BU - Bruliam

Annie Murphy Paul’s opinion piece in the March 17th New York Times unravels our brain’s intricate interconnectedness by linking fiction and neuroscience. In “Your Brain on Fiction,” she details how reading words like “lavender” or “cinnamon” cross stimulate both the language centers and olfactory regions of our brains. Lines like “The singer had a velvet voice” tickle and arouse the sensory cortex whereas the sentence, “The singer had a pleasing voice” does not. In other words, reading metaphors of texture and touch or similes of scent ignites the same neural synapses as when we actually grasp sandpaper or inhale lilacs. Paul writes, “The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering in real life.” The research she cites hails from lofty academic institutions like Emory University and the University of Language Dynamics in France. But we lovers of good fiction knew this already.

If you’ve ever cried during a novel or spent a sleepless night obsessing over a fictional character’s bad choices, you’ve experienced firsthand the enchanted allure of prose. For me, the scent of honeysuckle is indivisibly bound to the fictional character Quentin Compton. That distinct, sticky, floral smell still evokes Quentin’s complicated, relationship to his sister, although I first read The Sound and the Fury over20 years ago. I suppose this is the inverse silhouette of Paul’s intention. Here the actual smell of honeysuckle invokes both my olfactory cortex and brain’s language centers. But the intent is the same. Expressive writing sticks.

Do you suppose the same neural pathways are stimulated by wine writing? How might mediocre wine writing compare to metaphor and adjective heavy wine descriptions? After all, wine notes are all about aromas, flavors, and lofty comparisons. I’ve read plenty of wine reviews comparing pinot noir to pine needles, damp earth, mushrooms, and trees. What if instead the reviewer had written the pinot “evokes the prickly, sap-sticky pine needles of an evergreen forest floor.” Would our enjoyment of that first sip be more intense? If our brain recruits not only our language centers but also olfactory (smell), memory, and sensory cortex (texture) might our drinking experience be richer or more nuanced? Does just reading about that wine rouse our brain as fully as actually drinking it? MRI studies suggest yes. These imaging studies map multiple regions of our brain responding to written stimuli, quantifying scientifically “why the experience of reading can feel so alive.” Sure the cozy smell of chocolate chip cookies makes my mouth water. Reading about it just makes me hungry and grumpy.

And how about a played-out metaphor? Paul notes that some idiomatic vernacular, like “a rough day,” is so overused that your brain processes the slang like any other verbage. The extra sensory textural punch is lost. I’m sure the same holds true for those generic pinot descriptors like “ripe cherry/berry.” Your brain codes those wine notes as linguistic spam, just another bottle of juicy blackberry pie and huckleberry brambles. Still it would be fascinating to set up an experiment that tracked which brain regions are stimulated by richly compelling (aromatic and textural) wine vocabulary compared to passive, generic wording. After reading the wine notes, you’d give test subjects a taste test. You’d offer the blinded taste testers two identical glasses of wine, each paired with very different tasting notes. I wonder how many blind taste testers would correctly identify both glasses as being filled with the same stuff?

By the way, if my super compelling tasting notes leave you craving a glass of pinot, don’t blame me, it’s your brain.

At Bruliam, we are lucky to get our barrel advice from Todd Stanfield, who has represented Tonnellerie Remond for many years. Todd recently spent the morning tasting though my 2011’s and was kind enough to talk to me about the art of barrel aging.

If you can’t see the video, please click here.

The most recent Pinot File newsletter included a short write up on the 2010 Bruliam pinot noirs that we poured at the World of Pinot Noir last month, along with a picture of Kerith and I working the crowd (see below). 

As this was our first public tasting of the 2010 pinots, it is very gratifying to see a positive early review.  The wines are being sent in for formal reviews in the next couple of weeks:

Brigade member Ted S. sent in this picture to express his approval for our 2011 Rose of Pinot Noir.  Ted and his wife Donna earned an early preview of the Rose after they came up to Healdsburg in February to help us bottle it. 

The rest of you will get your chance to try Kerith’s first ever Rose (along with the 2010 Rockpile Zin!) at our summer wine party, tentatively planned for the first weekend in June in San Diego.  Date and details to come. 

Until then you’ll need to live vicariously through Ted.

Whoppin’. Event volunteers and insiders in the know phonetically enunciate each phoneme of W.O.P.N. The acronym for World of Pinot Noir is thus pronounced “whoppin’.” And whoppin’ pretty well describes this two day tribute to all things pinot. There was a whoppin’ throng of thirsty revelers vying for tastes at the Kosta-Browne table. And a whoppin’ flock of butterflies in stomach in anticipation of the Saturday Grand Tasting. I nearly wiped out delivering my bottles to the media room. Clutching a bottle in each hand with a third stashed in my armpit, I unsuccessfully sidestepped a lounge chair. At the last second, I caught my balance by squeezing my inner thighs and sort of straddling the chaise lounge, like Jenna Jamison, except worse and unsexy. Only 40 or 50 people noticed, all potential Bruliam customers queued up for the tasting tents. Luckily, I roll incognito, camouflaged by inconspicuous “Bu” logo wear. By the time I reached the media room, flustered and red faced, a reviewer gave me the once over and declared, “Kerith, you look nervous.” Uh, yeah. I was glad I’d reapplied deodorant before leaving my hotel room.

Earlier, I’d tried to quench my nerves by walking laps around the empty tents. Nursing my neurotic compulsion for preparedness, I’d allowed myself 119 minutes to set up one map, three framed tasting notes, and arrange a stack of business cards. That left me 113 minutes to obsess before the crowds converged. So I walked the tents. Besides, incanting the names on the winery placards seemed a better way to undermine my confidence. In another 109 minutes I’d be pouring my pinots alongside the best known, most delicious, and highest rated pinot noirs in California and Oregon. “Kosta-Browne, Pisoni, LaFollette, Domaine Serene…” I chanted my warbling invocations to Bacchus. In the final jittery moments before the gate opened, a reviewer from a national publication approached my table neighbor, Alta Maria. He ambled over to offer kudos for the well-loved cult pinot, Native9. But before he wandered away, he looked at me and said, “You know, I really enjoyed your wines in the media room. You ought to submit them to our magazine.” Brian, seeing me starting to tear up, punched me under the table and hissed, “There’s no crying at wine events.”

Over the next three hours, many incredible, talented, passionate (and even famous) winemakers stopped by the Bruliam table to taste my 2010’s. Their assessments were overwhelmingly positive and complimentary. There were lots of “great job’s” and “keep it up’s.” By 6 pm, the sun had dropped behind the Pacific horizon, and the tents slowly cleared out. My clammy, nervous sweat was evaporating, and I was freezing. Incredibly proud, but damn cold.