What Makes A Wine Complex?

[Rebel Rose]

What makes a wine complex?

I found myself pondering this question this weekend with a friend. We were drinking a popular but very extracted style of pinot. He loved it / I was okay with it. It was an excellent wine, very delicious, but not what I would order in a restaurant to go with tuna tartare and a cheese fondue. As it turns out, we were grilling gorgonzola-stuffed prawns and cube steaks, so it was a good match.

As we discussed the wine, I pointed out that while I found it delicious--and dark--I didn't think it was complex and interesting.

"What do you mean?" he asked, shocked. "You and I just listed a long stream of flavors associated with this wine!"

And so we had--blue and red plums, cherries, cola, chocolate, root beer, tobacco, and a hint of dried apricot.

But then I found myself explaining, although I'd never really thought about it before . . . that I look for contrasts in a wine. Bright and dark flavors. And this wine was all at the brown end of the flavor spectrum. There was nothing to give it any lift, tension, or contrast. So no matter how many descriptors we came up with, the wine was still, to me at least, not complex.

In the act of trying to explain what I was looking for, I came to know something about myself that I hadn't recognized or verbalized before.

What is your definition of 'complex'?

And to keep the discussion from becoming too ephemeral, I hope some of us will post notes on specific wines, and explain why, or why not, that particular wine could be called complex.

[JohnL]

Good question.

Complexity in anything (films, art, wine, music) is what brings one back over and over each time experiencing and discovering something else.

In wine there are so many flavors fruit and non fruit that can manifest.

I had a Colgin Herb Lamb vineyard cabernet (the 91 0r 92 I think) that had lots of fruit flavors that were complex--black fruits and a subtle blue fruit--blue berries along with some spice, Everytime I went back there was another flavor note to add to the mix.

I also loved a Jasnieres I had recently. There was almost no fruit flavors but is was all wet stones and wax and herbs.

I think there is a tendency to categorize and dismiss wines too quickly.

"Oh another fruit bomb" or over extracted wine or "just another old world wine with no fruit."

Often one should relax and try to enjoy a wine for what it really is and not dismiss it for what it is not!