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Uncorked: The nose knows

And the eyes, too, according to the author of several popular books on wine tasting. Rely on both when choosing a wine, Kevin Zraly says.

By CHRIS SHERMAN
Published October 19, 2005

TAMPA - With nonstop jokes and bestselling books, Kevin Zraly has tried to teach us about wine tasting for decades. And now he's decided we got the concept backward.

"It should never have been called wine tasting. It should be called wine smelling," Zraly told his latest pupils. For his 34th anniversary as a wine educator this month, his stage was a simple room crowded with two dozen wine lovers in the back of Ybor City's West Palm Wine.

His lesson plan and monologue were the same: The nose knows far more than the tongue or palate, he said. Oh, yeah, and taste with your eyes, too.

Zraly, director of wine for the Smith & Wollensky steakhouse chain, assesses 5,000 wines a year but dismisses half of them with eyes and nose alone. He doesn't have to put the wine in his mouth.

It could be because his mouth is always moving as he works a room like Dame Edna or a beloved Catskills entertainer.

Live, Zraly is an electrified, bearded version of his books, which were the first to make wine simple and friendly with lots of graphics and short questions and answers. His Windows on the World Complete Wine Course (Sterling, $24.95) grew out of his classes 25 years ago and have now sold 2.5-million copies. West Palm owner Jim Sirna himself learned at some of Zraly's early classes.

Today, Zraly's books are possibly the most numerous surviving remnants of the grand restaurant on top of the World Trade Center shattered by terrorists on 9/11.

"For me the day is still incomprehensible," Zraly writes in the latest edition of the book, in which he remembers the lost restaurant and colleagues, including six construction workers building a new wine cellar. "The reflections of those windows will remain with me forever."

In recent years, Zraly has concentrated on teaching smell, and his next book will focus on the magic and mysteries of the olfactory sense. So, although this month's topic was Burgundy, that was secondary to proper nose usage.

Why? Zraly says taste registers a paltry few sensations - sweet, salty, bitter and sour - while there are roughly 10,000 smells in the world. Humans, he reports, have the olfactory gear to note 2,000 of them, 200 of which are in wine.

He also contended that women have a more developed sense of smell than men, eliciting a few hoots. No one challenged him when he demonstrated that one nostril worked better than the other. Half the group said their right was more sensitive; the other half said left.

Yet he didn't bother trying to pick out green apple, cigar box or other arcane aromas, just to focus on whether the smeller liked the final mix.

Zraly simplified the fractured, complex geography of Burgundy into a kids' game. Waving his arms in smaller and smaller circles, he narrowed the location. With each wine he asked what country it was from, which region, what district, what village and, finally, what vineyard. And the crowd shouted back like kindergarteners.

The focus was on the Cote de Beaune for reds and whites and Cote de Nuits for pricier reds. Along the way, Zraly explained how beginners can sort Burgundy quality by labels. Above the generic level of Bourgogne, wines of the next best quality are identified by the name of a village. Finer premier cru wines wear a longer name, including the village and a vineyard. The finest grand cru Burgundies carry only the vineyard name.

Zraly demonstrated his new technique for judging wine that makes pure tasting last.

With the eye, color reveals age and clarity hints at drinkability. White wines darken from pale straw to gold copper and dark brown as they age. Reds do the reverse and become lighter as they grow old. And, Zraly said, if wine is clear enough to see your fingers through it, it's ready to drink.

As to smelling, forget the cork. It smells like cork - or wet cork.

Smell the wine three times. The first will just clear your nostrils. Try again, inhaling deeply. For the third, put one hand over the glass and swirl, remove your hand.

Take a sip of wine, hold it in your mouth for five seconds to warm the wine and release the fumes that go up the back of the throat to the nasal passages.

Swallow and savor the aroma and taste for at least 60 seconds before making a judgment. Not only will a wine change, length of the experience is important. A good wine will last in balance at least a minute, great wines can last three minutes or more.

Zraly clocks how the tastes and sensations change in 15 seconds to see if the tart acid outlasts the mouth-puckering tannins or if they balance out before he decides if the wine is too young, just right or far gone.

And when you get a wine that's too tannic, don't give up, he says. The cure is fat and protein, which Zraly happily translated as cream sauces, cheese and rare roast beef.

Like many wine advisers, Zraly's rules for picking Burgundies are to trust the vintage first, than pick the producer. That is easier now with a string of good vintages from 1996 on; his book skips 1998 and 2001.

For recommended producers, the book cites the big names: Bouchard, Drouhin, Jaffelin, Jadot and Latour and Laboure-Roi, but notes that there are small producers such as Grivot that smart merchants can recommend.

- Chris Sherman can be reached at 727 893-8585 or sherman@sptimes.com

[Last modified October 19, 2005, 11:20:35]