The mystique of Red in wine

If you are web designer, you are taught to be aware about the significance of colours in your web pages. Colours are rich in symbolism and meaning in different cultures even if they do not make sense. You rarely hear of the bride wearing a black wedding dress because black is worn for mourning and reflects death, sorrow, the Devil or bad luck. So a black web background on a web page may not attract a lot of visitors from some cultures. What has colour got to do with wine you may well ask?

Describing colours is more complex than the taste of a rare vintage wine because the colour palette offers so many combinations, hues and shades. Fortunately wine is binary, it either Red (ok Rose) or White. Which wine do you think is more popular in Asia and why?

Red has special meaning to most of Asia. In China it is the colour of the communist party, the traditional bridal colour, good luck, prosperity, longevity, celebration and joy. In India, red means purity. To the Japanese, red is life. To Christians and the Jews it symbolises blood, sacrifice, passion, love and sin. For Europeans red means danger but love-hearts are always coloured red, and so are the for sale signs!

Last month I read a Reuters interview with the former Singaporean cardiologist Mr NK Yong who is a vintage wine collector and consultant to restaurants. Apparently he converted his swimming pool into a wine cellar where he stocks some 12,000 bottles of wine. Asians tend to find some medicinal and aphrodisiac quality in almost any food, plant or drink. And Red wine is no exception. A carefully poured glass of red wine, whose stem is elegantly caressed by the fingers of the wine lover, gives the consumer status and recognition in Asia.

While one would expect Asians to drink chilled and cool white wines in the heat and humidity of the tropics, the statistics tell us a different story. Wine-Searcher.com released its search statistics which showed that in 2008, wine consumers made some 32 million searches on its wine site. Of these searches, Asians chose the most expensive Bordeaux (Red) wines above all other wines.

There is a certain mystique about the RED in wine, what the British call the claret (or is it Clear-Red). You can almost sell any Red wine in the Asian market for its aphrodisiac and medicinal claims alone. If you are the Red Wine Matador, Asia is all bullish and ready to charge at you. Are you seeing too much Red as you read my post? If you are a wine exporter or a wine consultant in Asia, is this also your experience?

The Asian Cornucopia

Joe Zugelder responded to my first post by saying that winespeak used by Old World wine gurus and wine aficionados are not “snobby per se, just frozen in its evolution”. In linguistics, this is called "fossilisation". Joe may be right but I still contend that one is constrained by what one can recall from ones cultural context and the limited scope of ones vocabulary. I am certain that the "frozen ones" can be thawed out with a little exposure – to a bit of the red rocket chilli perhaps.

This week I want to present the Asian cornucopia to our Old World wine consumers and pundits with a view to expanding their horizons beyond Western shores. Asia with its teeming billions presents the wine sellers a gargantuan market. If 10 percent of the Indians and Chinese population alone can be convinced to spend 10 dollars per annum on wine, that would be a hefty revenue for any wine merchant. But most of Asia is famed for its “chai” (tea) drinking habit. The British and the Americans also acquired a taste for tea. Remember the Boston Tea Party of 1773 when the American colonists dumped the tea belonging to the British East India Company in the Boston Harbour? They did this in protest because of high taxes (not a lot has changed). And now the West is trying to convert the East to become wine drinkers but how can the Old World communicate the wine jargon in the Asian context?

Have a look at the picture in this blog. The Asian cornucopia presents a wide variety of fruits such as rambutan, mango, duku, soursop, durian, stafruit, jackfruit, mangosteen, coconut, longan, mata-kuching etc. I can name another dozen or more Asian fruits. Do you know their tastes? Which wines represent the aromas and tastes of these fruits?

Asians are status conscious and they are more likely to consume wine at special events and pay a premium for these. They’d show off the wines they have bought to outbid one another. If you can convince them by describing your wine bouquet and taste using a fruit from the image above, you will not only convince them to buy your wine but might even convert a chai-drinker to a wine connoisseur. Also check out my recommended book, "Wine with Asian Food"

Next time you pop into Chinatown or Little India in the USA or Europe, why not train your tongue and nose to experience the exotic tastes and aromas of Asian fruits?

Have you tasted any of these fruits? They are are exquisite in tastes and texture. Which Asian fruits can you experience in your wines?

Smells like shit tastes like heaven

As the idiom goes, “One man’s meat is another man’s poison”. What one likes in wine may not be the preference of another. A similar sentiment is expressed in the title of this blog article when referring to a unique Asian fruit. I want to talk about this fruit in relation to faulty wine.

Discussing faulty wine is not a common topic. Some would argue that it’s not a fault at all but a unique and funky character of wine. Here I am alluding to the elusive five-syllabic oenological term “Brettanomyces”, often referred to as Brett. Jancis in her “Oxford Companion to Wine” describes Brett as “a spoilage yeast” perpetuated by less than hygienic conditions in the barrels resulting in off-flavours in wine. Although Brett is naturally occurring yeast, its excessive presence in wine is said to taint the wine.

While I have not experienced brett, wine tasters and writers use various descriptors to explain the smell and taste of brett wine. These range from mousey, metallic, smells like horse barnyards, band-aid, sweaty saddles, manure-like etc.

An Asian fruit found in Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand commonly known as the King of Fruits is as controversial as Brett. The fruit I would like to introduce is “Durian” (Durio Zibethinus). This fruit has a love-hate relationship with many western tourists but to Asians it is one of the most loved and popular tropical fruits. It is banned in many Asian airports, hotels and public transport systems. Durian’s aroma is an overwhelming stink of dragon’s breath or the waft of an open sewer. Yet its buttery pulp is the nectar of the gods – sweet and slimey and other-worldly.

But I wonder whether this spiky-shelled fruit is one that would better explain the subtlety or the boldness of Brettanomyces rather than a whole list of metaphors and wine descriptors mentioned earlier. Although Durian is not known in the West, you may purchase or smell one in your local Asian grocery refrigerator. Wine Consultant and writer Randy Caparoso in his blog has some great ideas for food that go with bretty wines, including the Durian.

If you are selling or explaining Bretty wines to Asians why not get off your high horse and sweaty saddle and just mention Durian and it will make sense immediately. Isn’t language in context more powerful than a mouthful of "brettygook"?