Photo credit ©hlkljgk
I am a wine lover. My husband has never understood the appeal. But then again, he said the same thing about sushi and now he throws down slabs of raw fish like he’s part pelican. So maybe he just needed a chance to try some different varieties to find something that tickled his palatte. Besides, it was clear that my technique of teaching him about wines wasn’t working. That technique, quite simply, involved forcing him to sample my favourite cabernet merlot and then stand above him, hands on hips, and say, “Well? WELL?”
“It’s fine,” he would say. “It tastes like wine.”
“And?” I would ask. “Good wine evokes more than flavour. It’s more than ‘fine.’ It warms the soul. It reminds you of summers when you were a child! It speaks to you of friendship. What emotion are you feeling right now? What feeling is the wine giving you?”
“Fear?” he suggested. “Anxiety? Definitely a feeling of wanting to be anywhere else.”
“Philistine,” I hissed.
“Can I drink my beer now?” he asked quietly.
I was recently invited to a wine festival highlighting several regional wines. The event, which tend to sell out quickly, is a weekend-long celebration wines from crystal-clear whites to so-dark-light-can’t-escape reds; from the syrupy-sweet dessert wines to so-dry-they’re-desert wines-and everything in between. Ports, pipes, fruit wines, sparkling wines, rosés, reds, blushes, barolos, chardonnays and shirazes-do I have your attention? The resort hosting the festival certainly had mine. We were invited by the resort’s marketing manager for the event’s second day which included a chance to participate in the judging portion of the weekend as well as the grand finale when winners are announced. My beloved philistine was ambivalent about the wine tasting, but the resort is famous for its scenery, fine food and luxurious spa. It wasn’t difficult at all to convince him of the merits of a night away at one of the most amazing-and free, natch-places around.
We started the day at the spa for a couples treatment that included a delicious soak in a mineral mud bath and a half-hour massage. While one of us sat in the deep, clawfoot tub in the rich, loamy heated mud puddle, the other was tenderized, round steak-style. I know that some people prefer a gentle, soothing massage but I like a masseuse who gets in there and beats up muscles I didn’t even know I had. Luckily, our masseuse was that perfect blend of nurturing and ever-so-slightly sadistic. As she kneaded that particular place between my shoulder blades that sometimes hurts like blazes, she worked out a knot that is likely as old as I am. Oh, sweet, sweet pain. I may have cried a little. Awesome.
An hour and a half later, with all the tension rolfed out of us, we floated to the first event of the day, the judging of the wines. If only all contest judges felt as fluid and full of zen as we did. If the Academy Awards were given out by an academy full of jello cups like Rusty and myself, everyone would go home a winner. This was exactly the shape my darling dearest needed to be to learn about how to taste wine.
There are many secrets to being a wine drinker. Getting just the slightest bit loud, clumsy and opinionated is not the secret part. The secret is learning how to swirl the wine to open it up to the air and really bring out the flavour. The secret is learning how to hold the glass by the stem of the glass so as not to muck up the glass with fingerprints and your body’s heat. The secret is learning how to really put your nose into the glass and smell the wine before you even taste it and searching your most ancient memories for that olfactory memory that, once found, can make a simple one-note Beaujolais suddenly become an orchestral movement on the tongue.
It’s amazing how quickly my husband discovered those secrets.
In the judging seminar, four different stations were set up with whites, rosés and blushes, reds and dessert wines. Upon entry, each judge was given a wine glass, a form to rate the vintages and a pad of paper on which to make notes. Each bottle was presented in a brown paper bag to conceal the label-one of the few times drinking from a paper bag is respectable-and labeled with letters of alphabet to distinguish them. Rusty and I were on, roughly, F-and starting to loudly debate the merits of Howard Jones as an accurate representative of the ’80s musical scene-when our marketing manager friend pointed us to the bucket in which to pour the excess wine in our glasses.
“Don’t hurt yourselves,” he advised.
From then on, it was all about digging in, sniffing, swirling, sampling and snobbing. There were over 40 wines to sample, and each with its own distinctive flavour. And my husband-bless him-started to understand the differences. At one point, an hour in, with his nose deep into the glass, he said, “This one smells of smoked oysters, compost and . . . and my mom.”
“And?” I asked.
Tears sprung to his eyes.
“And I love it,” he declared.
I never loved him more than at that moment. I sampled the wine that had reduced him to a blubbering fool. It was swill.
“Well done,” I lied. But he got better from there.
We rated the wines, and by the end of the judging, Mr. Expert was talking about oakiness, peppery flavours, fruitiness, dryness, depth, clarity, bouquet and all the other terms that aficionados use to prove we know what we’re talking about.
From there we proceeded to the grand finale, where the winners were revealed, all of the entrants provide samples of their best vintages and several cows-worth of some of the finest cheeses are offered for tasting. A fine evening. Some of the most distinguished palates in around were on hand to offer hints on taste, depth and tone. As well, there were people who-like the old saying went-may not have known a lot about wine, but they knew what they liked. The brilliant thing was that everyone found something they loved. For me, it was a fantastic syrah, a fantastic cheese combination-and my husband. His palate has turned out to be rather sophisticated. He found flavours and depths in wine that I hadn’t even begun to explore.
In the weeks since he was educated in being a better snob, he has purchased progressively better wines. Insufferably better wines. He’s been talking disparagingly about the Australians insistence on oaky Chardonnays, suggesting maybe they just need to make oak wine and save the grapes for people who aren’t complete cretins. He offers me a glass of this new Pinot Gris he just happened upon after reading a column on some snooty website.
I smile, shake my head and drink my beer.
Madame Fabulous–otherwise known as MadFab (more fab than mad)–has been a professional writer, actor, director, producer, occasional photographer and painter for most of her adult life. Her mother would argue that she’s been a drama queen from the get-go, however. She is a mother to three: Alexa, Theo and Ethan who she blames for the eternal house messiness, the ongoing pantry emptiness, the perpetual head-shaking oddness and the lifelong happiness. She was very recently married to the man who, for the record, she totally pegged as “That Guy” from the start.
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