The Back Label: Are you a Taster or Drinker?
by Rob Dobson
Some chefs think that chefs are divided into two rival ?gangs? according to their cooking philosophies. The Bloods insist on using only local ingredients while the Crips select whatever ingredients they feel taste best regardless of where they come from.
Once I got past the nasty visual image of rival gangs of chefs attacking each other with foie gras and fresh local produce, I decided to try looking at wine drinkers in the same way. Sure enough, two clearly different kinds of wine lover began to emerge. To avoid being hunted down by gangs of chefs, I will call my rival wine gangs The Tasters and The Drinkers.
The Tasters love to obsess over wine. They can?’t drink it unless they know the grape variety, the vintage year, the name of the winemaker?s dog and whether the wine went through full or partial malolactic fermentation. There?s no such thing as a casual glass of wine for The Tasters. It has to be a multi-year sit-down comparative vertical tasting of a single vineyard, with a tasting sheet in one hand and an aroma wheel in the other.
The Drinkers, on the other hand, enjoy wine just as much as The Tasters, but they could care less about the details. Wine shopping consists of picking the most colorful label or the hippest name. Restaurant choices are usually a house wine or whatever a server happens to suggest. It’?s not that The Drinkers aren?t discriminating. They know a good wine from a bad wine, but it?’s not often you?’ll see a Drinker bother to jot down the name of a wine they liked.
I?’m definitely a Taster, maybe even a gang leader; but I?’m not as bad as I used to be. I?’m still fascinated with the history, culture and science associated with wine. I?m still a compulsive note-taker and I regularly irritate my friends with bits of completely useless wine trivia. But I?’ve stopped filling scrapbooks with labels I’?ve soaked off of wine bottles and I?’m finally able to enjoy a glass of wine without analyzing it to death. Like Freud said, ?sometimes a good cigar is just a good cigar?.
One of the things that helped me to let go of my extreme wine-geekiness was a short article by Terry Theise. Theise is a wine importer from the eastern U.S. You’?d expect him to be a hard-core Taster, but when he was invited to a tasting of fifty vintages of a top Bordeaux he replied ?no thanks?. He said he would not enjoy ?sitting in some chillingly-well lighted room in a row with many other people as if we were taking the written segment of a driver?s test, with ten glasses in geometric patterns in front of me, little itty bits of wine in each glass, sippin’? and spittin’? and combing my mind for adjectives. I don?t enjoy it because I think it?s a waste of wine, and even worse it is a sin against the spirit of wine? Sitting in some creepy banquet room and ?tasting? fifty old wines not only dilutes the aesthetic experience, it?s a macho snub of the nose to the angels.? Ouch. Talk about not pulling your punches and, just to plunge the knife in a little deeper and give it a twist, Terry concluded his rant by saying, ?If a hard-working vintner knew his/her wine would end up, fifty years later, being opened in a ?tasting? alongside forty nine other wines for a bunch of earnestly scribbling geeks, he?d probably hurl a grenade at the winery and run away sobbing.?
Theise may seem to be raining, no, downpouring, on The Tasters parade, but he has also written, ?Soul is more important than anything, and soul is expressed as a trinity of family, soil, and artisanality.? That?’s a pretty Taster thing to say and I bet Terry knows the names of several winemaker?s dogs. If you want more of Terry Theise?’s brilliant insights into wine, you can find them here: www.skurnikwines.com/msw/terry_theise.html
As Terry Theise so colourfully points out, too many Taster gang activities are unhealthy, but being a Drinker hoodlum is just as bad. Let me give you a personal example. Many years ago, when I was very involved in our local wine societies, we were a small band of people who wanted to learn more about wine. There was a definite Taster emphasis. We had tastings, visits from winemakers and the odd dinner; but eventually it was decided that we should try to grow our membership. We found that the best way to do this was the wine dinner. We?d book a restaurant and try to match some interesting wines to a creative menu. This worked like a charm. Membership exploded, but there was an obvious shift in the emphasis. A lot of people weren?t joining to learn about wine, they were joining to have great dinners at good restaurants. The wine was just a bonus. We had made a point of always having someone stand up to talk about the wines that were being served. But the groups had become so large and so loud, that I felt that whoever was trying to speak ended up shouting for only a few interested people. I would ask people as they were leaving which wine they liked the best and the answers invariably ranged from ?the third one?, ?the dessert wine? or worse, ?I dunno?. These Drinkers are missing the point of joining a wine club: to learn about wine. Or at least that?s what I?ve always thought that?s the point of joining. Needless to say, I?m no longer very active in our local wine societies, or should I say dinner clubs.
The Tasters and The Drinkers both have their good and bad points. Maybe the result of a huge rumble would be a gang of perfect wine lovers.