second lever: sequential versus simultaneous fermentation

Most wine goes through alcoholic fermentation first, yeast converting sugar into alcohol, and only afterward gets malolactic conversion. That’s the sequential order. Winemakers can also choose to run both processes at the same time.

According to Oregon State University, doing them simultaneously can mean less diacetyl overall. Actively fermenting yeast create a reductive environment, and any diacetyl the bacteria produce gets converted quickly into acetoin and 2,3-butanediol, both far quieter than diacetyl on the nose. But simultaneous fermentation carries real risk. If the alcoholic fermentation gets stuck before finishing, the bacteria are left with leftover sugar, and instead of a clean conversion they can produce volatile acidity, the vinegary fault no winemaker wants in a finished wine.

If the goal is maximum butter, ferment sequentially with a high-diacetyl-producing strain bacteria and stop the process during MLC. If the goal is to avoid butter, co-ferment with a low-diacetyl strain of bacteria, or let the MLC sit for 10-14 days after it has completed the conversion of malic acid to lactic acid (another nerdy article from the experts at buttery chardonnay, Kendell Jackson). I have no idea which approach the producer of this particular Saint-Romain used, but it was definitely a good education that “100% MLC” on a back label is NOT shorthand for butter bomb. There is a whole host of decisions throughout the process that can result in very different experiences in the glass.

Rombauer, for contrast

If you want to taste the other end of this spectrum, pour a glass of Rombauer Chardonnay. It’s one of the most recognizable butter bombs in California Chardonnay: thick, rich, all vanilla and popcorn. Both wines, as far as their labels go, went through malolactic conversion. What happened to that conversion afterward is where they part ways completely.

Why Burgundy tends to land here

Chardonnay might be the most malleable grape in the world. Compare it to something aromatic like Riesling, which tends to announce itself no matter where it’s grown or how it’s handled. Chardonnay takes on the fingerprint of the winemaker and the place more than almost any other variety, oaked or unoaked, buttery or racy, tropical or flinty, all from the same grape. That’s how the same “100% MLC” claim can describe both a Saint-Romain and a Rombauer.

Burgundy has its own tendencies, too. Cooler growing conditions mean higher natural acidity to start with, which gives a wine like this Saint-Romain a strong acid backbone even after malolactic conversion softens it. And the region’s winemaking culture, historically lighter on heavy new oak (this one was only 10%), tends to let that acidity keep leading. None of this is a hard rule. But it’s a part of why French-style Chardonnay so often reads differently than New World, even when both wines technically did the same thing in the cellar.

The wine, and the company

I’m partway through my WSET Diploma, which means most of my tasting these days comes with a notebook and a list of questions I’m supposed to be answering. But some of my favorite wine moments lately haven’t been the formal ones. They’ve been nights like this Wednesday, sitting across from Krista with a bottle we were both genuinely curious about, going down a research rabbit hole together because one label claim didn’t match what was in the glass. Having someone who wants to get that nerdy about a bottle of wine with you is pretty wonderful.

This Saint-Romain still has years ahead of it. I’m already looking forward to hearing what its like next time.

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The bottle was a Jacques Selosse Champagne Grand Cru Extra-brut, “Le Mesnil-sur-Oger Les Carelles,” from the producer’s celebrated Lieux-dits series. It is a blanc de blancs (100% Chardonnay) from one of the most revered Grand Cru villages in all of Champagne.

Who is Jacques Selosse?

Anselme Selosse is, depending on who you ask, either a genius or a provocateur. Probably both. He founded his eponymous house in Avize and proceeded to do something genuinely radical in Champagne: he made wine like a Burgundian. That means oxidative handling, barrel aging, extended lees contact, and deep attention to terroir at a time when most Champagne was being made to be consistent, not singular. He treated Chardonnay the way it gets treated in Chablis or Meursault, then put bubbles in it. These wines are not distributed outside France, so if you are lucky enough to be there (and have the funds), get on the hunt.

What is a Lieux-dits?

Lieux-dits is a French term for “named places.” They are singular parcels that carry a traditional name reflecting something distinctive about them: a microclimate, a topographic feature, a piece of local history. Selosse’s Lieux-dits series is a collection of single-vineyard expressions from some of Champagne’s most prized Grand Cru sites. Les Carelles sits in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, a village so famous for its Chardonnay that the name alone commands reverence. The chalk is deep here.

Four wines in one sip

I typically find blanc de blancs to be linear. Beautiful, bright, precise, all acid and citrus. My heart belongs to white Burgundy, and when it comes to Champagne I usually reach for a blend or something Pinot Noir-dominant, because I want complexity and I want the red fruit that comes with it. I was not expecting this.

The color was the first signal: a rich, deep golden yellow, far from the pale straw of most blanc de blancs. The bubbles were impossibly small, more texture than effervescence. And from the very first sip, the wine kept changing.

Violet Beauregarde’s three-course-dinner chewing gum in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory moves through tomato soup, roast beef, and blueberry pie in a single piece of gum. This wine did something similar, minus the turning violet. One sip moved through four distinct experiences.

