A Splash from Your Nantucket Sommelier
The Fifth Flavor
by Leslie-Ann Sheppard
owner of The Cellar on Surfside Road.
Labor Day weekend has ushered itself into our lives with a pseudo-hurricane and now, on the other side, crisper, drier air and cool breezes. It was a hot, humid summer with little rain, so the hydrangeas already indicate advanced autumn, and some of the leaves on island have started to turn color and even drop to the ground. There is a lovely, earthy scent to the drying of leaves and flowers, and it makes me think of a couple of my favorite red grapes—Pinot Noir and Nebbiolo—perfect wines for this lovely time of year.
Pinot Noir and Nebbiolo? While practically everyone who has held a wine glass is at least familiar with Pinot Noir, this is not true with Nebbiolo. Pinot Noir is planted internationally and is particularly famous in its native land of Burgundy, France, and domestically in Oregon and California. Nebbiolo has a very different story. Native to Piedmont, Italy, it is very rarely seen growing outside its birthplace. Aside from those distinctions, from a taster’s standpoint, the two can have a similar flavor profile. If this flavor had a season, it would be now. I call this flavor umami.
Umami is the ‘fifth flavor’ that our tongues can perceive, in addition to sweet, salty, bitter, and sour. For hundreds of years, philosophers and scientists contended that there were four flavors that we taste in foods, and that every food is comprised of some combination of sweet, salty, bitter, and sour. Then in the late 1800s, the famous Parisian chef Auguste Escoffier is said to have invented veal stock—a base for cooking almost anything—and it could not be pigeonholed into the four basic flavor categories. Around the same time, a Japanese scientist, Kikunae Ikeda, was interested in his own version of veal stock, so to speak. For him, it was dashi, a soup with a seaweed base. His hypothesis was that the deliciousness was beyond sweet, sour, salty, or bitter. It needed a new word. That word was umami, which he identified technically as glutamic acid, but which translates loosely as ‘good food’ or ‘yummy’ in Japanese.
Umami has since been described as the savory ‘fifth’ flavor. To experience it, you can imagine tasting foods that are naturally high in glutamic acid, or, alternatively, add MSG—monosodium glutamate—to foods. Some such foods are soy or fish sauce, mushrooms, anchovies, aged cheese, or ripe tomatoes. Even though these foods also may have elements of sweet, salty, bitter, or sour, there is that ‘certain something’ that is difficult to put a label on. This is the umami.
Which brings me back to wine. Pinot noir, since it is grown and vinified all over the world, can have dramatically different styles. New world Pinot, that from non-European countries, often is described as ‘fruit forward’. This expression basically means that there is ripe fruit flavor up front, as the dominant flavor. Sweet raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, or cherries come to mind. Pinot is described as ‘Burgundian’ if it is less fruit forward, and more complex with earthy notes. These are the savory qualities. Umami.
These are the best Pinot Noir wines, in my opinion. I like complexity. Earthy notes mingle with spicy; the smell of dried leaves crunching underfoot comes to mind. It is difficult to nail down to an exact description this flavor, and expert wine critics and writers have certainly tried. Perhaps it is why wine descriptions pull so many comparisons out of our language; a great wine has many flavors and layers. But maybe it is this umami—this element of savory complexity—that makes a great Pinot really great.
Like Pinot Noir, the Nebbiolo grape has a ‘certain something’ difficult to pinpoint that makes it so interesting and complex. Also like Pinot, Nebbiolo is thin-skinned, temperamental, and difficult to grow, but when done right, very much worth the effort. Nebbiolo is responsible for the great wines Barolo and Barbaresco, and is also bottled in numerous other appellations under their respective names. But Barolo and Barbaresco have perhaps given Nebbiolo more esteem than any other appellation. Barolo in fact is widely referred to as “the wine of kings, and the king of wines.”
It is also very often a misunderstood wine. I have had countless conversations with consumers who have the expectation that a Barolo is going to be a massive, hulk of a wine. But to have been in the commune of Barolo is to have experienced the amazing “certain something” that is Nebbiolo at its best.
When I visited, I was totally captivated by the aromas and flavors everywhere. Literally everywhere. Stepping outside my hotel room, I was assaulted with amazing fragrances that were all-surrounding. Trying to put my finger on it, I turned to the flavors of cocoa, truffles, figs, and, again, dried leaves. Umami. A savory-ness that is not quite sweet, not bitter, not sour, not salty.
I think the misunderstanding of Barolo and other Nebbiolo-based wines stems from their potential to be tannic, which is actually not a flavor, but a texture. High tannin feels like an astringency: a dry sensation around the mouth and gums. This will soften over time, which is the reason that Nebbiolo based wines usually will improve with age.
But texture aside, when one tastes a well made Barolo or Barbaresco, it is easy to be charmed by the combination and complexity of flavors. The same can be said for a great Pinot Noir. Perhaps it is this fifth flavor, this fall-like savory-ness that is responsible for the distinction between “good” and “great” wine. Perhaps it is the umami of red wine, and its season is now.
