Despite my droning on in previous posts about loving whisky and beer and beginning to appreciate the differences in tea I know next to nothing about wine. I know I generally prefer red to white, fish should NEVER be mixed with red wine (it showed up the villain in From Russia with Love) and that rose tastes like alcoholic Ribena. I know most countries categorise their wine according to the varieties of grapes that go into the wine... except France who do things almost exclusively by region. I also know that if I'm buying wine, I generally follow the ABC rule... anything but chardonnay. Or go for the bottle with the biggest discount within my budget.
Ok I'm slightly overplaying my ignorance here. I know a wee bit more than that but I've still barely dipped my proverbial toe in the pool of knowledge.
It's quite a shame really. I take a tremendous pleasure from what I eat and drink (Bond quote there) and I think I have a fairly decent palette. When my hayfever isn't playing up I have a decent nose too so I have a decent backing for wine tasting. Furthermore, being used to puzzling out the flavours of whisky means that, on the occasions I do drink wine, I can pick out the aromas and flavours of the wine with fair accuracy.
However there are a few things that put me off. They all revolve around the fact that the whole process is ludicrously complicated. To decant or not to decant? Which vintage? How long should it be aged for? Will it be better the next morning when it's breathed a bit? Which country to I start with? The list is seemingly endless.
The other problem is that, from experience, I know the best way to gain knowledge and experience of something like a drink is to taste copious amounts and compare them against each other. This could easily get expensive. Ok I got to taste a lot of whisky at Uni. but wine tasting, being that bit more mainstream and popular, will be considerably more expensive. Trying them myself is also not on given the cheaper bottles cost around a fiver. This is a serious stumbling block given that, even with whisky, I can only identify some of the elements of one malt when comparing with another so drinking individual bottles would be of limited use.
There is also the fact that wine can be, and often is, insanely pretentious. James May makes this point regularly in the Oz and James series and I have to agree. Oz Clarke is evidently not only deeply knowledgeable on the subject but also fearsomely passionate and it shows... but there's still a lot of bollocks. Even with my taste for tradition and grandeur it's a bit much.
Worst of all is the convention of spitting out samples. At whisky tastings it breaks my (and the distiller's) heart to see people not finishing their drinks; spitting them out goes against every fibre of my being. It's designed to be consumed, not doing so is frankly taking the piss.
Perhaps this is something I can investigate when I have more time and disposable income to devote to it.
JR
Ok I'm slightly overplaying my ignorance here. I know a wee bit more than that but I've still barely dipped my proverbial toe in the pool of knowledge.
It's quite a shame really. I take a tremendous pleasure from what I eat and drink (Bond quote there) and I think I have a fairly decent palette. When my hayfever isn't playing up I have a decent nose too so I have a decent backing for wine tasting. Furthermore, being used to puzzling out the flavours of whisky means that, on the occasions I do drink wine, I can pick out the aromas and flavours of the wine with fair accuracy.
However there are a few things that put me off. They all revolve around the fact that the whole process is ludicrously complicated. To decant or not to decant? Which vintage? How long should it be aged for? Will it be better the next morning when it's breathed a bit? Which country to I start with? The list is seemingly endless.
The other problem is that, from experience, I know the best way to gain knowledge and experience of something like a drink is to taste copious amounts and compare them against each other. This could easily get expensive. Ok I got to taste a lot of whisky at Uni. but wine tasting, being that bit more mainstream and popular, will be considerably more expensive. Trying them myself is also not on given the cheaper bottles cost around a fiver. This is a serious stumbling block given that, even with whisky, I can only identify some of the elements of one malt when comparing with another so drinking individual bottles would be of limited use.
There is also the fact that wine can be, and often is, insanely pretentious. James May makes this point regularly in the Oz and James series and I have to agree. Oz Clarke is evidently not only deeply knowledgeable on the subject but also fearsomely passionate and it shows... but there's still a lot of bollocks. Even with my taste for tradition and grandeur it's a bit much.
Worst of all is the convention of spitting out samples. At whisky tastings it breaks my (and the distiller's) heart to see people not finishing their drinks; spitting them out goes against every fibre of my being. It's designed to be consumed, not doing so is frankly taking the piss.
Perhaps this is something I can investigate when I have more time and disposable income to devote to it.
JR
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