The front was Basque cider: nutty, oxidative, slightly funky, not like any Champagne I’d had before. Then the wine’s effervescence asserted itself: bright and acid-driven, all energy. Then something stranger and more beautiful: fuzzy peach candy, the kind from a corner store, with tart acid rising alongside it. And finally, on the finish, a long golden wave of white Burgundy: round, creamy, ripe yellow apple, chalk minerality arriving last and leaving a lasting impression.

The acid never disappeared. It moved, built up through the middle of each sip and then settled gently at the finish, like a wave that comes in fast and recedes slow. I have never experienced acid behaving quite like that before.

This is what Selosse’s oxidative style produces: layers. The nutty quality that comes from oxygen exposure is there, but it doesn’t dominate -- it creates depth. It gives the wine somewhere to go.

The Burgundy connection

A great Meursault (like the one that blew my mind, became my new obsession, and changed my understanding of excellent Chardonnay) is buttery without being heavy, round without losing its spine, long on the finish, and alive with yellow apple and mineral. Selosse took all of that and added bubbles and chalk and four hundred years of Champagne terroir.

Our cousins are the ones who first introduced me to the Meursault that changed my life. They described it as liquid gold, and they were right. This was the second time they handed me a glass and changed something. We were on our way to a beautiful French dinner that evening. But the stop I will always remember most is their kitchen.

Some bottles are inseparable from the people who open them. This is one of those bottles. Thanks, J&L ❤️

We were looking for differences in marketing strategy. Could we identify white labeled or exclusive wines? What ways might a wine differentiate itself from its shelf-mates? It was quite an education. Snoop Dogg is now the label model for 19 Crimes, a departure from their classic mugshots of people convicted of crimes and sentenced to transportation to Australia. We found bottles of prosecco textured with bubbles, and bottles with mildly suggested profanity. We found a 4L jug of Carlo Rossi Burgundy priced at $19.99. Fancy.

And then we found Bay Bridge Chardonnay at Fred Meyer for $3.99.

I picked it up, because absolutely we need to know what a four dollar bottle of chardonnay tastes like. The bottle felt really weird in my hand. I’ve held so many bottles of wine, and this one felt less stable, like I was going to drop it because my hands didn’t know how to hold it. The neck was so short it made me nervous. I grabbed another bottle to compare and found that the neck on the Bay Bridge was at least an inch shorter.

Also, there was no punt. That indentation at the bottom of most wine bottles was originally there to hide the edge of the glassmaking process back when bottles were hand-blown. It also stabilized the bottle. For sparkling wines, the concave base distributes CO₂ pressure more evenly. For still wine, though, it’s pure tradition and signaling. The Bay Bridge bottle had an entirely flat bottom.

I was skeptical that it actually contained the 750mL it claimed. When I got home, I measured it and found that it did!

Bay Bridge is produced by The Wine Group exclusively for Kroger. According to their website, The Wine Group is the 2nd largest supplier of wine in the world. It’s non-vintage. The cork is about a third shorter than typical corks. Everything about this bottle screamed cost optimization, and I got curious. What must their margins be? How can anyone make money off a $4 bottle of wine? The choice of smaller bottles has to be part of the answer.

Wine bottles cost anywhere from $0.50 to $3.00 each, depending on weight and features. Lightweight bottles sit at the low end of that range. Less glass means cheaper to manufacture and cheaper to transport. The stubby shape that made Bay Bridge feel so wrong in my hand delivers about 10% better pallet efficiency and roughly 14% less weight compared to a standard long neck bottle. You can fit more bottles per truck. You spend less on shipping.

Once The Wine Group created the custom mold for this stubby, flat-bottomed bottle, it would be easy for their manufacturer to produce at scale. Economies of scale matter here. The Wine Group’s sheer volume gives them leverage. I’d estimate their cost per bottle lands somewhere between $1 and $2. Selling at $3.99 means they’re making their money on quantity.

The consumer gets a bottle of wine at a lower price because of the choices to save on glass. It’s also better for the environment. You can ship more wine, more cheaply, because it doesn’t weigh as much. Reducing bottle weight from 500g to 300g saves around 30% of the CO₂ spent on packaging and transport.

When I opened the Bay Bridge, the wine jumped out of the bottle and all over my hand. Maybe a consequence of the short neck? It was pretty ordinary tasting, and the alcohol was the first thing I detected. It wasn’t a nose I was lingering over. That being said, if I was putting ice cubes or fruit in it, or turning it into a spritz or a slushie, this wine would deliver.

For comparison, we’d just opened a bottle of Russian River 2017 Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir from the Balistreri Family Vineyard at home, and that is a serious bottle. Thick glass, deep punt, green tint to protect the wine, real cork, wax seal. This is packaging that represents gravitas and reflects the quality of the wine inside. You hold it differently. You open it with intention. The weight in your hand tells you something before you ever pour a glass.

Packaging is definitely a channel of communication, and its pretty much the only channel when you are browsing in a grocery store. The Bay Bridge bottle is honest about being value wine. The Russian River bottle signals serious, age-worthy, premium quality. We saw other strategies too. Carlo Rossi’s 4L jug for $19.99 is a volume play (family size?).

Then there’s Gigi’s Garden Sauvignon Blanc, a 1L bottle with screen printing (an expensive process) and a shelf talker that says “33% more wine than your typical 750mL bottle. Made to Share.” Premium positioning with a bigger format and eye-catching design.

