Posted on January 9, 2012
WINE EDUCATION II
Evolution of the wine novice
“Wine is confusing! Wine is complicated! I will never understand wine!”
photo credit: LaPrimaDonna
“Wine is confusing! Wine is complicated! I will never understand wine!” That is the mantra of every wine novice. It almost seems impossible to fully understand it all. It all starts pretty innocently, drinking wine. It takes a while to get used to the taste, and the next thing you know you start drinking wine without really thinking too much about it. Then somewhere down the road things change.
1. You start to drink more wine and become interested in knowing more about what you’re drinking.
2. You surround yourself with people who begin to talk about wine as if it were poetry, and to not be left out, you too begin to take an interest.
3. You start to work with wine, a bar, restaurant, shop or wholesale. Now you are also forced to know more.
4. Lastly, the one I wish was my introduction. You inherit millions of dollars and don’t know what to do, so you start buying wine. So that it seems as though you know how your spending your money, you start to learn more about wine.
Whatever the reason is, you are now reading this because something, somehow or somewhere drove you to learn more about wine. And at first you said, “Wine is confusing! Wine is complicated! I will never understand wine!” Look at yourself now, I bet you know much more now than when you first went to the store and asked for a Cabernet Sauvignon because it sounded more sophisticated than asking for a red wine. And as time passed, you started to ask for a less tannic wine, or a fruitier or a drier wine. As you started to understand your palate you started to develop the language that would allow you to articulate your likes and dislikes. You knew that you enjoyed a Cabernet Sauvignon because it had “a bite to it”, and it had a “full bodied mouth-feel” but that was about it.
picture taken from http://www.rudisglutenfree.com/2011/07/28/walking-in-your-shoes-gluten-free-dinner-party/
Then one day you are at a dinner party and the host decides to “decant” a prized bottle from the cellar, and its FRENCH! So much French written on the bottle that all you get from the label is the word “Chateau”. Everyone is oohhing and aahhing over the label, the vintage, the magnificent garnet color, the aromas and flavors. And all the time you are trying to see if you can pick out a cassis aroma that someone gawked over. Of course you remain silent and act like you totally pick up on the smoke and leather, all the time wondering why everyone is so mesmerized. You taste it and it’s nothing like the Cabernet Sauvignon you had from Vons the other night. In fact you don’t really understand why it’s supposed to be so good, it just tastes dirty. But as an aspiring wine connoisseur, (and someone who wants to be in the “in crowd,”) you need to find out why that bottle was so praised. So on to the internet. Whoa! You learn that you drank a bottle of 1989 Chateau Haut Brion, one of the first growths in Bordeaux. You go on to to read that Bordeaux uses primarily 5 grapes, and one of them is your favorite, Cabernet Sauvignon. You are in a state of shock, all this time you thought Bordeaux was a grape. (more…)
