CHILEAN WINE, AND THE ART OF WINE TASTING - CAPT AJIT VADAKAYIL

DON'T CARE FOR WINE BRANDS AND COST -- TRUST YOUR OWN SENSES-- TRUST YOUR INNER VOICE.

Let me tell a naked truth.

I have never ever bought a bottle of wine for my own private consumption, paying my own money.

If so how do I qualify to talk on this subject-- pray?.

Well I have been a ship Captain for nearly 3 decades. When some one wants to give me a valuable present, whether it be a owner, or a charterer, or a shipper, or a consignee , or an agent—the first thing which crosses their blessed minds in to gift me a nice bottle of wine.  And being a ship Captain, nobody dares insult me and give me cheap wine, unless they want "double trouble".

And then I do buy economical  wine for my ship’s crew for Sunday dinners, as part of victualling .  I go ashore and choose expensive  vintage wine with ship’s officers club money for festivities and ship parties.

Every time I take a flight to join or sign off from a ship ( usually an average of 3 / 4 connecting flights ) I sample what the airline has to offer — usually “unpleasant “, “out of balance” , “oak reeking” , “astringent in the finish” , “unstructured tannin “ wines originating from “limited hang grafted grapes “  affected by  fruit flies, Phylloxera louse and downy mildew  from France, Italy, California and Australia in tiny bottles ..

On my stainless steel chemical tankers we carry red and white wines in bulk.  The wine is filled right up to the top of the PV stack, to prevent oxidation.

A top grade vintage wine goes by refrigerated containers  on ships nowadays.

I got introduced to Chilean wine more than 2 decades ago. My ship had been to Chile and we bought some dirt cheap Chilean wine. The moment the crew saw the cost, nobody wanted to drink the wine.

It is assumed that all cheap wines are bad.  But once they had a sip, almost all who knew something about wine , opined that it was fantastic wine.

My love affair with Chilean wine started from then on.

Now I find that the whole world has woken up to Chilean wine. The wine did not sell abroad, till Jew Domains Barons De Rothschilds in 1988 bought off a 50% stake in the 250 year old Los Vascos Vineyard in the Chilean Colchagua valley.

Rothschild JACKED UP the prices knowing wine selling is closely related to snobbery. The moment the cost went up the uppity West started warming up to Chilean wine.


Rothschild got wine experts from Bordeaux to supervise the viniculture, harvest, maceration and ageing process. They modernized the process for mass production using temperature controlled stainless steel vats, pneumatic presses,  .

Rothschild has always known ( like Picasso ) how to market their wines and to buy their own wines using anonymous agents , at record breaking prices, to hit the head lines of the wine magazines and breaking news of TV media which their own.  

So, a 1945 Chateau Mouton Rothschild Jerobaom sold at Christie’s auction in 1997 for 114614 US dollars.

Most of the wine tasters are like the art critics who praise Picasso’s dreadful daubings.  Money talks—these wine critics are usually bribed. The only time they fall into deep shit, is when they are told to blindfold and test.  But  they have some sort of magic communications to still beat the system. It is all a big game.

First of all none of the wine tasters know how the human mechanism of smell and taste works.  This is the way God made you, you are NOT having special tongues and noses.

NOW LET ME DIGRESS BRIEFLY INTO THE SCIENCE OF SMELLING AND TASTING.

In India since the past 12000 years we have the system of cleaning the tongue by using a sharp scraper every morning immediately after brushing the teeth.  You will understand what this means only if you do it once and see for yourself the YUCK toxic slime , known in 7000 year old Vedas as Ama, which comes off .

It is mostly dead tongue taste buds and cells. There are more than 10000 taste buds on your tongue whose life is just 10 days.

It also brings out dead bacteria, fungus , plaque coating, fur,  bad smelling volatile sulphur compounds and stuck food debris.  Indians were the first to do this and it was introduced to China by Indian Kalari warrior sage Bodhi Dharma .  The mouths of people who don’t use the tongue scraper stinks.

A girl could be the most beautiful in the world, but if she has repulsive MO, you would not want to kiss her at all. She can chew Wrigley's double mint gum throughout the day, her mouth will still smell like crap—and this is NOT from bad teeth or rotten gums..

Clean and healthy taste buds on a unfurred tongue can 1/200 sweet, 1/400 salt and 1/ 135000 sour and 1/2000000 bitter. Contrary to what experts say, taste buds all over the tongue can taste everything—there are no maps.

Never confuse taste with flavour. Taste is a chemical sense perceived by the receptor cells in the taste buds. Falvour is a fusion of multiple senses. With spicy food the brain registers pain as one aspect of flavour. To perceive flavour brain interprets taste , smell and other stimuli and sensations.

The moment the food or drink is smelt the Pavlovian response secretes saliva, preparing the tongue for tasting. Hence odours play an important role in the taste of foods. If you plug your nose you cannot make out the difference between strawberry jam and cherry jam— for both will taste sweet.