I think I’ve spent most of my wine life in the DTC world because I really love to hear the stories of the labor that goes into the glass. I want to hear about the impact of weather that year, what challenges they faced, and how those challenges are expressed in the wine. I love tasting wine and thinking about what was going on in the world when those grapes were growing. This is a very different wine buying experience. Standing in the Fred Meyer wine aisle, holding a stubby bottle of non-vintage wine, I realized that there is a whole world of decisions that go into a bottle of wine that are beyond the type of grape, the timing of harvest, or the selection of maturation vessel. Packaging is a big part of the story and how the winemaker wants you to experience their product.

I’m not going to change my buying decisions based on this information. But I am more conscious now of the business of wine, the choices that get made long before the wine hits the shelf. The Bay Bridge bottle taught me that even a $4 bottle of chardonnay has a story. It’s just a different kind of story. One about logistics and scale and optimization and getting wine to people who want it at a price they can afford.

Its like a prism: light enters, refracts, and you see so much more than you did before. I had four recent experiences that each added new ways to appreciate the wine in my glass.

Winderlea: The Cellar Door

Winderlea is a small, estate-focused winery in the Dundee Hills AVA of the Willamette Valley. When you arrive, someone greets you at the door with a glass of Pinot Gris and walks you out to a balcony overlooking the valley. It was a five-mountain day (clear enough to see Hood, St. Helens, Adams, Rainier, and Jefferson all at once) and vineyards stretched in every direction below us.

We were guests of a member, so enjoyed some extensions of the usual flight: two whites, six single-vineyard Pinot Noirs, a bonus sparkling, and two library pours. Two industry veterans worked our table, and the conversation moved between barrel programs, vintage conditions, and gossip -- including a story about a producer in the valley whose flagship wine draws from a single vineyard they’ve never named publicly. The question mark vineyard. Two people at our table had been told two different provenance stories by the same winemaker – the mystery deepens.

The library wines were on point. A 2018 and a 2010 Crawford Beck -- same single vineyard but a few lightyears apart. The 2018 was concentrated dark fruit and barrel spice, still integrating. The 2010 had arrived somewhere quieter: forest floor, tertiary complexity, a little vanilla on the finish. Ready and beautiful.

The cellar door experience exists to tell this story. You’re not just tasting wine -- you’re being shown what the wine becomes, what the land produces over time, why it’s worth caring about. Our friend at that table has been a member for more than a decade. That’s what a great cellar door does: it converts attention into loyalty, and it earns it every time we open a bottle together.

AtoZ Wineworks: The Scale Play

A couple of months earlier, I toured the AtoZ Wineworks facility (one of Oregon’s largest producers) and got an education in what happens when you optimize for volume. Trucks drive in, dump fruit directly into the crush, which is then piped into processing. No sorting of any kind. Massive climate-controlled tanks handle storage and blending. Multiple label programs run from the same building. Oak treatment at the mass-market tier comes from staves and chips; the premium tier gets some proportion of actual barrel time. Every decision is calibrated to produce quality Oregon Pinot Noir for under $20 and get it onto supermarket shelves reliably, consistently, at scale.

Then we sat down to taste two wines. An AtoZ and a Rex Hill -- their premium label made at the same production facility with slightly different choices at key points in the process. I was delighted by both. Not because they were of equal complexity, but because they were each doing exactly what they were designed to do. The AtoZ was clean, fruity, consistent, and built for a consumer who wants reliable Oregon Pinot without thinking too deeply about it. The Rex Hill showed more vintage character, more barrel integration, more to linger over. Same building, different intentions, and both highly successful.

AtoZ doesn’t need you to visit. They have a tasting room, but it’s attached to Rex Hill -- the brand that benefits from a cellar door experience. AtoZ needs the supermarket to reorder. That clarity about what each label is for, and who it’s talking to, is its own kind of craft.

Hearth and Vine: Margins in Motion

Hearth and Vine in downtown Portland advertises fifty wines by the glass, twenty-two on tap. The tap program covers real geographic range: local urban wineries, Willamette Valley, Columbia Valley, Napa, Sonoma, Lodi -- recognizable labels from producers who offer multiple tiers under the same name. A Coravin program lets premium bottles appear by the glass, which is smart risk management: high-end optics without the commitment of an open bottle that might not move. The room is pleasant and busy.

Understanding the business model changed how I experienced the list. This is a program built for the middle: consumers who want variety and accessibility, who respond to fifty wines by the glass as a signal of sophistication, without necessarily wanting deep engagement with what’s in the glass. The tap program keeps margins healthy. The Coravin program keeps the list aspirational. The geographic breadth keeps it approachable. Every element is doing a job.

I only found two wines I wanted to try, but I left admiring the strategy. It is well-executed for the market it’s trying to tap. Another facet to the prism.

L’Echelles: The Single Page

L’Echelles is destination dining. The wine list is a single page on the back of the menu, curated to complement the food rather than demonstrate range. A shorter list means faster inventory turns, lower by-the-glass waste, and a staff that actually knows every bottle well enough to make a real recommendation.

