 The Japanese had been reportedly complaining about the white wines available in the market being too dry or two sweet for their cuisine. Jacob’s Creek has introduced a white wine blend of Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio and Sauvignon Blanc that lifts fruit aromas, adding subtle flavours of pear, peach and citrus. It is crisp with softened corners that yield a refreshing yet smooth mouth-feel.
According to a media report, Jacob's Creek recently presented its first tailor-made wine, which was created by working with leading Japanese sushi chef and owner of Michelin-star sushi restaurant Ginza Sushi Kou, Mamoru Sugiyama, in Tokyo's fashionable Ginza district.
‘Wah’ has been made with sushi in mind. Says Takuya Kusuda, a wine educator from Tokyo, living in Osakaand a fellow judge at the HKIWSC held last week in Hong Kong, ‘Jacob’s Creek released the wine a couple of months ago. I have not tasted it yet but I am told it was made especially for the Japanese market.’ He told me that ‘Wah’ was a Japanese word conveying the meaning ‘something Japanese.’
The wine has also been released in Thailand a week ago and is currently targeted at selected leading Japanese restaurants in Bangkok. The next stop could well be India where Jacob’s Creek is the biggest single brand. Adrian Pinto, the National Head of Sales for Pernod Ricard says, ‘we will bring it in India when we think the timing is right for us. But we don’t have plans for immediate import.’
Wah Kya Swaad Hai
I told Kusuda and the other fellow judges in Hong Kong that ‘Wah’ was a Hindi word that meant ‘wow’ or the exclamatory ‘great!’ Therefore, the label might work well in the Indian market as well. This brought to focus my recent infatuation with a related gastronomical Hindi word ‘Swaad’ (a short and colloquial word for ‘swaadisht’) that I have been propagating for use in the gourmet dictionary and wine terminology-at least each of the 25 judges has been now using it in jest whenever they find some dish or wine exceptionally delicious and ‘yummy’.
I had gone for a day to Macau for a NZ wine tasting with Bob Campbell MW, the noted wine expert from New Zealand followed by Macanese dinner with a few of the judges, before the wine competition started on October 2. Some dishes were finger-licking delicious-they had a touch of Goan fare and fire that made me exclaim that it was really ‘Swaad.’ My friends liked the word and found it appropriate when I explained that to me it meant a notch better than being just delicious, even if in a rustic or more pedestrian way. To me it meant finger licking delicious, leaving me with a feeling of total gastronomical satisfaction.
The same concept could be applied to wine as well. A wine may have all the components - enticing flavour, balance and homogeneity, perfumed nose, long after-taste but for an ordinary person, it should be delicious and the best compliment for the wine from a novice or a connoisseur could be:
Wow! What a Taste!!
Great! How deeeleeeeshhhus! or
WAH! kya SWAAD hai!!
Subhash Arora
I implore my fellow tasters many of whom are educators, sommeliers, MW and aspiring to be the ones, to use the word Swaad in describing a wine whenever they think it is appropriate so that it describes the emotion while drinking wine
Tags: Pernod Ricard, Jacob's Creek, Wah, Ginza Sushi Kou, Mamoru Sugiyama, Takuya Kusuda, Tokyo, Adrian Pinto, Bob Campbell, Swaad |