No More Veritas In Vino?
I have to confess: I don’t know much about wines and I don’t see that changing at any point soon. Every time I’m in a restaurant nice enough to have an actual sommelier, I pretty much let him/her pick out what I’ll be drinking then do my best to get out of that whole weird ritual that begins with the smelling of the cork. I figure they get paid to know wine better than I do, so what’s the point of trying to subsequently act like I know what I’m doing by sniffing, swirling and swishing a glass of whatever they bring me?
My wine-loving friends are always appalled. They’re serious about their wine, man, and more than one of them has asked how the heck I know I’m not getting ripped off by the sommelier if I don’t go through that whole sniff-and-swish routine. That engaging in wouldn’t tell me if I was about to drink Listerine or a wine from the Loire Valley doesn’t matter, they say. It’s just “something one does”.
Which is odd, because I thought that what one does with wine is drink it, not gargle and spit the stuff out. But what do I know?
Meanwhile these very same friends are all abuzz with the police investigation in the Beaujolais region that has resulted in the arrest of five people for transporting sugar that allegedly added to wine. That’s right: they’re arresting people over wine. Apparently the investigation has set off such an alarm among wine lovers that there’s now a run on wines of Loire Valley by collectors determined to preserve the reputation of their collections.
If you ask me, that’s taking wine far more seriously than I ever intend to, but the aficionados that I know all believe it’s a necessary move to protect the “integrity” of the stuff.
“You’d have to be an oenophile to understand,” says one, and I politely resisted the urge to ask if oenophilia is related to onanism. I suspect I already know the answer: even though one involves a glass, both involve a lot of wrist action and messy liquids.
Then again, I suppose the same thing could be said of my beloved martinis, but at least with them the point is to avoid spewing them up.
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Blast let me try this again - maybe I won’t be so fumble fingered as to lose the comment. Heh.
I drink only white wine because of my migraines. So I stick with a table Riesling if they have it, otherwise I get Pinot Grigio or Savingon Blanc (sorry if that’s spelled wrong - can’t ever remember it). I refuse Chardonnay because I dislike the taste. Lately “dry Riesling” has been a big thing - I really like it. (I seldom say that about alcoholic beverages of any kind).
I will never be a wine expert - but I really enjoy the wine column in the Wall Street Journal every Friday - it makes wine more fun and less like an annoying hobby for people with too much money. The people (Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher) who write the column also wrote a book which I want to get. They often talk about less expensive wines, how to order wine in a restaurant, and all the other things the big “wine” drinkers do. Mostly they say - try different wines and find some you enjoy, have fun! I like that.
I like that, too. I’ve never appreciated the attitude that I “have” to order a particular wine with a particular meal. It’s a beverage, for chrissakes, which means it should be perfectly fine for me to order whatever I feel like.
Most often, like you, that’s a Riesling or sometimes a Gewürztraminer. Reds give me migraines, too.
Hi Kate,I dont like white wine so when Im in a place the waiter acts like its the end of the world because I didnt order the “correct wine” as the late great chef Justin Wilson put it ” the kind of wine you like is the correct wine” how true,quess I will stick with pissing of the waiters lol
Bravo for you Kate - the whle cork sniff thing is baloney in the first place. It is intended solely to insure off the bat that the bottle isn’t rancid (as happens when, say, the cork is bad and air has assaulted the wine). So sniffing the cork is just ritual for the self-impressed. And the whole swish-and-sip thing is also rigamarole. If the bottle is bad, it’s all bad, so the swish-and-sip only allows YOU to discover its spoilation before your friends do too.
It has been my practice for 25 years to instruct the waiter to skip the cork and taste and just pour the first glass for everyone, leaving the rest (if any) for us to serve ourselves.
I despise wine snobs.
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I have precisely zero patience with “rules” about pairing wine and food.
As for knowing about wine, I just kept a list. Every once in a while I’d try one that I liked or disliked and I wrote it down. There are now several dozen and I’ve noticed the correlation (like: Wow it’s not my imagination that 2003s seem to be really something special.)
It’s definitely worth it since you’re actually collecting the information anyway, might as well keep it.