Timeless Words of Wine Wisdom from Rodney Strong

By Katie Ambrosi, Wine Club Manager

There was a fun article in today’s Napa Valley Registrar about a staff writer in a monthly St. Helena Star/Napa Valley Vintners Wine Tasting Panel, who found herself slightly unprepared and a bit intimidated on the subject of Zinfandel.

Surrounded by a room full of glass-swirling, aroma-sniffing wine experts, equipped like a true Oenophile Regime with the jargon necessary to fill up an entire wine tasting dictionary, she quickly doubted her own wine judging expertise then realized, wait, she was the consumer in the room, perfectly qualified with the most important wine knowledge – what tasted good to her and what didn’t.

Rodney Strong (far left) & friends at the 1981 Windsor Vineyards holiday party.

It immediately brought to my mind an article that Windsor Vineyards’ founder Rodney Strong wrote for a wine club newsletter way back in 1982.  For those of you who aren’t steeped in Windsor Vineyards’ history, we were founded in 1959 by Sonoma County wine legend Rodney Strong, which means we are celebrating are 50th anniversary this year. As a result we (and me in particular), have been spending a lot of time reviewing our past and have been lucky enough to come across some gems.

Here is the article I mentioned, like today’s Napa Valley Registar article nearly 30 years later, this is a good reminder of what’s most important about wine – that you like to drink it!

One good Term Deserves Another

The wine world, just like the worlds of basketball or ballet, has its own language, its own dictionary of symbols and cliches. In part this language allows communication among the workmen of the industry. It also serves the wine drinking layman– to expand his or her sensory delight and understanding of the way many subtleties of fine wine, and…occasionally…to indulge that perfectly human impulse to impress one’s friends!

Sometimes wine language is born among the white coats and test tubes of the laboratory… too little pH, too much tartaric acid, centrifuge, heavy S02, too much (or little) tanning, Brix, degrees… Spoken by winemakers or critics, wine language sounds more like poetry– intense and personal.

And just as there are wines of dubious merit, there are terms to describe them: a thin Chardonnay, a flabby zinfandel, an insipid Grenache Rose, a weak-kneed Petite Sirah. We wouldn’t like them as wines any more than we’d like them as friends! And then on the positive side, there’s an august Cabernet Sauvignon, a noble Pinot Noir, a supple Johannisberg Riesling, a lean French Colombard…wines– or friends– we’d enjoy and admire.

A whole wine vocabulary now exists– words like flower, soft, silky, satiny, clean (overused word #1), crisp (overused word #2), herbaceous, aristocratic, disarming, light, fruity, flinty, fleshy, (the three y’s), fresh, cloying, intense, graceful, lush, rich, muscular, varietal, luxurious, sumptuous, green apple, green olive (salad anyone?), berry-like and so on and on… Sometimes these words say what we mean, and sometimes they fail completely, trying to translate into language what can really only be understood through seeing, smelling and tasting.

Only rarely do we hear a Wine Authority simply say, “I like this wine.” Period Just as we sometimes need to say to a friend, or hear from one, “I just like you, without qualifications or explanation, so with wines.

So, I like these wines, just because I like them. Without excess verbiage, let me mention them: 1978 Cabernet Sauvignon River West, 1978 Merlot River West, 1981 Chardonnay Garfield Estate, 1981 Johannisberg Riesling River West, 1981 Gewurztraminer, 1978 Pinot Noir Special Reserve and the 1981 French Colombard River West.

Maybe wine writers miss the point, trying to find just the right word and losing sight of the wine while looking for the descriptive phrase. It’s really simple––these wines I admire. I like them. They please me. I think you’ll share those feelings.

-Rodney Strong, 1982