Matt Kramer, True Taste; The Seven Essential Wine Words

Matt Kramer, True Taste; The Seven Essential Wine Words, Cider Mill Press, Kennebunkport 2015

The common denominator was (and still is) that each of the vineyards cited as “best” represents a consolidation of attributes rather than an exemplar of one or another. In Gevrey-Chambertin, for example, there are seven grand crus, which is a remarkable number for one small village. Each of these grand crus has its signature quality. For example, Grotte-Chambertin is notable for an intense wild cherry scent and taste, hence griotte (wild cherr). Mazi-Chambertin is considered to be the most sauvage or wild-tasting; Ruchottes-Chambertinis thought the most stony-tasting. / Yet Chambertin was and still is collectively seen by the producers in Gevrey-Chambertin as their single best vineyard. Why? Because it consolidates more attributes in one wine than any of the others. (46-7)

Take the French word sève for example. Literally, it translates to sap. But the definition hardly captures the quality that this significant term is trying to convey. The idea of sève is identifying textural density in wine—or its absence. The very existence of such a word signals how important French tasters thought that texture is in fine wine. A wine lacking sève is always considered lesser; one marks it down as “dilute” or “watery”. It’s a critical feature in fine wine everywhere. / For our part, we might choose simply to say “texture.” However, the idea of sève is more than just texture, which is—for me, anyway—a broader, if still important, word. Keep in mind that texture can be enhanced in the winemaking process by various techniques. (62)

Cosmetic complexity is more common than one might imagine thanks to a variety of winemaking techniques designed to give shallow wines an illusion of depth. You have, for example, various oak treatments that flavor a wine (different oaks, different degrees of toast…); barrel fermentation (which creates a thicker “mouth feel”); lees stirring (which imports flavor from the enzymatic breakdown of the yeasts); the use of vacuum concentrators (which removes water to make the wine more concentrated)” (71)

Thomas Dekker, The Stratford-Upon-Avon Library 4

Thomas Dekker, The Stratford-Upon-Avon Library 4, Harvard 1968

Well I mean, if well ‘tis taken (The Bellman’s Cry, poem in Lanthorne and Candle-light; Or The Bell-mans second Nights walke)

What more makes a man to loathe that mongrel madness, that half-English, half-Dutch sin, drunkenness, than to see a common drunkard acting his beastly scenes in the open street? (English Villainies Discovered by Lantern and Candlelight, 177)

Being the best and ablest gardener to week the republic (182)

...the courageous stag or the nimble-footed deer; these are the noblest hunters and they exercise the noblest game; these by following the chase get strength of body, a free and undisquieted mind, magnanimity of spirit, alacrity of heart and an unwearisomeness to break through the hardest labours. Their pleasures are not insatiable but are contented to be kept within limits, for these hunt within parks enclosed or within bounded forests. (210)

Will you walk a turn or two in your orchard or garden? I would there confer. (226)

Beezlebub keeps the register book of all the bawds, panders and coutesans (233)

When the Devil takes the anatomy of all damnable sins he looks only upon her body. When she dies he sits as her coroner. When her soul comes to Hell all shun that there as they fly from a body struck with the plague here. She hath her door-keeper and she herself is the Devil’s chambermaid. / And yet, for all this that she’s so dangerous and detestable, when she hath croaked like a raven on the eves then comes she into the house like a dove: when her villainies, like the moat about a castle, are rank, thick and muddy with standing long together, then to purge herself is she drained out of the suburbs as though her corruption were there left behind her, and as a clear stream is let into the City. (234)