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| Free Wine Classes This Spring |
| What grapes can you smell in your flowers? Free wine classes are blooming all over the place. I attended one this morning in the blossoms of a Crabapple tree. Approaching the flowers like a blind tasting, I asked myself what grapes they might smell like. Based on visual clues - the blooms are paper thin and the colors range from the lightest ruby to a delicate pink - I expected to smell a clean, unoaked red, maybe something along the lines of Gamay or perhaps a hint of Cabernet Franc. I was close, but when I stuck my nose in the tree, I found myself thinking about Riesling grown on red slate soils more than red varieties. I might have had a hint of a delicate Spatburgunder, aka Pinot Noir from Germany. Was I right? I won't know until I stick my nose into the next glass of Spatburgunder that I enjoy, but when I do I will be testing another set of ideas about what German Pinot Noir smells like, and I will have more parameters on which to build. It may well turn out that the next Spatburgunder I enjoy will have a much more pronounced, intense aroma that will remind me of the tree on the south side of the street, or maybe I'll have to wait until midsummer to find a rose that fits the bill, or maybe I'll never find it and I will just have to spend the rest of my life searching in the blossoms of every flower that I pass. Either way, I win. Smelling flowers makes me happy and smelling wine makes me happy too. This exercise that so deftly combines two things I enjoy cost me nothing more than sixty seconds of my time. Damien |
Jack Handey, perhaps the greatest
philosopher of our time, offers this
thought on flowers in May:
"If April showers bring May flowers, and
Mayflowers bring Pilgrims, what do
Pilgrims bring? Oppression, my friend.
Oppression."
philosopher of our time, offers this
thought on flowers in May:
"If April showers bring May flowers, and
Mayflowers bring Pilgrims, what do
Pilgrims bring? Oppression, my friend.
Oppression."
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