Why is wine like a cheeseburger?

In my wine classes, when I ask what the wine tastes like, the most frequent answer I get is, “It tastes like wine.” Well, yes…it does. But that flavor is actually made up of many layers of flavors (and other sensations) all working together.

Enjoying wine means you like it. Appreciating wine means knowing why you like it. And that’s the key to really getting the most out of the experience, expanding it, and making it part of the fine things you already enjoy.

When you chomp into a cheeseburger, your taste buds are assaulted with a huge variety of flavors and textures. There’s grilled meat and fat, tomato, lettuce, onions and pickles, mayonnaise, maybe ketchup, mustard, and relish, and the bread of the bun. All those flavors hit us at the same time.

Same with wine.

The overall flavor (and aroma) of a wine is composed of those layers of flavor that I mentioned above. Like the cheeseburger, they hit us all at once. Real wine appreciation consists of identifying, distinguishing and delighting in them, separately and together.

Here’s how it happens. First, the fermentation process, as we’ve already discovered, rearranges the fruit sugars in the grape juice. All fruits have sugars, and they each taste a certain way because of (here goes) the arrangement of the molecules that make them up. Enough with the chemistry, but that’s what happens. Take a wine like Sauvignon Blanc, for example. Many of those that come from New Zealand have very distinct flavors and aromas of grapefruit, pineapple and citrus. Did the winemaker put pineapple juice in the wine? He’d slit his wrists first. The fermentation process creates those flavors by transforming the fruit sugars.

The second way various flavors and aromas get into wine is through the aging process. If we age our wine in oak, all kinds of things happen, so this may be a good time to dive into the topic.

More winemaker decisions, all of them about oak. Should we use new oak barrels, which give more obvious flavors to the wine, or old barrels, used once or twice, that impart more subtle flavors? And how much money do we have? New barrels cost around $1,500 each. If we want to be really cheap about it, we can just throw oak chips or planks into the vat and strain them out later.

Then…do we use American or French oak? The American variety is loosegrained, and again, the flavors are more obvious and predominant. French oak has a tighter grain, making the flavors more subtle.

Third…what kind of toast do we want in the barrels? Toast? Well, yes. Oak barrels are made over open flame because the heat makes the staves pliable. The toasting caramelizes the sugars in the wood. Result? White wines aged in oak gain flavors of vanilla, toffee, caramel, and the wood itself. Reds gain dark flavors of cola, coffee, chocolate, toffee, and smoke.

Then…how long do we leave the wine in the barrel? Sometimes, that’s a cultural and traditional decision. The Spanish, for instance, might leave their wines in oak barrels for decades. We probably don’t want to wait that long.

While the wine is in the barrel, some winemakers stir the lees. That’s the small bits of spent yeast that settle to the bottom as the wine rests and ages. That process also affects the final flavor. Then, there’s the decision whether to put the wine through malolactic conversion, but I’m not going to explain that right now because I want you to stay awake. All these actions give layers of flavor and aroma to the wine, and if you focus and concentrate, you’ll be able to detect them and enjoy what’s in the glass even more.

Meanwhile, here are some new recommendations and discoveries that will make your eyes open wide.

— Jerry Greenfield is a wine author, educator and consultant. Order his books, “Secrets of the Wine Whisperer” and “Ask the Wine Whisperer” and read his blog at www.winewhisperer.com .

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