Flavor-profiling tomatoes: A serious business

Directly after my experience in Civic Center Plaza, I was scheduled to be at the Heirloom Tomato with Local Wines workshop over at Fort Mason. Believe me when I say I was less-than-interested, right at that moment, with something as trivial as wine and tomatoes, even though this was one part of the weekend I’d salivated over from the moment I saw the Taste workshop line-up.

Chip on my shoulder, I showed up on time and took a seat in the front row. As it turned out, I had not chosen just any workshop.

The leader turned out to be Ann C. Noble, a retired professor who worked in UC Davis’ sensory research program and developed the Wine Aroma Wheel. As soon as she started talking about retro-nasal perception, I knew I was in for some serious learning.

“You don’t taste strawberries, you smell strawberries,” she said early on in the hour. She reminded us that the tongue tastes bitter, salty, sweet, sour or umami. Nowhere in there lies “strawberry.”

“Flavor is what is volatile and goes up the nasal cavity,” she said. “If you have details, you remember details. Without a name for the aroma, you can’t call the aroma back.”

When she started talking about the carbon atoms in various flavors, I stopped taking notes, but suffice it to say this wasn’t just a layman’s tasting room.

Noble’s passion for identifying exactly what layers of flavor exist in anything one tastes—tomatoes, wine, etc.—had us all enthusiastically sticking our noses down into wine glasses filled with chopped Brandywine, Yellow Brandywine, Marvel and Cherokee Purple varieties. We spent most of the time identifying first each tomato’s aroma notes (I smelled saltwater and brine in the Cherokee Purple and caramel in the Brandywine), then its flavor and texture.

The Cherokee Purple? Hands down my favorite of the bunch, with the Marvel coming in a close second. To my surprise, the Brandywine was my least favorite—it had a bland flavor and mealy texture that didn’t stand up to the juicy smoothness of the Marvel and the Cherokee Purple.

As for the wine pairing, well, it turned out that was just for fun. She had poured us a 2006 Matchbook Tempranillo and Graciana blend, and a 2006 Matchbook Chardonnay, both out of the Yolo Valley, and we mixed and matched at the end, testing each wine with each tomato as Noble instructed us.

“This is part of the Slow Food Movement,” she said. “We want to find ways to enjoy food more.

“Just don’t eat tomatoes in the winter, or go to the Southern Hemisphere or something. Which isn’t very green, but maybe you can take a long bike ride.”