Is Wine Arrogant?

By Leticia Borges.

Wine is fermented grape juice. No surprises there. So why would anyone allow grape juice to spoil, on purpose, in order to drink it? I’ve always wondered what was going through that guy’s mind when he first came up with the idea. When he saw the warm bubbly foul smelling mulch, what made him take a sip? But forget about him, he was all in. Imagine what he had to do to convince his friends to try the stuff. “I swear it won’t taste like piss”. I bet that a big part of his success in pitching this disgustingly flavored fermented grape juice to his tribe revolved around the side-effects. “Try it. Late Uncle Larry shows up every time I throw back a shot”

If you follow that logic, it makes perfect sense to think that their goal was to get tipsy and, maybe, connect with some afterlife spirits in the process. I would bet money that no one was thinking about detecting notes of green peppers or violets. Pretty simple, right? So how is it that we have managed to turn that very basic religious experience into the over-engineered wine tasting production that has made its way to our days? Too often wine is accused of being snobbish. The swirling, the sniffing, the swishing are all part of a routine that has managed to turn wine into a mysterious commodity.

Wine Has Been Hijacked.

The general perception is that only a small group of people can afford or understand it, and most people think that wine is snooty and unapproachable. In my opinion this is an extremely unfair characterization of wine. Wine comes from a fruit. Fruit needs farming. There is nothing sophisticated about farming. You plant a seed. Once it has had enough sun, water and shade, you harvest the fruit. Oh, and you look like a pig in the process. Yes, the fermentation and bottling processes may involve specific technical knowledge that the winemaker controls but the winemaker’s goal is to produce a well-balanced wine, not a masterpiece. People go through all sorts of hoops to so eagerly protect this liquid from air, shifts in temperature and direct sunlight. But what we miss is that what’s inside the bottle started its life hanging from a vine. Those grapes successfully survived extreme heat and cold, rain and drought, bugs, bird shit and everything in between. So that bottle isn’t full of refinement, it’s full of fight. Have you ever seen a sophisticated fight? Nope. Wine isn’t unapproachable. Wine has been hijacked. The pretentious tasting rules developed by the “connoisseurs” have turned tasting wine into a representation of an aspirational lifestyle reserved only for the sophisticated and nothing could be further from the truth.

Let’s be real. Repeating a few taste words or mastering glass swirling mechanics doesn’t make the wine taster more refined, it makes wine tasting seem arrogant for no good reason. I crack up when I hear someone say “open the bottle so that it can breathe” What? It’s lived an overprotected life trapped in a bottle for years and you think it needs to breathe?

I’ll say it. The most approachable thing about wine tasting is the spitting. Knowing that some wine snob spits into a dirty bucket filled with other strangers’ spit, in public, brings a smirk to my face every time.

What Is All The Fuss About?

Just to set the record straight. Wine doesn’t have to be complicated or cost a fortune and it certainly doesn’t have to feel like you have failed your legacy because you can’t taste pepper notes or know the difference between Pinot Noir and Pinotage. Wine shouldn’t be intimidating either. The unassuming side of wine often goes unnoticed because it’s overshadowed by the pompous rituals that mean nothing to ordinary people. You shouldn’t be afraid of dancing to your own music or liking the wine that you like. If everyone decides that white wine is the only thing that goes with fish or that meat must always go with a bold red, there is no need for you to follow the crowd. You should feel comfortable just drinking what you like because you don’t have to be afraid of making a mistake.

My point is that wine can be enjoyed, without much fuss, by someone without a trained palate or the nose of a bloodhound. Having the liver of a blue whale might help considering that ordinary people would much rather swallow than spit wine, but it’s not required either. More importantly, not everyone needs to have a fancy French title or a litany of letters after their name to know if they like or dislike the wine in their glass.

In my world, enjoying wine has nothing to do with whether it’s good or bad. I focus on how it makes me feel and on the memories that a sip of wine may conjure. Does it remind me of the spices in my mother’s arroz con pollo? Does it make me feel like having that amazing pasta from that perfect little ostería in Rome? Does it smell like those small tart wild berries I used to pick with my cousins when I was nine? Or does it remind me of the smell in the air when my dad had just mowed the lawn? Does it make me think of coffee or chocolate? Do I smell the ocean or the farm? Does it make me forget a tough day in the office or does it make me open up and talk to strangers? Drinking wine shouldn’t be about winning a tournament. It should be about perceiving flavors in your own unique and individual way and translating those flavors into moments and memories.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy the cerebral aspect of a great glass of wine. However, deep down inside, I still believe that the intention of our ancestors was not to make wine complicated. If it had been, they would’ve made that pretty clear to us just like they did with physics and trigonometry. We should all try to find the simple side of wine and enjoy it for what it is; a way to bring people together through a sense altering concoction that a guy discovered by mistake centuries ago when he ran across some putrid grapes that someone forgot in a barrel and dared to take a sip…or ten. Pretty simple.