Gobs of Pleasure? No Thanks

If you prefer wines of delicacy rather than intensity, welcome to the world of the gob-less. (Photo: Tony Cenicola/The New York Times)

Peter Liem, a senior editor at Wine & Spirits magazine, has coined a brilliant term for wines of grace, balance and finesse, and though he credits a friend for the word, I credit him for writing about it. The term is “gob-less.’’

It’s a response to the gushing critical use of the word “gobs’’ to describe wines of overwhelming power and fruity sweetness, as in the phrase “gobs of hedonistic pleasure,’’ or “explosively rich with gobs of crushed blackberries and raspberries and a texture bordering on syrupy.’’ If you like blockbuster portlike wines formidably endowed, as they say, with freakish layers of extract, then gobs are most likely for you. But if you prefer wines of delicacy and subtlety, welcome to the world of the gob-less.

Peter used the term in his excellent column in the June issue of Wine & Spirits magazine, where he is a senior editor. I especially liked the column because the two examples of perfectly gob-less wines are wines that I love: the Arbois Pupillin red from Emmanuel Houillon, a delicate, beautifully aromatic yet pale wine, so pale – “almost partridge-eye color,’’ Peter writes – that it would be dismissed by many people as lacking in intensity (as if all red wines were required to be dark as night). In truth, its restraint and gentle earthiness is an essential part of its character. In the Jura, most people would drink a red like this before a more powerful white, like one of Houillon’s savagnins.

Peter also mentions the riesling spätlese from Joh. Jos. Prüm, which epitomizes the shimmering delicacy and vitality of the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, at a mere 8.5 percent alcohol. “Few wine-knowledgeable people would say that Joh. Jos. Prüm’s pungent, minerally riesling spätlese is lacking in intensity or concentration,’’ Peter rightly points out.

Of course, gobby wines have their place just as the gob-less do.
Read the column, see what you think. You can also read Peter’s fine blog, Besotted Ramblings. Me, I’ve been humming a variation on an old tune all day:

There ain’t no gobs on us!
There ain’t no gobs on us!
There may be gobs on some of you slobs,
But there ain’t no gobs on us!

Original here