We were eating family style: burrata, rapini, pork schnitzel, rich and textured dishes that wanted something acidic to cut the fat. Our server, likely not a sommelier, but clearly knows his wines and this list deeply, offered two options without hesitation: a Chenin Blanc from the Loire Valley or a Chardonnay from Chablis. Two high-acid whites, completely different flavor profiles, both defensible for what was on the table.

We went with the Chenin Blanc. It was beautiful on its own, and with the schnitzel it was the perfect choice: the acidity balanced the richness without fighting it, and I didn’t leave the table feeling heavy. It was doing exactly what wine is supposed to do at a table. And then it was gone. Last bottle. We couldn’t order another. That’s another facet that makes me appreciate what’s in my glass right now – this wine exists at this point in its life, at this point in my life, with this food, and this company. Even if there had been another bottle, the experience of that one would have been different (we’d have been on dessert!). Wine is truly time based art, and it is lovely to anchor remarkable and memorable moments on what is in the glass.

The Prism

My journey to truly enjoying Pinot Noir started on a cruise ship, with a California Pinot so bad we wrote off the entire state. A friend from California took this personally and took us to Sonoma to change our minds. We found beautiful wines. One in particular, Papapietro, stood out because it reminded us of Oregon. That’s where I started to understand what Pinot Noir could actually do: express everything -- the soil, the season, the hundred decisions made under uncertainty in the vineyard and the winery. How much whole cluster? How much new oak? In Oregon, the forest floor. In California, the cherry cola. Same grape, different expressions.

I recently heard a local grower-producer say that 2024 was the first vintage where they could pick their Pinot Noir at the perfect moment for both phenolic and sugar ripeness. Every other year, they’re optimizing for one or the other based on what the weather gives them. Every vintage is a negotiation. Every bottle is the result of decisions made without knowing how it ends.

That’s true at every scale. At Winderlea, making a few hundred cases of single-vineyard Pinot, and at AtoZ, processing thousands of tons of fruit. The cellar door and the supermarket shelf and the tap line and the single-page list are all just different answers to the same question: how do you get something beautiful from the vineyard to the person who wants it?

The more I understand the myriad ways you can answer that question, the more the glass refracts. I can’t recommend studying wine highly enough. Every bottle that makes it to a table is the end of a long, complex, and risky journey, and tasting it with that knowledge makes it richer for me every time.

So why does Rioja age so well in the first place?

Rioja, in northern Spain, is built for this. The region sits in a kind of geographic sweet spot — a confluence of Atlantic, Mediterranean, and continental influences — that gives its wines both structure and freshness. The main grape, Tempranillo, has the tannin backbone to survive long aging. But the real secret weapon is the oak.

Back in 1782, a winemaker named Don Manuel Quintano traveled to Bordeaux and came home with a revelation: aging wine in small oak barrels was what made French wines travel and age so well. His neighbors promptly created regulations to make the practice unprofitable. Decades later, a Peruvian named Luciano Murrieta tried again — same Bordeaux pilgrimage, same conclusion — but this time used cheaper American oak instead of French. The result was widely praised, and a tradition was born. (For more on Rioja history, check out this link to Wickham Wine)

American oak became the signature of classic Rioja largely by accident and economics. When phylloxera devastated Bordeaux in the late 1800s, French winemakers headed south to Rioja, bringing their expertise but unable to source French barrels. American oak was cheaper and more available. Because American oak is sawn rather than split, and kiln-dried rather than air-dried, it concentrates lactones that give wine those creamy vanilla notes Rioja became famous for. Vanilla, coconut, a little dill, leather.

The reason this 1987 Crianza isn’t overwhelmed by oak? Many traditional Rioja producers rarely buy new barrels, preferring to repair decades-old American oak already in their possession. Old barrels have already given their biggest flavors to previous wines. They become gentle. They oxygenate slowly. The wood steps back and lets the fruit do its thing — which, after 38 years, means cooked, complex, and still alive.

About that vintage.

1987 was not an easy year to be a grape in Rioja. After an extremely cold winter and a frost in May, the summer turned brutally hot, with August temperatures hitting 40°C and total rainfall for the whole growing season barely exceeding half the average. Then, right when harvest was about to start in September, it rained. Of course it did.

The growers who waited it out were rewarded — fully ripe, healthy grapes. The highest and latest-picked vineyards did best, which is why Rioja Alavesa came out ahead that year. Patience, as always, was the deciding factor.

A brief time capsule.

These grapes were ripening on the vine while Ronald Reagan was in his second term as president. A gallon of gas cost 90 cents. A gallon of milk ran about $1.07. A bottle of wine like this one would have set you back maybe $6–8 at a decent wine shop.

At the Grammys that February, Paul Simon won Album of the Year for Graceland. At the Oscars in March, Oliver Stone’s Platoon swept four awards including Best Picture. And on Broadway, Les Misérables was packing the house and took home the Grammy for Best Musical Theater Cast Album. It was a good year for things that took a long time to make and rewarded patience.

I was ten years old when those grapes were ripening. My family didn’t drink a lot of wine when I was growing up. For Christmas, my parents would splurge on a box of red and a box of white, expecting it to last through the New Year. It would take me 20 years to appreciate a glass of wine, and another 10 to fall in love with tempranillo. Nearly four decades later, the wine is still going. That’s not nothing.

