The Real Thing

You can't buy a good bottle wine for twelve dollars, but you can buy a reasonable six pack of beer. It was hard to ignore that logic during the early days of my campaign for quality. But, while some very nice lagers and ales did enjoy temporary residence in my fridge, I was also earnestly afoot plumbing liquor stores for that jewel in the rough that didn't offend the parity I thought should exist between wine and beer. Wines above that critical threshold of common sense, about twelve bucks, were in my mind reserved for the upper echelons of society, to which I clearly had no connection. Nevertheless, onwards I soldiered through countless bottles of mediocrity. At a certain point, where my taste buds were thoroughly dulled and likely atrophied, I came to an all-too-common conclusion that good wine must in fact taste awful. Either I had no sense of taste (of course not, I'd killed it), or I simply hadn't worked my way through enough brands to expand my pallet and develop an appreciation that didn't include pucker and grimace on every sip.

Too many people are scared of wine. I wasn't alone in believing that my own personal failings (lack of taste, ignorance, 80's hair) were behind my inability to enjoy cheap wine. Others plainly found themselves equally deceived by bad and expensive wines that they were compelled to enjoy or discretely empty in the nearest planter box. On this note, I had the good fortune to share a meal with a prominent wine writer at a conference we both attended last year. I was curious about the true story behind a favourable, yet politely cloaked, review he'd written on a winery well known for its 'rustic' style in winemaking. It appeared we shared opinions on the unconventional taste of their product, and I wasn't surprised when he related a story about a tourist who, in spite of tasting an oxidised & vinegar laden sample, put on a brave face and happily shelled out for a whole case! We tend to think that wine is somehow above us and, in doing so, totally ignore that most basic and natural premise: our own good taste!

"All that matters is that the wine either tastes good to you or it doesn't" - those were the simple words of a French winemaker from Bordeaux, who's cellar I had earlier toured and who's wine I was then drinking. Had I only known or believed this nugget of insight a decade earlier...

Back then, I had worked hard to become a connoisseur of uninspired wines and was rudely shocked one day to taste the most unexpected thing - fruit! - but without nail dissolving acidity or chalk board screeching bitterness. Forget about sublime herbal and under-ripe green, I'd stumbled across the Andes and found the most luscious and therefore peculiar merlot. It was downright yummy and easily within the means of a semi-employed software developer who's tastes had never yet left the country.

Inspired by my new found drinking enjoyment, I found the will to spend a bit more on different wines, even read a few reviews, and invest in some snazzy coffee table books. A modest increase in my budget also put the world of varietal wines (those made with identifiable or single grape types) packaged in quantities fewer than a million cases into a new and happy focus. I was a freed man seeing sunlight for the first time, armed with another new outlook on wine, and friends that would actually drink what I served them.