A few thoughts on wine...
I cannot pretend to be an expert on vinticulture or wine itself. But wine has played an interesting role in my life that I hadn't really thought of until recently.
Growing up, my parents didn't drink much alcohol in front of me. But, as an avid reader, I remember wine always came across as classy and sophisticated. In the books I read, it was the wealthy, the elite or the intellectuals who drank wine. It was so beloved by the Greeks and the Romans that they had a god entirely devoted to wine. And when Jesus went to a wedding, it wasn't beer or hard liquor that he turned water into. It was, in fact, wine.
So it may come as no surprise that the first alcoholic drink I ever tried was a wine cooler (I wasn't ready for anything with an alcohol content above 5-10 percent at that time). But the second adult beverage I tried was a glass of nicely pink Rose' when I was studying in London. I'll never forget that evening. I was an intern with a Public Relations company and my boss offered to pick up the tab for dinner and drinks for the table. He and the other intern had quickly ordered drinks while I originally ordered water. I didn't have anything against drinking, but the idea of becoming drunk was almost a phobia. I had seen way too many after school specials and had mentally linked drinking to every horrible thing imaginable that could possibly happen to someone. But that night something changed.
Maybe it was the safe feeling living in London gave me. Afterall, I walked everywhere or took trains or buses so I knew there would be a sober ride home. Maybe it was that I felt absolutely no pressure to drink because the UK drinking age is 18; so by the time they got to my age (20), they had already dealt with those wild experimental years and settled into preferred drinking habits. Whatever the case, I remember looking at the wine glasses and deciding that was what I wanted. From that moment forward, drinking was no longer scary. Instead of it being something I avoided so I wouldn't feel out of control, drinking wine actually helped me regain some control over my life.
There's an interview technique where you take a glass of water in with you so that you can cover awkward pauses by taking a sip. Since wine is something to be sipped and savoured, I learned to go out to parties or clubs with people I barely knew and order a glass to slowly consume during awkward moments. Apparently, people are less concerned with seeing how much you will drink as they are with seeing you drink in general. Nursing a glass of wine throughout a night gave me the freedom to drink at my own pace without everyone in the room wanting to know why I wasn't drinking. I had never before realized that people felt judged by my decision not to drink, but I gained a new acceptance among my peers when I returned to college after that semester abroad.
Later, my knowledge of wine (and my willingness to continue learning and trying different varieties) helped me adapt to working as a Reporter in NorCal. Going to wine tastings let me compare and contrast different labels, which became an excellent conversation starter. Perhaps because of the combination of its elite reputation and its actual affordability, I found wine was a safe topic that I could discuss with virtually anyone. There's sonething to be said for having a social equalizer.
But being the ridiculous control freak that I can be sometimes, it wasn't enough for me to simply enjoy wines that taste good. Instead, I had to know how the wines were made and why the wines I didn't like tasted badly to me. In this pursuit of knowledge, I found I became interested in topics I never would have before. For example, in high school I had little interest in science and I avoided it like the plague in college. But after a tour of a winery where they discussed the process of making wine, I became fascinated by the science behind it. For instance, I learned that sweeter wines tend to have lower alcohol content. This is because, during the fermentation process, yeast eats away at the sugars to create alcohol. Additionally, I learned that the reason people are so keen to use special gizmos or decanters to pour wine is to add oxygen, which helps reduce the acidity caused by tannins.
In addition to science, the study of wine is a study in world economics. Australia, Chile, Argentina and South Africa have become some of the best countries for certain types of wines, and their climates allow those countries to mass produce, reducing costs and making wine more affordable globally. A blight killed off many of the vineyards in Germany, so the traditional German Reisling you might purchase are likely using California grapes transplanted onto German soil. By the way, I highly recommend Hogue Late Harvest Reisling from the Columbia Valley region of Washington if you're looking for a good Reisling that's not too sweet and not too dry.
Perhaps learning and changing is what I most closely associate wine with. So whether it's a deep and spicy red or a crisp and light white, here's to a lifetime of education that I have only just begun.
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