Castillo de Sajazarra Rioja Crianza 1987. Cooked cherry, tobacco, quiet oak, and a whole lot of time.

Light strike: The Champagne that smelled like cheese

Aromas: dirty drain, stinky cheese, cooked cabbage

Last year, we traveled to Champagne with some friends. It was amazing! After a wonderful cave tour at one winery, we sat down for the tasting. Our guide opened a bottle, brought it to her nose, made a face, and said she was going to get another bottle. Before she took it away, we asked to smell it.

It smelled powerfully of cheese. Not a subtle, dairy-adjacent note, like you often get with malolactic fermentation, but potent, ripe, assertive cheese. Honestly, it was the kind of smell I would have appreciated enormously on a cheese board. In a glass of Champagne, it was deeply wrong.

This producer bottles several of their wines in clear glass, which makes them vulnerable to light strike. The fault occurs when UV light and certain wavelengths of visible light react with compounds in the wine, particularly riboflavin, triggering a chain of chemical reactions that produce sulfurous, cheesy, cabbage-like aromas. Direct sunlight is an obvious culprit, but fluorescent lighting in retail stores can cause it too, and the damage can happen surprisingly quickly. The answer for most producers is simple: use darker glass. If you as a consumer happen to receive a wine in a clear bottle, protect it from light.

Our guide knew immediately what had happened, replaced the bottle without ceremony, and the rest of the tasting was excellent (we even went on to purchase some of that clear-bottle wine). But that first sniff was a genuine education.

Tartrate crystals: The rosé that looked broken (but wasn’t)

Appearance: white crystals floating in the wine or settled at the bottom of the bottle

We picked up a lovely rosé of Tempranillo from a local Willamette Valley producer. We’d tasted it at the winery and loved it, and were looking forward to opening it with a friend. I put it in the refrigerator to chill, and when I pulled it out, there was what looked like a small snowfall of white crystals floating inside the bottle.

We drank it anyway. It was delicious. And as the bottle sat out and the wine warmed up, the crystals gradually disappeared.

Tartrate crystals (mostly potassium bitartrate, sometimes calcium bitartrate) are chemically harmless and don’t affect flavor. But many people understandably see them as a sign that something has gone wrong, and so most wineries, particularly for whites and rosés, where the crystals are most visible, put their wines through some form of tartrate stabilization before release.

The crystals form most readily in cold temperatures, which is why they appeared when we chilled the bottle and dissolved again as the wine warmed. Wineries can address this several ways: cold stabilization (chilling the wine deliberately to encourage crystals to form and drop out before bottling), various additive treatments that inhibit crystal formation, or filtration methods that remove the relevant ions. My best guess with our rosé is that it hadn’t been fully stabilized, but it made no difference to our enjoyment of the wine.

The fish wine: My best guess

Aromas: fish — “like trout,” per the winemaker himself

This one remains, honestly, a bit of a mystery, and a good reminder of how much I’m still learning.

Several years ago, we visited a tasting room in the Willamette Valley and were poured a Pinot Noir that smelled like fish. The winemaker was pouring, and he actually named it himself. He said it smelled like trout. I’m still not entirely sure why he poured it. Trout is not exactly a desirable characteristic in wine.

The wine was from his first vintage, and my best guess at what happened involves isinglass, a fining agent derived from fish bladders, that’s used to remove phenolic compounds that can contribute undesirable color or bitterness. Used in excess, or perhaps used inappropriately, it can leave a fishy character in the wine. It’s more commonly used in whites than reds, though, so I hold this hypothesis loosely. It’s simply the most plausible explanation I’ve found so far.

_____________________

I’ve come to genuinely value encountering faulty wine, because each fault is a story about what happened during the wine’s making: a yeast that struggled, a winemaker who reached for the wrong tool, a clear bottle left too long under bright retail lighting.

The other thing I’ve learned is that knowing these faults changes how I carry myself at a tasting, in a restaurant, or when I open a bottle at home. Now I know the difference between a wine I don’t like (though, honestly, there aren’t too many of them!) and a wine that has something actually wrong with it. It’s a very useful distinction, because you can and should return a faulty wine.

So, if you ever find yourself sniffing a glass and thinking something is off, trust yourself. You might not have the words for it, but you’re probably right.

The nose is your most important wine assessment tool. Even when what it’s telling you is deeply unpleasant, the aromas and flavors in a glass are clues to what happened during the wine’s making.

Here are some of the faults I’ve encountered over the years, and what I’ve learned from them.

Cork taint: The moldy bottle I almost convinced myself to drink

Aromas: mold, wet cardboard, damp basement

My first encounter with cork taint was early in my wine life, and I didn’t recognize it for what it was. We’d picked up a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from a winery in Walla Walla, Washington. When we opened it, Katie wisely took one sip and put her glass down.

I, having never tasted an aged red wine, stubbornly suggested that maybe this was what aged Cab was supposed to taste like. I soldiered on through a glass, trying to convince myself that I liked it. But eventually, I had to admit that it smelled and tasted unmistakably like mold.

