96 Gaja Barbaresco

J

Joel Stewart

Joel Stewart
Showing correct nebbiolo traits, with a bit of wood (less than expected). The wood seemed smokey and injected with a bit of nam pla at first, but otherwise, recognizable and fairly straightforward nebb. Great with starch-loaded fatty foods.

Grip from tannins went to shibu-gaki mouth puckerin levels later, but the core of fruit inside was traditional, and alive...you can tell the fruit sorting shows here. Young stage still, with primary bright and vigorous cherry notes on top and the pain of the whip on the back end. What another decade might do here.

Also interesting to me is that the 97 Guigal La Turque (tho stored passively in the same bin) got so baked and jammy, whereas this puppy seems was well protected by massive tannins alone.
 
Glad it was correct but not mediocre. I'd never heard of nam pla, so at first I thought it was some ultra hip alliteration for napalm.
 
I'm drinking a Rinaldi 1998 Langhe Nebbiolo. It's been decanted for 6 hours already and it is still so lean, so tannic, so prim and proper.
 
And, this one at the 8 hr mark has gotten thicker, more bitter, and the fruit has up and vanished. One of those wines where the first few glasses were the best. Glad I did not decant.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
Disorderly word gamesGlad it was correct but not mediocre. I'd never heard of nam pla, so at first I thought it was some ultra hip alliteration for napalm.
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Fermented, salted anchovy brine used in Vietnamese (under a different name), Thai cooking etc... stinkier than soy, with it's fishy fermented-ness, but if used with care, an awesome stealth umami vehicle. Even a couple drops in a vinaigrette open the flavors up awesomely....
 
I often use it in conjunction with a touch of sugar to bring out the notes. A baker friend adds it, along with pepper, to his cakes instead of salt.
 
originally posted by Yixin:
I often use it in conjunction with a touch of sugar to bring out the notes. A baker friend adds it, along with pepper, to his cakes instead of salt.
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I can see that working really well in both cases.
 
Trust the chemist to take the mystery out of it! Emoticon bla bla here.

So why not just the powdered form?
 
originally posted by Yixin:
Trust the chemist to take the mystery out of it! Emoticon bla bla here.

So why not just the powdered form?
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You may get most of the oomph from the glutamate, but there are still other flavors to be had from 19 other amino acids, little peptides, etc. It's a very complex mixture.

I think there's a thread on this somewhere.
 
I myself have a couple of fish sauces (nam pla, worcestershire) in the house, and no MSG.

Italian chefs are curiously addicted to MSG in the form of bullion cubes, which I find disgusting.
 
All these things are heavy on the autolyzed protein. Enzymes in the fish digest the proteins, cutting them up into savory little bits, including their 20 constituent amino acid. One of these is glutamate, which we detect as umami.

Other stuff too, of course, I don't mean to get too reductionist.
 
That's my question, too. How is using MSG as what the French call (I love the expression) an "exhausteur de got"* any different than thickening a sauce with arrowroot, for instance? I mean, one can always be a purist and swear by beurre mani, but with other tricks in one's bag, one might avail oneself of those, I guess I'd opine. So the question is what MSG has or does that is wrong or simply inadequate faced with more "natural" products.

*And of course, I'm talking about just the MSG, not some bastardized cube of fake chicken 'n' herbs.
 
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