Why wine turns you on

The vocabulary of wine appreciation is a crazy thing. Suggest to the uninitiated that Sauvignon Blanc smells of “cat’s pee” and you’re pretty sure to be met with gales of laughter. You also have to love the euphemism that equates the aromatics on Pinot Noir to “farmyard”.

It’s curious what turns people on. Eben Sadie of Columella and Palladius fame is outspoken in his dislike for Sauvignon Blanc. “Put me on ‘Fear Factor’ and I could cope with the cockroaches and the snakes. Just don’t make me drink Sauvignon.” Wine critic Michael Fridjhon recently came up with the arresting observation that “oxidation [on Chenin Blanc] – with all due respect to the lunatic fringe – is a step away from necrophilia.”

During the festive season, I was sharing a glass of Orange River Colombard 2010 with my mother-in-law, Jenny Ferreira, custodian along with father-in-law Naas, of the truly spectacular garden at Klein Optenhorst in Wellington. Not a wine of great pedigree, but it did achieve a value rating of 20/20 in the 2011 Wine magazine Best Value Wine Guide sponsored by Ultra Liquors having been rated 2½ Stars while selling for slightly over R20 a bottle.

The Colombard had been open for a day or so and had a very particular note on the nose which I described as “musky”. This prompted Jenny to draw a volume from the book-shelf entitled “Anatomy of a Rose – The Secret Lives of Flowers” by Sharman Apt Russell (William Heinemann: 2001).

Chapter Three entitled “Smelling Like a Rose” explores why we are so attracted to the smell of flowers, their scents appearing in our soaps and perfumes, bubble baths, lotions, shampoos, deodorants, air fresheners and cleaning products.

Russell points out that most perfume today has three odour groups or notes.”The top note comes first, with a floral highlight such as lilac or lily,” she writes, and the comparisons with wine are immediate, lilac being a classic descriptor for Shiraz. “The middle note provides body and uses the essential oils in jasmine, lavender, or geranium.” Again, Shiraz comes to mind, these descriptors applying to a more full-bodied, rich and ripe example. In general, floral aromas are very much part of the vernacular when it comes to wine assessment, “rose petal” being synonymous with Gewürztraminer and “violets” with Cabernet Sauvignon, for instance.

Where Russell’s treatise gets interesting is when she describes the third, or base notes of flowers: “[These include] animal products, such as musk from rutting deer or in the pasty fluid from the anal glands of civet cats. These last products also add the intangible qualities of body and warmth.”

Here, I suspect, lies a clue as to the great attraction of über-fashionable varieties Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir. According to “The Oxford Companion to Wine” (Oxford University Press: 1999), descriptions of Sauvignon typically include “musky… and even ‘tomcats’”. The esteemed reference’s entry on Pinot Noir, meanwhile, reads as follows: “If Cabernet produces wines to appeal to the head, Pinot’s charms are decidedly more sensual and more transparent.” Want more specifics? When I was younger and more impressionable, Giorgio Dalla Cia, previously of Meerlust, put it to me that good Pinot should smell like vagina (and good Chardonnay of semen…).

Back to Russell, who argues the following: “The human body has its own array of scent from glands scattered on the face, scalp, breasts, under the arms, and in the genital area. Oddly, humans are desensitized to this last smell. Long ago we suppressed our ability to sniff out ovulation. One theory suggests that when we began living in complex social groups, smells of sexual readiness threatened the pair bonding needed to raise children. Frankly, culturally, we are a bit disgusted by our own odour. We do not want to smell too human.”

Discussing the above, a colleague proffered that a great wine should not be so perfumed as to suggest a woman who had doused herself in Chanel No. 5 but rather who had applied merely two drops. I countered that a great wine for me was analogous to a woman who exuded her own pheromones and was utterly irresistible as a consequence. My wife is quite smelly, if you must ask.

For more by Christian Eedes, visit www.whatidranklastnight.co.za