Since then, I’ve come to understand how common this fault really is. The culprit is a compound called TCA (2,4,6-trichloroanisole) which forms when chlorine compounds (like from cleaning or pesticides) react with certain molds present in cork. Even very small concentrations are enough to replace a wine’s pleasant aromas with that musty, wet-cardboard quality. Estimates put corked bottles somewhere from 3-5% of all natural cork-sealed wines, though improved testing and treatment methods are bringing that number down.

Cork taint happens. But how a winery or other retailer handles it matters enormously. We once bought a case of Pinot Noir from a Willamette Valley winery we loved. One bottle was corked. I called to let them know, and even though weeks passed before I could make it back, they replaced it. We bought more wine. On the other end of the spectrum, a Lodi winery we’d belonged to for four years included a corked library bottle in one of our shipments. I called. I emailed the wine club manager. I heard nothing. I cancelled the membership.

The lesson isn’t lost on me now that I work at a winery. A faulty bottle isn’t just an inconvenience to the customer. It’s a test of trust. The winery that replaces it without question understands that its reputation, and sometimes the whole region’s reputation, may be on the line.

Volatile acidity: The lunch wine we quietly left in our glasses

Aromas: vinegar, nail polish remover

A family member once invited us over for lunch and, knowing we love wine, opened a bottle from a winery near their home in Washington State. It was a generous and thoughtful gesture. But the wine smelled overwhelmingly of acetone. It was not subtle. It was the wine’s dominant character.

I didn’t have the vocabulary for it at the time, but what we were experiencing was volatile acidity (often abbreviated to VA) at fault levels. All wine contains some acetic acid (the compound that gives vinegar its punch), and a modest amount is considered normal, even desirable for complexity. But when oxygen isn’t carefully managed, when sulfur dioxide isn’t used correctly or at the right times, or when hygiene lapses allow acetic acid bacteria to proliferate, that acidity can climb to levels that overwhelm everything else. Add ethyl acetate (a related compound) to the mix and you get that solvent, nail-polish-remover quality.

Understanding this fault helped me appreciate just how many decisions go into preventing it: thoughtful fruit sorting, meticulous sanitation, diligent oxygen management, and judicious use of sulfur dioxide.

Reduction: From toasted marshmallow to rotten eggs

Aromas: struck match, smoke, rotten eggs, sweet corn

This is a fault that can be complicated, because at low levels it can be genuinely beautiful. One of my favorite wines of last year was a Willamette Valley Chardonnay with just a whisper of reduction — a smoky, toasty quality that reminded me of the caramelized outside of a perfectly roasted marshmallow. Delicious. Clearly intentional.

But the conditions that create that pleasant quality can spiral very quickly into something far less appealing.

We were visiting a winery in Paso Robles, a place we’d liked enough on a previous visit to join the wine club. It was just at the tail end of harvest. Before we’d even stepped inside the tasting room, we were hit with an overwhelming smell of rotten eggs. It was impossible to ignore. Other visitors seemed to be politely pretending not to notice. At first we wondered if someone nearby had... an unrelated problem. But the smell persisted through the entire visit and made the wines very difficult to assess or enjoy.

I now know that the most likely culprit was stressed yeast during fermentation. Yeast need nitrogen to do their work of converting grape sugars into alcohol. When they’re starved of that essential nutrient, or stressed by heat or other pressures, they produce volatile sulfur compounds as a byproduct. Reduction can also develop during aging if wine sitting on its lees isn’t given enough exposure to oxygen. The takeaway, as I understand it: take care of your yeast.

Reduction has another face I discovered only recently. Playing the board game included with the Aromaster Professional Sommelier Wine Aroma Kit, I encountered an aroma card labeled “sweet corn” and thought: surely that’s not something that actually turns up in wine.

Then, the very next weekend, we visited a winery where more than one white had that exact aroma: starchy, unmistakable, canned sweet corn. It’s caused by dimethyl sulfide, another reductive compound that forms when yeast are deprived of oxygen or nutrients. Once you learn to identify it, you can’t unknow it.

Continue to Part Two, where we encounter a bottle of Champagne that smelled like a cheese course, a rosé full of mysterious crystals, and a Pinot Noir that smelled like fish.

To be honest, I didn’t get it immediately, but as soon as someone else mentioned it, it was all I could smell (the power of suggestion is a topic all its own!).

I’d encountered banana before in white wines, Beaujolais Nouveau, and once memorably in a blueberry wine. But never in a Chianti. I had to figure out what was going on.

The components of wine aromas

Wine aromas come from organic compounds that can originate from the grape varietal (primary aromas), the winemaking process (secondary aromas), and aging (tertiary aromas). There are many types of these compounds, but esters are the biggest contributor to most fruit and floral aromas. Yeast produces esters during fermentation as it converts sugar into alcohol.

The banana smell comes from an ester called isoamyl acetate, which forms when isoamyl alcohol combines with acetic acid (basically vinegar). Isoamyl acetate is also known as “banana oil,” and it’s what’s used in all of your favorite banana-flavored products, from banana candy to banana Lip Smackers.

