Ever wonder what Guilty tastes like? What about Power? How 'bout Orgasm?

Thought that would get your attention. Now, apparently, you can find out. Avant-garde fashion-meets-art publication Visionaire just released TASTE in collaboration with International Flavors & Fragrances Inc. (IFF), the bar none leader in the creation of scents in the world's top perfumes as well as other flavored and scented products.

The TASTE tome, bound appropriately in noirish black (Visionaire has a rep for being a bit dark), comes equipped with 12 emotions/concepts depicted both visually--via photographs--and, er, orally. Flavors meticulously cooked up by IFF's team of flavorists are stored on strips made from the same taste-film technology that makes Listerine breath strips possible.

Emotion-concepts (I coined that term myself, as I'm not sure how else to refer to the stuff depicted in TASTE) are depicted variously in photographs and still artwork. Guilty, for example, is a photograph of an attractive woman heavily made up and scantily clad running her fingers through her hair. The side note says "taste leather and chocolate". Ok.

Visionaire says that "Some tastes are easy to identify, while others are highly conceptual."

And so I'm guessing that the flavor-concept "Mommy", rendered via a photograph of a woman's breast and the flavor "condensed milk", is most definitely not one of the "highly conceptual" pieces.

The Visionaire website further reports that "This may be the first time that flavor has ever been used as a pure art medium, without concern for convention or application and detached from its connection to food." Hmm. Except that there are flavors in wine, which is not food, which got me thinking about the unique role that flavor plays in wine appreciation.

Like the flavors experienced in TASTE, those found in wine are also separate from the sources they recall. For example: leather. And earth. And berry fruit. All of those flavors are often present in a regular old glass of Pinot, but they aren't really there. Not, at least, in their literal forms.

That's the special thing about wine: unlike food, you don't have to actually ADD those ingredients into the mix to have them somehow appear in the finished product. In some ways, and I know this is going to sound cheesy, it's kind of like magic.

And so, while my hat's certainly off to Visionaire and IFF for so carefully concocting these "completely unprecedented flavors", I'd like also like to tip my hat to the world's top winemakers, who manage to make an ordinary glass of wine sing without nearly as much pondering, mixing, matching, and calculating.

I guess the magic, in the end, is in the grapes, not the ingredients.

Bonus: You don't have to pay for a fancy black leather binding to enjoy up to ten THOUSAND different TASTES in a glass of wine. Beats just 12 flavors and a picture of a woman's breast any day.

www.visionaireworld.com

www.iff.com

Posted by Courtney at 11:08 PM • Comments (0)

Ok, so you can't actually drink these grounds, but they look pretty cool, don't they? The heavy sediment that vintage port throws is what's in this coffee filter, not the genesis of your morning cup of joe. I decanted an 18 year old bottle of the old but good stuff recently and this is what I got.

I must admit that I had forgotten about this very necessary process (decanting) that must be done to all vintage port before consuming. In my sommelier classes my instructor had done it before class time, and so when the vintage was poured for tasting I didn't make the connection with the delicious stuff in my glass and the fairly intense decanting process that had made it possible.

Here's how it went down: I bought a half bottle of Real Companhia Velha 1987 vintage port ($17 at BevMo in San Francisco) on a whim and decided to have a glass with lunch. The cork was extremely soft when I inserted the worm of my waiter's corkscrew, and its delicacy was confirmed when it crumbled into many small pieces when I tried to extract it.

I never succeeded in getting the whole thing out. Instead, I poured the contents of the bottle out through the small opening that I was able to produce. When I poured the first of it into my glass I was struck at the very heavy sediment that appeared. Some of it was in long thin pieces and reminded me more of pencil shavings than coffee grounds or anything so particulate.

At that moment I recalled my instructor's showing us a large coffee filter he'd improvised for a real vintage port filter to remove this sediment from the stuff before our class. The coffee filter was, like the one I've pictured here, full of an alarming amount of thick purplish sediment. Recalling this, I grabbed a coffee filter of my own, a large water glass, two chip clip magnets from the fridge, and jury rigged my very own coffee filter-cum-vintage port decanter contraption.

I'm sort of embarrassed yet proud of this invention. I'm sure there are folks who are absolutely horrified that I would use this sort of device instead of the REAL DEAL--specially made vintage port filters often feature fine muslin filters--but then again, wine isn't supposed to be all about doing what's right all the time. This worked for me, and it can work for you too.

Check out these before and after photos of the port.

The first shows it prior to filtering, and you can observe some serious sediment floating around. The second is after: the wine was clear, delicious, and, although it could have used a little more time in the bottle (vintage port generally shouldn't be drunk before it's 20 years old), I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Vintage port 411
Port must be from the Duoro region of Portugal, a climatically extreme place where little goes down except the making of this fabulous stuff. It's only produced two or three times a decade, when the harvest is so superlative that a vintage year is declared. It's often ready to drink after 20 years, but can last as long as 100 in some cases. For this reason, some folks like to compare its evolution to that of a human life.

Vintage port is perfect stuff for cold wintry days and nights. It tastes fabulous alone and will also accompany good quality chocolate and other sweet treats. I think it would be the absolutely perfect thing to sip in front of a roaring fire just after coming in off the slopes this winter. Decadent, delicious, luxurious and rarely disappointing, except when drunk too young.

Next time you see grounds like this, there's good drink ahead.

http://www.thevintageportsite.com/decanting.htm

Posted by Courtney at 12:43 PM • Comments (0)