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A Google news search for El Nino’s effect on vineyards generates tens of pages of opinion articles speculating on if and how the big winter will contribute to the quality of the 2016 harvest. As always, the media is stirring up concern regarding the impact of heavy rainfall on grapevines in articles such as Eater’s, […]

Johannes and I found ourselves in the middle of Napa on my birthday last weekend bickering over whether the mustard had always been there (me, the idealist) or rather planted (Johannes, the realist, but also the one with much more experience working in vineyards). Well, after some research, we determined we were both right.

After several years in bottle, wine can dip into a ‘dumb phase.’ This wine was probably fruit forward, round on the palate, full of minerality and expressive of all beautiful traits that define classic Riesling, but are now muted, and the wine seems uninteresting and dull. Sometimes, decanting can help bring the wine to life, but typically, this is a phase that can go on for months to a few years.

The toughest part of describing the aromas in wine is first detecting the flavors, but once you have that down, the next challenge is to find a rhythm in spitting out a description that ‘wows.’ Try this flow we’ve described in this post. Check out the color. White wines should point you down one path, say white fruits, stone fruits, citrus, reds another, red fruits like cherry, blackberry. Sometimes white and red wine aromas can overlap with fruits like orange and dried fruit aromas.