Factors that impact banana aromas in wine

Not all fermentations create the same amount of isoamyl acetate. Some yeast strains create more than others – for example, the yeast commonly used in Beaujolais Nouveau generates high levels of it. Carbonic maceration, which is a hallmark of Beaujolais Nouveau, increases isoamyl acetate production. Together, these factors explain why banana (along with bubble gum and candy) is a key tasting note for these wines.

Fermentation temperature also matters. Higher fermentation temperatures produce isoamyl acetate faster, but lower fermentation temperatures produce it in higher concentrations. Cooler fermentations are less volatile, so more of these esters remain in the final wine. That’s why you often find banana in aromatic white wines, which are typically fermented at cooler temperatures.

Banana also tends to show up more in young wines because these esters break down over time.

Becoming a wine sleuth

As I work to improve my wine tasting skills, I’m trying to become a better wine sleuth. Rather than just noting the aromas (though I’m definitely still working on that!). I’m starting to ask deeper questions, like “What does this tell me about the winemaking?” “Why might this note appear here and not in a similar wine?” Each aroma (especially the unexpected ones) is a clue, and putting those clues together is what makes wine tasting a type of detective work.

So, what about that Chianti? Chianti doesn’t typically go through carbonic maceration or particularly cool fermentation. So, my best guess is that the banana aromas were due to the specific yeast strain that was used and the fact that it was relatively young.

This experience also helped me spot another area for improvement – next time, I’ll take a picture of the bottle so I can research the producer’s methods later. 🤦‍♀️ Onward and upward!

A UPS is an uninterruptible power supply.

If you work from home and occasionally lose power, you either have one or you should get one. It’s the heavy, black box that sits under a desk or next to a router, quietly doing nothing most of the time, until the power goes out.

A UPS isn’t designed to power everything in your house. It’s designed to protect the things that need to stay on when the grid goes down. It switches automatically to a different power source, not because that power source is better or more efficient, but because it preserves what matters most. It’s a system built around priorities.

Choosing what stays on

I have one at home, and there are a few things I’ve intentionally plugged into it. My modem and Wi-Fi, for example. There are other things I could run off it in a pinch, like grinding coffee beans and brewing a pot, but those are choices. They would drain the battery faster, and one could argue they’re not essential.

When you don’t know when the power is coming back, you have to decide what’s critical and what’s optional.

Grapes, plugged into the grid

It turns out grapevines face a very similar decision.

Up until a certain point in the growing season, grapes are effectively plugged into the grid. Water and minerals flow in through the xylem. Inside the berries, cells are growing and dividing, acids are accumulating, and the whole system is focused on building structure rather than storing value.

Veraison, when priorities change

At veraison, priorities shift.

The berries soften. Color changes. Sugar begins to arrive in earnest. And at that moment, sugar stops being just another energy source and becomes the product.

Burning sugar to keep the berry alive during ripening would be like filling a bathtub while the drain is open. Water goes in, water goes out, and you never quite get full.

The system technically works, but it defeats the purpose.

Why malic acid?

Malic acid doesn’t suddenly appear so it can be burned during ripening. It’s been there all along, just like the UPS.

Early in the season, the grape is focused on growth. Cells are dividing and expanding, tissues are fragile, and the berry is managing water, pressure, and basic metabolism long before sugar is part of the picture. Malic acid supports that work. It helps regulate internal balance, stabilizes growing cells, and provides metabolic flexibility while the berry is still under construction.

By the time veraison arrives, the problems malic acid was solving are no longer the most important, since growth is finished and storage becomes the priority. The acid that once helped the berry grow becomes something the vine can afford to spend.

This is the grape’s UPS switching on.

Malic acid as backup power

Malic acid becomes the backup power supply that keeps critical metabolic functions running while sugar is protected and stored. Acid doesn’t disappear by accident during ripening. It’s being spent on purpose.

A UPS isn’t about efficiency, it’s about continuity. It runs on a different chemistry, has a limited fuel supply, and is designed to protect essential functions.

In grapes, the mapping looks like this:

• Sugar is the protected load.

• Malic acid is the backup fuel.

• Ripening is the planned outage where priorities change.

Warm nights make the UPS run harder. Cool nights let it idle. That’s why climate shows up so clearly in acidity.

What this explains in the glass

Once you see ripening this way, a lot of familiar differences stop feeling mysterious. High-acid wines from cool climates, and low-acid wines from hot regions aren’t accidents. They’re the outcome of how long the backup system was left to run.

It’s hard to overstate how wet this place is.

Periodic torrential rain. Trails turn into rivers. You walk through inches of mud. Under the canopy, the light is dim, and the soundtrack is constant: dripping water and the crash of surf from a beach you can’t see.

What surprised me most is how nurturing it felt.

Not oppressive and not threatening. Just part of a whole. The forest floor felt alive in the same way that “forest floor” aromas show up in wine: humus, decay, renewal, all cycling together.

At the same time, I’ve been deep in my diploma studies, learning about how water moves through grapevines. An onboard lecture about tropical rainforests combined with the experience of the mud and the humidity, brought a new dimension and texture to the coursework.

The plant physiology reset

My background is much more in animal and human physiology. In those systems, fluid moves because something pushes it. A heart. Muscles. Pressure generated by force.

So when I thought about plants, I had always vaguely imagined water being pushed upward from the roots, like pressure in a pipe.

