Shapes

Wine notes - not least my own - are littered with references to shapes.  This in itself is a pretty bizarre idea, since of course the fluid itself can have no actual shape. 

By shape one is really seeking to define a movement. The wine, on entering the palate, starts to move into a shape.  Many shapes are used to describe the way the fruit moves across the palate, but truly I think these can be categorized at the headline level into just two classes. 

A wine is said to be “Round”  if the fruit moves horizontally across the palate after entry.  This word seems to be used quite universally to describe this sensation. There is a width and breadth to the way the wine fills the mouth - particularly with reference to its fruit. Certain grape varietals seem to have the propensity to deliver their fruit horizontally in this way.  Pinot Noir grapes grown in alluvial soils in Burgundy - from lower down the slope and so on deeper topsoils and with less limestone and more clay - would appear to result in rounder wines. Likely this type of soil also inclines other grape varieties to express their fruit horizontally. Other descriptions might include “Lateral”.  Wines with especially ripe expansive fruit seem to me to do this.  The fruit coats all parts of the mouth.

The contrast is a wine that is described as “Vertical’ or “Linear" in the way the wine - and especially its fruit - moves across the palate. The wine has a lot of direction towards its finish and seems to by-pass any sense of roundness. The sense of motion can be quite strong in these wines. No time to linger and caress the palate with voluptuous fruit. I think this urgency may have more to do with the wine’s acid than its fruit because I think a flabby wine - lacking in acid - will surely have the sensation of being ‘round”.   To be vertical a wine must surely have higher than average acid.  It is also possible I am told that this sense of movement can come from the wine’s tannin, which drives the wine forward. Wines grown in very poor stoney soils may have a tendency to be vertical in shape.

Then there is Romanee Conti itself - said to be a “spherical wine” - which presumably means it moves in all directions at once. 

What may complicate the idea of roundness a little is that Pinot Noir seems to have a unique capacity to appear to expand its flavors in the mouth - it does this to a degree other grapes do not. Pinot Noir comes to you - you never have to chew the wine to sense the fruit. But this quality does not mean the wine is properly described as “round”.   

Tannins themselves can be defined by reference to a coarseness of grain - from silk through velvet and on to fine grained and then gravelly. This is another reference to shape in an effort to describe texture. Here one is not describing movement so much as a particle size, which is an attempt to define the degree of fineness of the texture of the tannins as they present themselves in the mouth.

The picture is by Juan Gris