Interview by Linda DonahueSusan Barbour always tells people that, unlike with most sommeliers, there was no “bottle that did it for me.” Instead it was a grape—a moldy, rotten, wrinkled grape from the Sauternes region—as well as the peculiar way the angled light hit the vine-rows and the charming idiosyncrasies of the winemaker who led that tour. All of these components intersected in the glass, and suddenly she saw that wine was poetry.
As a writer, this realization was all Susan needed to get hooked for the rest of her life. That was in 2005. The following year she spent working part-time teaching English in France while spending most of her time and money designing her own extensive tours through Burgundy, the Rhone, the Loire and Bordeaux. Susan still thinks that most of what she knows today about wine came from those first few months of adventure, when it was all new and in situ.
Afterward, Susan returned to the states and completed her formal training and certification at the Wine and Spirits Education Trust, but building her palate library has been the outgrowth of many wonderful encounters with wine and wine-lovers everywhere.
I met Susan during a wine tasting on a Vueling flight between Paris and Barcelona, and over a delicious Spanish lunch we discovered that, among other things, we shared the same astrologer in New York. Susan introduced herself as “a poet”—something that, these days, few are willing to claim as their primary occupation. But during the course of our conversation, it became clear that, for Susan, wine is no different from poetry, especially in the way one learns to appreciate it.
How can someone develop a wine sense?
I honestly believe everyone can enhance their palate through practice and attentiveness. I have an article on my blog SavvySippers called How to Maximize Your Nose’s Wine Potential. In it, I make recommendations for how to go about training yourself to notice and identify more. Smell is more or less an outmoded sense (we’re not hunters and gatherers anymore), so it just needs to be engaged and put to good use. It’s like learning a language: once you decide to sense and decipher what’s around you you may even find you start dreaming in scents! With a little bit of mindfulness you can do anything.
What’s the secret to finding a good wine?
The secret is there is no secret. Finding a good wine is part knowledge of regions, vintages, producers, price points—and part good luck. But ultimately it’s only “good” if it pleases you—and this can be the hardest part for some people. You have to have confidence in knowing what you like, and you have to be unabashed about savoring pleasure when it finds you. Wine appreciation is really just that: appreciating the value of something, making its worth increase through your attention and devotion to it. If you have a hard time expressing passion then it is going to be more difficult for you to find good wines! I often meet people who wish they could be more sensitive to wine, but the true problem is that they just don’t have a high enough bliss-tolerance. They have limiting beliefs about the role of pleasure and their right to it. But that is the single best reason to start learning more about wine, because it will expand your happiness as well as your perception. My advice is to try new wines with the intent of being surprised. Then, when you do find a good one, remember what AOC or region it comes from—that’s the single most important piece of information. Chances are good you’ll like another wine from that region if you try more.
What makes a good vintage?
Vintages are a cross-section of history. I once heard a Burgundy winemaker describe grapes as temoins, or “witnesses”, to history. If you have ever been in wine country during the vendages of an amazing vintage (I was in Bordeaux, for example, in 2005), then you know that a good vintage is magical weather. It’s the kind of ordinary day that seems extraordinary because of the quality of the air, the angle of the sun. In France, where the weather varies greatly, vintages are quite important. In California and other sunny climates, not so much. If you’re making an investment or looking to get something special at a restaurant, I’d recommend consulting a vintage chart. You can find Robert Parker’s online then print it out and carry it in your wallet. Wines drunk too young will cloak you with stingy unreadiness, while wines drunk too old will seem like dingy flower water from an old vase (I’ve never actually drunk the latter, but it’s always what I imagine!)
Do you think some wine regions are better than others?
Better is a slippery word. There are definitely regions where there is a higher percentage of higher quality wine. But this isn’t always obvious to the consumer. Bordeaux, for example, is world-famous for its wines and often sells them at top dollar, but as a region they still produce hoards of mediocre ones. In the little appellation of St. Emilion alone there are over 900 wineries! So there is bound to be a range. What most certainly is true is that there are regions which are better for finding good values. The Rhone, the Loire, and Languedoc-Rousillon are great areas for this.
What’s your favorite wine region?
People often laugh when I say this, but I actually have phases. Right now I am weak in the knees for Coteaux-du-Layon, which is a semi-sweet wine from the Loire made from Chenin Blanc. It tastes of perfume, sweat, and honeydew. It’s absolutely delicious. Wine phases are nice because you build—relatively quickly—a nice basis for comparison, which is good for building your palate library—a life-long task! If I were really forced to settle down with one region for the rest of my life, however, it would be red Burgundy. The whites are to die for, but the reds offer enough subtlety and variety to break your heart a new way every time.
Is there any difference in the taste of wine when served in a “wine tumbler” vs a traditional stemmed wine glass?
Definitely not in the taste, although you should be careful because a tumbler means your hands are going to warm the wine—which can make the alcohol too apparent. Sometimes that’s okay if the wine was served too cold—but a stemmed glass can still be warmed by rotating the glass with the stem between your fingers.
What are the main things to look for in red wine?
With any wine there are three components to tasting: appearance, smell, and taste. With appearance you need to check for clarity, viscosity, age (the meniscus of an older wine will be lighter in color), and reflections. Then you check for aromas in a first and a second smell (the second one is preceded by swirling for aeration). It helps to identify broad categories of aromas (fruit, floral, vegetal, mineral, chemical, etc.) Then you’d taste and look at the balance. Red wine, unlike white wine, has tannin, so the composition is made of acid, sugar/alcohol, and tannin. A lot of people have difficulty discerning between acid and tannin when they first start tasting because they can both feel drying. But acid will make the mouth water afterwards whereas tannin will make the tongue feel leathery. Alcohol is sensed at the back of the throat and in taste tests will often be confused with sugar, from which it is derived.
What are the main things to look for in white wine?
All the same things I mentioned for reds with the exception that white wines don’t have tannin. And with a white wine, I always find, acidity is absolutely essential. It is the backbone of a white wine, and without it the wine will come off feeling “flabby”. Acid actually causes water to release positively charged Hydrogen ions, which will bind to aromatic molecules. Acid makes the aromas in a wine “pop” so to speak, the same way that lemon juice brings out the flavors of raw seafood.
Any final tips you’d like to leave us with?
Yes. Don’t serve artichokes or asparagus! Those are the cardinal wine-killers. They’ll spoil your palate, and you won’t be able to taste red or white wines. You can, however, serve them up with dry Champagne. I’m also a stickler for not refilling any glass until it’s been drunk to the bottom. The reason is that the bottle and the glass have different surface areas, so they oxidize at different rates and are hence different wines. It’d be like taking identical twins and rearing them apart—only with one on a spacecraft traveling at the speed of light! They just don’t age the same way. In a Burgundy, which evolves rapidly, the difference in the nose of the bottle or decanter versus the nose of the half-drunk glass can be noticeable even to a complete beginner.
Susan J. Barbour is a Paris-based poet/sommelier. She has studied and worked in France, Italy, Cyprus, Malawi and Japan. Susan received her B.A. in English Literature from Dartmouth University and attended the Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University where she met and worked with the poet-scholar Allen Grossman, who had a profound impact on her work and thinking. Susan currently lives in Paris where she is working toward a doctorate in English at the University of Oxford. Her first book, Metaxu, a unique pastiche of prose poetry, memoir, literary essay, and lyric fragments is forthcoming next spring. Learn more about Susan and wine at her blog, Savvy Sippers.