That’s not how it works.

In vascular plants, water is pulled upward, not pushed. Evaporation from tiny pores, called stomata, mostly on the underside of leaves, creates tension. That tension pulls water up through the xylem from the roots like a straw. Nutrients dissolved in that water come along for the ride.

No pump. No force. Just evaporation and physics.

Same strategy, wildly different scales

Here’s the part that made me thoughtful: that same invisible force

• moves water a few feet up a grapevine

• and hundreds of feet up massive rainforest trees and palms

The scale changes dramatically but the mechanism does not.

Standing in a rainforest I’ve never experienced before, realizing that the same process is at work in vineyards I know well, gave me an unexpected sense of connection. This wasn’t an alien system. It was familiar, just amplified.

Evapotranspiration wasn’t an abstract term anymore. It was the reason the air felt thick. The reason clouds form. The reason rain keeps returning.

That made the rainforest feel deeply resilient to me. Not delicate, but cyclical.

Grapevines are climbers (and that matters)

Another surprise from my studies is that grapevines aren’t desert loners. They’re woodland plants, and they’re climbers.

I’d never really internalized the purpose of all those tendrils beyond “support.” In Ujung Kulon, we saw climbers everywhere: strangler figs, Monstera, vines using established trees as scaffolding to reach light.

Grapevines do the same thing.

Seeing this behavior in a rainforest made vineyards feel a little austere by comparison. Highly controlled. Artificial. Efficient, yes, but stripped of the collaboration these plants evolved with.

It made me curious. What would grapes taste like if they were grown in closer relationship with their ancestral peers? How does vitis vinifera behave in a more woodland-like system? What do we gain, and what do we lose, through monoculture and strict training?

Pull, not push

One final thing that’s been sticking with me.

“Push” systems feel effortful. They fail when force fails. They require constant input.

“Pull” systems feel different. Evapotranspiration relies on something basic and passive, like chromatography or capillary action. It’s sustainable precisely because it doesn’t require constant exertion.

That distinction feels important, not just for how plants move water, but for how we think about systems more broadly.

The rainforest doesn’t push.
The grapevine doesn’t push.
They rely on cycles and gradients.

Walking through mud under a dim canopy, learning about grapevines thousands of miles from a vineyard, I didn’t expect to come away with a clearer picture of how connected these systems are.

But here we are.

And now, when I select a wine from the extensive glass list on board the ship, I’m also thinking about rain, leaves, humidity, and the cycles that tie it all together.

Which feels… appropriate.

I’m writing this from Bali, where we’re kicking off 2026, meeting up with dear friends we’ve now visited multiple continents with (including Antarctica). When Barb says, “Want to go to [anywhere]?” the answer is always yes.

It also happens to be a moment of change in other parts of my life. I’m at a crossroads in my career in technology, I’m starting this program, and it feels like one of those times where you tug on a single thread and everything else starts to shift. You know the feeling.

What feels different about starting the diploma, compared to when I began WSET Level 3, is confidence. I loved Level 3. Not just because it took me deeper into appreciating wine, but because of the shared experience with my classmates. There’s something powerful about learning alongside people who are just as curious and nerdy and invested as you are.

This time, though, I’m walking in knowing I belong here.

The goal hasn’t changed: I want to enjoy wine more. And honestly, wine education has wildly over-delivered on that front. The more I learn, the more alive wine becomes. And somewhere down the line, I hope my career leads me into the wine industry itself—so this feels foundational in a very real way.

Yesterday, all of that theory collided beautifully with real life.

We walked into a grocery store in Seminyak (Bali), and I stopped short because I swear it smelled like someone had smashed a bottle of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. That unmistakable aroma profile was everywhere. Bright. Zippy. Grapefruit. The kind of smell that snaps your attention to full alert.

Naturally, we walked past the wine section first. Nothing there explained it.

Then we turned the corner into produce.

Dragonfruit everywhere—lemon, pink, white, and deep magenta. Rambutans in big bunches. Citrus in more shapes and varieties than I knew existed. And suddenly it clicked. That aroma that first cracked white wine open for me all those years ago was standing right in front of me.

The first time I ever had that experience was with a glass of Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc, nearly eighteen years ago. At the time, I thought white wine wasn’t for me. Too sweet. Headache-inducing. Hard pass. That glass changed my mind entirely. It smelled like grapefruit juice and tasted impossibly refreshing. Standing in that produce aisle yesterday, I could almost feel the acidity on my tongue.

That’s why I love wine. It’s not just flavors and aromas—it’s memory, sensation, thought, and feeling all tangled together. A full mind–body–spirit experience. And the deeper I go, the more often these moments happen, where the world starts quietly explaining wine back to me.

This is also why I built MySipNotes.

Like everyone else, I take photos to remember moments (usually terrible but occasionally awesome ones). You look at them years later and you’re instantly transported—not just to what something looked like, but to how it felt to be there. I want to remember wine that way. Labels help, but they’re just the surface. I want to capture the experience: what I noticed, what it reminded me of, how my understanding was shifting in real time.

This blog is part of that practice. Notes from a journey that’s still very much in motion through wine, through place, through paying attention.

This is one stop on a longer journey, and I’m glad you’re here at the beginning.