NOTE: The following description of events isn’t just BASED on truth…it is completely true…
My first post…oh this is so exciting! Err..umm….uh….I mean…
Over this past summer, I received an invite to a blind wine tasting.
The rules for a blind tasting are as follows:
Basically, you bring a bottle or two, cover up the label, and the person running the tasting disperses the wine among guests. You all taste it without knowing anything about it and then try to identify what type of wine it is, the country of origin, and the region.
So I thought it would be fun to take my wife as kind of a night out thing to have a little fun. On my way from work to the tasting, I grabbed a couple of bottles from the store. Let’s get our wine on!!
So the tasting starts, first wine is dispersed and the immediate feeling of fear and inferiority overtakes us. The manner in which the lingo just rolls off everyone else’s tongue as we’re tasting is just awe inspiring.
They’ve got noses like dogs – “I think I detect a leathery almost burnt leaves aroma with some asiago cheese,” says the girl next to me. My eyes go wide.
They’re all world class travelers to wine countries of the furthest reaches of the universe – Former Soviet Republic of Georgia, Italy (more than once), France, Chile, Argentina, Australia – all mentioned like, “Oh, I do it every month don’t you?” And better yet, the bottles have been brought back and used for this tasting. If a vineyard was discovered on Mars, they’d be there in a heartbeat.
The bottle prices – $55 and up (yes, I said $55). And even a $75 bottle (yes, I said $75). My initial thought? Why on earth would you be bringing bottles like these to a blind tasting for strangers to taste? If it were me, these are reserved for me and spouse and after careful consideration, some extended family.
Anyhow, my next thought was that they were going to pin down our wines in less than 2 seconds. How could their taste buds not identify mass produced wines from a local store after we’ve been tasting high priced wines from places where they seemed to know exact coordinates of the spot on earth where the grapes had been grown? Or at least pretended to know.
But as they tasted, everyone shouted out a different thing. “Oh this is definitely a Cabernet” or “This could be from Argentina.”
There was confusion.
As it mounted, I became increasingly anxious. Could it be that this group of full-on blow-hards couldn’t identify the wines?
The answer came: THEY COULD NOT. Nobody identified the Zinfandel or the Rioja. To add to our happiness, they were very impressed at how good the wine was.
“Wow, how much did these wines cost?” asks a woman from the other end. “They’re very good.” Everyone at the table stared at us – I had no problem shouting my answer across the table: $12.50.
Cue the voice of Billy Crudup:
-1 bottle of Red Zinfandel $12.50
-1 bottle of Spanish Rioja $12.99
-Fee to attend tasting ; $5
-Seeing the look of defeat on the faces of the full-on blow-hards:
PRICELESS!!!!
The cherry on top of this was that the person running the tasting got pissed at everyone for just blurting stuff out and not opening their minds enough! For a second I thought she was going to send them to the principal’s office. It was like Rocky traveling to Russia to beat Ivan Drago and subsequently winning over the crowd (well, maybe we didn’t win them over).
I inconspicuously grabbed my wife’s hand under the table and engaged in a quiet fist pump with her. We strolled out of the room having won one for the Gippers of the wine world.
The moral of this story is that wine is what you decide it is.
Sure, there are some rough guidelines to follow, and you might become a little bit more knowledgeable after doing enough tasting that you could recognize certain similarities in taste and smell…but in reality, you smell what you smell and you taste what you taste.
So time to get your wine on…your palate is waiting.
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