Monday, June 10, 2013

"Aquaoir"? Really?

I'm sure that aging a wine under water will give it a different character than aging it in a cellar, but the descriptions in this article are typical of the kind of pretentiousness we've come to expect from "wine connoisseurs".
Ocean-aged wine is 'more complex' says Napa winery
You know its pretentious when they make up a new word -- "aquaoir". That's a play on "terroir", which describes subtle differences in wine derived from the soil in which the grapes were grown. A zinfandel made from grapes grown in France, for instance, can be distinguished from a zinfandel made from California grapes, even if the wine-making process is otherwise the same.

Of course, Mira Winery has invented the word "aquaoir" to describe flavor variations that occur during bottle aging, meaning that it really has nothing in common with "terroir" at all.

Sommelier Patrick Emerson produced some lovely nonsense after sampling some of the water-aged wine.
‘I am quite surprised – shocked at how quickly these two wines have changed paths – something magical has happened with “aquaoir”. The signature difference might be in the riddling motion of the tides.’
Mira winemaker Gustavo Gonzalez made the much humbler and more believable claim that...
‘It’s not better, it’s not worse and it is definitely different.’
Unfortunately he followed that with wine mumbo-jumbo rivalling Emerson's.
‘The land wine is tighter versus aquaoir-aged wine, which is more complex and broad, more open and relaxed.’
I love wine myself, and would love to do some taste-testing of water-aged versus cellar-aged wine, but wine descriptions tend to leave a bad taste in my mouth.