Waiting for the umami moment.
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Will you taste umami in your Christmas food? For sure, if it’s savoury. And it often is. I recently learned that umami means savoury. And at the risk of being accused of not accepting reality as it is (much like those who refused to accept that the earth is round), I must confess that I do not accept umami as one of the basic tastes.
How can something that no one understands be a basic taste? Salty, sweet, sour and bitter, everyone understands what it is. “Oh, this is so salty” is something everyone has experienced. But who has tasted something and burst out in an “Oh, this is so umami!”? On the other hand, recent taste research seems to have discovered that we have more than four (five?) basic tastes on the tongue. Even the spell checker in Word doesn’t believe in umami and marks it as misspelt.
How can something as vague as “savoury” be a basic taste? There is something fundamentally wrong with that. Savoury is what the whole dish turns out to be when you have mixed various ingredients. One person tried to explain it to me as “the umami taste sensation of these combined ingredients surpasses the taste of each individual ingredient”. But that is pretty obvious. That is what happens when someone knows how to cook. I don’t understand why you need to add the concept of umami to the mix.
In that case, the wine also has its umami moments. When the winemaker in Saint Emilion achieves the perfect blend that is so much better than his merlot or cabernet franc on its own. Or when the oak barrels are so delicately in the background that you don’t even notice it, but is there. When a bit of skin contact lightens up an otherwise somewhat flat chardonnay.
Winegrowers often draw parallels between winemaking and cooking. The winemaker’s kitchen is just a bit bigger. Wine is blended from different tanks, from oak barrels of different age, and from different grape varieties grown in different vineyards. Finally, a few per cent of petit verdot is added to season the wine and give it a little pepperiness. That’s when you get umami in the wine. Perhaps? Or do you get it just savoury?
Anyway, the ultimate umami moment must be when good wine is drunk together with good food (and preferably good company). Maybe this is it? Umami is not a taste but a state of mind. The wine and the food are better together than individually. No wonder, they are made for each other. Say the winemakers and we agree.
Travel in winter (but summer)
Some of our most exceptional wine tours are during the winter. They are filled with very special experiences. In summer weather in the southern hemisphere!
You have three fantastic long-distance tours to choose from:
- Chile-Argentina in January – very few places left
- South Africa in February – very few places left
These are tours with unique and magnificent experiences.
Travel in harvest time
And you can already start planning for wine tours next harvest season:
- Champagne, September 27 – October 1
- Champagne and Bordeaux, September 27 – October 5
- Bordeaux, October 1-5
More info on our wine tours here. “World’s Top Wine Tours”. Tours with the people who know wine and who have an unrivalled experience of wine and tours.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Enjoy the Brief!
Britt & Per
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What’s on at BKWine Tours
BKWine is also one of the world’s leading wine tour operators. Here’s what we currently have on our scheduled wine tour program:
- Chile-Argentina, January 16-29 – BOOK NOW
- South Africa, February 8-18 – BOOK NOW
- New Zealand, March 15-30
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- Champagne, September 27 – October 1
- Bordeaux and Champagne, Sept 27 – Oct 5
- Bordeaux, October 1-5
We also make custom designed wine tours.
We’re different than most other wine tour operators. We are people who know wine inside out, who travel constantly in wine regions, who write award winning books about wine. Who do this out of passion. Our tours are different from others. More in wine tours: BKWineTours.com.
