New biodynamic book shows best days for tasting wine
September 25, 2009
By Richard Woodard
Anyone saving those extra-special bottles for Christmas and the New Year might want to consult a new biodynamic tasting calendar – and hold off on the corkscrew.
According to a new book, When Wine Tastes Best, by biodynamic gurus Maria and Matthias Thun, optimum times for enjoying wines over the festive season are after 27 December, either before 3pm on New Year's Eve, or after midnight.
More importantly for some, Valentine's Day on 14 February is a Flower Day from 5am onwards.
Using more than 55 years' research, Maria Thun has based her calendar on every aspect of the lunar cycle, solar cycles, star constellations and the movement of the planets.
The calendar pinpoints Root Days, Flower Days, Leaf Days and Fruit Days: the days which, according to lunar cycles, are most auspicious for development of those parts of the plant.
Conscientious biodynamic gardeners and farmers sow and plant according to this calendar – and it is accepted that Flower Days and Fruit Days are the best days for tasting wine – a theory endorsed by wine professionals.
Hilary Wright points out in the book's foreword that UK supermarkets Tesco and Marks & Spencer use the calendar to help decide the timings of their wine tastings.
Jo Ahearne of M&S has said she was 'completely blown away' by the results of tastings carried out on root and flower days.
She told decanter.com that over a period of several years the tasting team found noticeable and consistent differences between the same wines tasted on different days.
'We would taste 140 wines on one day and find no faults, then 40% of the same wines, tasted the next day, would be slightly duller.'
Consulting the biodynamic calendar, the team ascertained the 'off' days were root days. 'I was cynical about it,' Ahearne said. 'But now I'm convinced.'
Marks & Spencer's trade tasting of its wine portfolio takes place on 1 October, a flower day.
When Wine Tastes Best, by Maria and Matthias Thun, is published at £3.99 by Floris Books on 24 September. www.florisbooks.co.uk.
Have your say... To post your comment on this story, email us at news@decanter.com
If I tasted a 140 wines spitting out most but swallowing 20 mls each taste I would have drunk 2.8 litres of wine. Next day, flower or fruit, I certainly would be '40% slightly duller.'
Caroll Casey
Whose to say that the "duller" view was not more accurate? The problem
with this pseudoscience is that there is no control and it was not
done blind, that is, there was an expectation of difference, and
miraculously, it was found. This is a common error in both sensory
assessment and in most anecdotal observations.
Timothy Milos, Winemaker, Napa, California
What a lot of crap.
Hubert Van Heghe
This information is truly a worthy addition to any wine taster's compendium. I have been pondering for years why certain wines taste better on some occasions than others. The fact that 55 years research has gone into producing these spectacular results is evidence of my own failure. Innocently, I had thought that wine tasted differently on different occasions because of differences in maturation, the ambience of the location, the influence of people you were tasting with, what you had eaten or drunk before, how sober you were, etc.
By extension, one would presume that biodynamically produced wines would be clearly superior to those produced by conventional means, and that such wines drunk on the appropriate biodynamic day would be nothing short of spectacular. And yet, I have been unable to divine any difference in quality between biodynamic wines and wines produced in the old way. Curious. And there have been these annoying studies which have shown no difference in nutrition or, in most cases, taste between organic, a very close relation of biodynamism, and normally-grown foods. Curiouser and curiouser.
Incidentally, I have been exploring another area which has received an undeserved degree of scepticism over the years. The problem is the lack of skin-flap between the legs and the body, which I think could be solved in the short term by surgery and, in the long term, through selective breeding. Minor modifications in speed of limb movement, achieved by rigorous excerise, together with extension of the tail and retraction of the head, should produce success. I give you: The Flying Pig!
Keep up the good work.
S.C. Chafe, Melbourne, Australia
Register on decanter.com absolutely free for news alerts delivered direct to your email inbox, and our fortnightly newsletter with advance notice of what’s coming up in Decanter magazine, offers, competitions and more.
PLUS registration is a one-stop shop for the Decanter magazine Archive and Decanter Fine Wine Tracker.