Your perception of scent is more than a thousand times stronger than your perception of taste. Taste is 78% smell. You must pity the guys whose noses are blocked and who breathe in through their mouths. They wont even feel the desire to eat.

We cant see bacteria with your eyes, yet we never eat rotten putrid food as our sense of smell which can detect more than 10000 different odours , warns us in advance. A top quality perfume has more than 450 ingredients.

This is why when you smell the wine you must fill up the glass 25% and swirl the wine and allow it coat the sides of the glass , so that it vapourises and tosses molecules into the air, releasing the bouquet. Sniff first and only then swirl. Sweeter wines will leave thick viscous streaks.

The top part of the glass will give you the floral and fruit odours. Put your nose in and take a big deep sniff to cross the threshold of sensitivity—to get that first impression of the wine before olfactory fatigue sets in after a few seconds. The best time to smell is in the afternoon when both your nostrils are clear and smell membranes sensitive.

Before you do that tilt the glass away from you ( or Emily Post will make fun of you  ) and look at the edge of the liquid against a white tablecloth—to judge hue and clarity.

Older wines are darker and will have an orange tinge at the edge. We on chemical tankers who do wallwash tests with Methanol are experts in all this.

Now sip up enough wine to swirl and slosh it around in your mouth to that every corner of your tongue , for viscosity and tannins. Allow the wine to settle on your lower mouth and now slurp in air to make the volatile parts travel to the back of your nasal cavity for the aroma.  Swallow and feel the after taste , alcohol content , acidity, and linger. . Inhale retro nasally to give a hit to the five million nerve cells

Now remember the best and most famous wine tasters of this planet have been served the same vine from the same bottle and come up with hilarious differences, and branded one as cheap and other a expensive vintage.  

A little bit of temperature difference can affect the judgement. White wine is always chilled and red wine at room temperature—this means about 18 deg C—NOT 32 deg C like in India. Lower temperatures mute the aromatics . Aromatics get liberated inside the warm mouth. It is through the aroma that the wine is actually tasted.

This is different from bouquet which refers to smell from fermentation , exposure to oak, and ageing. Scientists use Gas Chromatograph mass spectrometers to analyse the aromas, as wine makers have started using illegal flavourings. On Chemical tankers we use Gas ion Chromatographs to find the chlorides.

One of my European Chief Engineers used to tell me how he makes wine in his house when he is on leave, and he would show me pictures. He would put a latex glove on the neck of the vat.  When the limp glove gets filled with gas and then becomes limp again—that is the time to start drinking. He was firmly convinced that drinking lot of red wine with flavonoids makes you live longer and can prevent heart attack —till I told his that is all bull dished out by the wine-mafia.

Chilean wines are good as the grapes in that part of the world is NOT affected by louses and fungi. Chile lies in one corner of the world, totally sanitized by the Andes mountain range. The climate is temperate , due to the cold Humboldt ocean current, and the soil rich in minerals, highly permeable and well draining.

There is low rainfall , clear sunny skies, hot days and cool nights for colour and aroma , no frost because of unpolluted winds from the Pacific, which again means no fungus and louses. . This means acid, sweet tannins and alcohol are in balance.

I love to have a reasonably priced, classic, red Don Melchor Cabernet Sauvignon ( Concha Y Toro )  from the Maipo valley—just because I have visited the place and made a mental connection.  

You will love any Merlot or Carmenere wine with delightful blends of unique flavours and a dash of minerality.

Aromas?

Chocolate, caramalised nuts, strawberry, plums, leather and earth, blackberries, raspberries, cherries, cracked pepper, candy berry, fresh rose, spicy red berry, coconut, olives, figs, marsh mellow, toasted nuts, prunes, pineapple, peaches, lemon curd, banana, apricot, lychee, minty black currant, coffee, custard, exotic herbs

—want any more?

Every time you sign off or join a ship at a Chilean port, usually you have to have a long drive from the Capital city of Santiago. It is delightful to see the ORGANIC vineyards against the Andes backdrop along the highway, where the long hang grapes are ripened in the sun before harvest.

Word of caution from a mariner—don’t buy vintage Chilean wines of El Nino years. You can get these years on the internet.

Chile has started worrying the traditional winemakers in France, USA, Australia , South Africa and Italy, who market their pathetic products aggressively.

China and India have realized like Capt Ajit Vadakayil, that Chilean wine gives the best value for money.

I wonder if I should charge the Chilean government for this support via a universally well red blog post.

The video above allow does not show the SLURP ( which must be done atleast thrice ). Only pros slurp ( see below ) as they spit the wine out -- the amateurs dont slurp, as they swallow the wine.

If a Chilean wine does NOT appeal to your, just allow the wine to breathe for a while .  The open wine bottle is never corked. If you cork it in a classy restaurant the waiters will give sarcastic smiles to each other .  Red wine goes with red meats.

Dont believe the Western propaganda on internet that Cheap Chilean wine tastes cheap-- so says Capt Ajit Vadakayil.

CAPT AJIT VADAKAYIL
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