TN: "This Pig is dead for nothing"

DaleW wrote on 18 Sep 2005 12:42:47 -0700: in the recipe they went for Bordeaux ('96 D> Calon-Segur), I followed their lead and went with the 1999 D> Leoville-Poyferre. Opened (a small glass poured, but not D> decanted) before the movie, it was smooth and ready by D> dinner time. Clean ripe dark berry/cassis fruit, there's a D> bit of chocolately new oak but even more Medoc earth. D> Graphite and smoke on the finish.

Forgive me Dale but "graphite" is a new tasting term to me and, as a chemist, I did not know it had one :-) Can you describe the flavor another way, perhaps?

James Silverton.

I tend to use graphite interchangably with "lead pencil". Of course, describing flavors and aromas is always more "searching for best analogy" than "this is it".

cheers,

DaleW wrote on 18 Sep 2005 13:25:28 -0700:

D> I tend to use graphite interchangably with "lead pencil". Of D> course, describing flavors and aromas is always more D> "searching for best analogy" than "this is it".

Sounds like it's more like the taste of cedar wood from a chewed pencil !

James Silverton.

Yes, this has been troubling me, too. It's used to describe the smell of pencil shavings, a smell that is ingrained in those of us of a certain age from our school daze. Parker has used "graphite" interchangably (IMO) with "pencil shavings," perhaps to sound more erudite or probably because he gets bored writing the same descriptors over and over and ... Anyone who's ever used graphite to lubricate a lock will know that it doesn't have much of a smell and doesn't at all resemble pencil shavings, which as you point out smell of the dried red cedar wood traditionally used to make the pencils (at least in the US). This gets into a different semantic trap, though, because "cedar" is also used as a descriptor, but I've always assumed that that refers to the live tree, which smells quite differently from a pencil. Hopelessly confusing, I realize *sigh*

Mark Lipton

p.s. To add even more confusion to the fire, I only recently learned that all the "cedars" native to the US (red, white, incense and Alaska) are *not* true cedars (genus Cedrus) but actually members of the same family as Cypresses. Go figger...

Mark wrote on Mon, 19 Sep 2005 04:21:59 GMT:

ML> James Silverton wrote: ??>> DaleW wrote on 18 Sep 2005 12:42:47 -0700: ??>> in the recipe they went for Bordeaux ('96 D>>> Calon-Segur), I followed their lead and went with the 1999 D>>> Leoville-Poyferre. Opened (a small glass poured, but not D>>> decanted) before the movie, it was smooth and ready by D>>> dinner time. Clean ripe dark berry/cassis fruit, there's a D>>> bit of chocolately new oak but even more Medoc earth. D>>> Graphite and smoke on the finish. ??>>

??>> Forgive me Dale but "graphite" is a new tasting term to me ??>> and, as a chemist, I did not know it had one :-) Can you ??>> describe the flavor another way, perhaps?

ML> Yes, this has been troubling me, too. It's used to ML> describe the smell of pencil shavings, a smell that is ML> ingrained in those of us of a certain age from our school ML> daze. Parker has used "graphite" interchangably (IMO) with ML> "pencil shavings,"

I guess, I should not be too worried about a term used in wine tasting but, now that you mention it, "pencil shavings" does rather accurately describe an odor that I remember from several tastings and does differentiate from the very different cedar smell! I suppose a purist might wonder if pencils are made from cedar wood in places other than the US :-)

James Silverton.

I'll disagree here. Take a soft good-quality pencil (a 1 or 2) and taste the sharpened end - there's a distinct taste there, and that's what I'm referencing (don't use a hard pencil or mechanical pencil lead, there's too much filler). That's a very distinctly different creature than the aroma of pencil shavings,which is much more wood-driven.

I'm not familiar enough with Parker's notes to say whether he uses pencil-lead/graphite > James Silvert> > DaleW wrote on 18 Sep 2005 12:42:47 -0700:

Yes, I get the smell of pencil shavings quite often in youngish red wines, although most recently with the '97 Antinori Chianti I opened last week. It's somewhat similar (to me) to the "minerality" I often pick up in white wines. And, I too wondered whether our Euro contingent would have the same organoleptic association, since our pencils are made from the incense cedar, which AFAIK is native to N. America.

Mark Lipton

[snip!]

Graphite may not smell, but it does have a metallic taste to it. I always assumed 'pencil lead' referred to a flavor and not a scent.

Dimitri

D. wrote on Mon, 19 Sep 2005 20:34:27 +0000 (UTC):

DG> In article , DG> Mark Lipton wrote: ??>>

DG> [snip!] ??>>

??>> Anyone who's ever used graphite to lubricate a lock will ??>> know that it doesn't have much of a smell and doesn't at ??>> all resemble pencil shavings, which as you point out smell ??>> of the dried red cedar wood traditionally used to make the ??>> pencils (at least in the US).

DG> Graphite may not smell, but it does have a metallic taste DG> to it. I always assumed 'pencil lead' referred to a flavor DG> and not a scent.

I tried rolling a mechanical pencil lead around in my mouth but could not detect any taste at all. That's not to deny that others might taste something and pencil leads are not pure graphite, anyway. They contain varying amounts of binder that change the "hardness" of the lead. I think the binder was originally clay but other materials are used these days. However, I think I am satisfied that I now know what "graphite" means if a taster uses the term.

James Silverton.

As I noted ( snipped-for-privacy@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com) you can't use a mechanical pencil lead. They're hardened with fillers to stand alone. It needs to be a #2 or better a #1 (might I suggest the Mirado line,I think it's the Black Warrior that Betsy uses to mark parts). There is a distinct minerally (almost metallic, as Dmitri says) taste. If I use lead pencil or graphite I'm do not mean pencil shavings. :)

Hmmm... I'm clearly going to have to do some research, Dale. I suspect that we're talking about the same flavor/smell, but that remains to be seen. I agree that the smell of an unsharpened pencil is definitely

*not* what I'm talking about, but honestly it's been so long since I've sharpened a pencil that I'll have to track down a sharpener tomorrow just to refresh my memory.

OK. More on this later...

Mark Lipton

Salut/Hi Mark Lipton,

le/on Tue, 20 Sep 2005 05:07:55 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

And to be more specific, cedar wood. It's a fairly well known characteristic of red bordeaux - I remember first being _really_ struck by it when Ch Cos d'Estournel 1970 hit full maturity. I tend not to use the "lead pencil" descriptive as I find it less evocative (to me) than cedar (cigar box).