One of the great mysteries of wine: why does it often taste like cherries, or tobacco, or mint?

Something I read a decade ago in Kermit Lynch’s Adventures on the Wine Route has delighted and mesmerized me ever since.

Kermit Lynch in his Berkeley, CA shop.

First, a shameless plug for this book. It reads like an adventure novel, plays like a road movie. It’s full of characters and travel and mysteries and pleasures. And I love Kermit Lynch because, in spite of the fact that he has one of the great palates on the planet, he’s down to earth about enjoying wine, at table, with people you like. And he thinks of wine as a living, breathing thing, the best of which are handmade, interact with local soils and breezes and plants.

So, in K. Lynch’s delightful travels, he reflects repeatedly on the great mysteries of wine. For instance, how does terroir imprint itself on wine? Why does wine so often express “extra-vinous” flavors: berries, flowers, spices?

Enter one of the great characters in the history of wine culture, Rene Loyau. Loyau was a negociant (negociants buy grapes or bulk wine–rather than harvesting solely from their own vineyards–and bottle under their names). Loyau was born in 1896, got into the wine business as a teenager, fought in World War I, made a living during the second war by transporting his wine by bicycle.

Mr. Lynch met Rene Loyau in a dripping, limestone cave above the Loire River…

Rene Loyau knew more about wine than any hundred of us put together

…where the latter was seated at an ancient, hand-cranked labeling machine. In the ensuing days, Lynch listened to stories of traveling, tasting, selecting, and making. Loyau lived and breathed the wine business, all with childlike wonder and full-blooded passion. He was determined to live and work until he was 100 (he just missed it). And he had a theory about why wine tastes like more than just grapes. He had tested this theory over and over again for nearly 80 years and was absolutely satisfied that it was solid. He gave this example.

Pere Loyau was tasting in the cellar of a Gevrey-Chambertin grower and noticed that the older vintages carried a flavor of wild currants, but the newer ones didn’t. He had never seen the vineyard, but took a shot in the dark and asked the grower when he had taken out his currant bushes. Bingo.

“There is only one possible explanation for this mysterious transfer of aromatic quality from one type of vegetation to another,” Pere Loyau exclaimed to Lynch. “Bees! The bees gather the nectar from blossoms–in this case, wild currant blossoms–then they alight on the grape blossoms, their little legs fuzzy with pollen from the currants.”

Kermit Lynch, bless him, is in no hurry to expose Rene Loyau’s theory of bees to scientific scrutiny because he doesn’t want to see this romantic notion dissected. The mystery is beautiful, the theory delicious.

I’m with Kermit Lynch. I love that universities like Davis are working to understand the science of wine, but from my perch, at the table, I love the mysteries and the stories even more.

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