Eric Asimov – A Different & Great Wine Critic

This book arrived at my house last week.

While the majority of Northern American wine critics are busy handing out clinical scores upon scores on wines, as though teachers perpetually stuck marking midterms but forgetting to teach, Eric Asimov,the chief wine critic of New York Times, beats to a different drum. 

While some believe that it is tastings and courses that teach us to be a wine connoisseur, Eric thinks all those things are really unnecessary.  “Buy-drink-and-love wines” is Eric’s philosophy.  I agree.

As the name of his book “How to Love Wine’ would suggest, the book is not about how to critique or taste wines but rather about the essence of wine – i.e. the pleasures of wine.

A friend recently told me that he stopped taking educational courses because they take all the pleasures out of learning.  I think wines can be like that if one is not conscious about the essence of wines.  And I believe that is what Eric Asimov’s book is all about – love and pleasures of wine.  What a pleasure to read to Eric Asimov’s book!

Indigenous Yeast – Two Words that Speak Volumes

The wines that I love have one thing in common: fermentation is by indigenous or natural yeast.

A simple reference to indigenous yeast has cascading implications.  Least the way I see it after visiting many vignerons.  Indigenous yeasts can only be meaningful and successful if a vigneron practices viticulture in harmony with nature, hand-harvests, and minimal intervention in the cellar.  Pictured left is the Noella Morantin vineyard in Loire.

If a wine producer decides one day to use indigenous yeast after farming his vineyards conventionally with chemicals of herbicides and pesticides, it is not going to happen too easily over night.  Indigenous yeast lives in the vineyards.  So when vineyards are sprayed with chemical, there will not be enough indigenous yeast population for fermentation.

And if a wine producer uses a machine harvester, grapes burst and bleed before they make to cellar.  And as soon as the grapes bleed, it is grounds for a bacterial infection.  To stop the bacterial infection, a dose of sulphur must be added to the juice or crushed grapes.  Once the sulphur is added, the indigenous yeast is instantly killed.  So lab yeasts must be added.  And to feed the lab yeasts, additional chemicals need to be added.  And so a list of intervention continues.  Over-worked or intervened wines to me taste flat and soupy.

To me, the difference between the wines made from indigenous and lab yeasts are significant. The ingenious yeasted wines are lively and fresh.

The story behind indigenous yeast came up when I was listening to I’ll Drink To That – an excellent podcast out of New York where ex-sommelier Levi Dalton interviewed David Lillie of Chambers StreetWines.  I strongly recommend the podcast.  It is genuine, entertaining and educational.

I never bought into the idea that just because one can sell the wines, one doesn’t have to ask how the wines are made and taste.  I always thought it is the other way around: Because one knows how the wines are made and taste, one wants to sell them.