Learning to Love Wine
Does one drink wine in a cozy, wood paneled old pub? Surrounded by flowerboxes at a sidewalk cafe? In a very elegant dining room? Or on a picnic blanket out in a field of grass?
I’ve been thinking about mood and place and company lately. In graduate school, when I was studying political economy, I literally had this picture in my mind of spending afternoons at very artsy, bohemian cafes, wearing all black and discussing Hegel and Heidegger over some rot gut wine, like Hungarian Bull’s Blood from Eger. Of being passionate and being with passionate people who wanted to solve all the world’s problems deep into the night.
Then I entered the real world: a job, a little more spending money and a regular schedule of 9:00am meetings. I still socialized quite a bit but I was not as idealistic or extravagantly carefree. Coming from a not wine-friendly culture like India, I tried to like beer, I did like cocktails but not the headache afterwards and I occasionally drank wine. Those were the heady days of over indulgent Australian Shiraz and wonderful, cheap Portuguese wines whose names I couldn’t pronounce, but which were big and jammy and highly extracted.
At some point, I realized, I was beginning to like wine for more than just that jammy fruitiness and I realized, I have no idea what is even in a Cotes du Rhône! What grapes are in Rioja or Chianti? Those were the days of course before apps and blogs, and data charges for cellular internet were expensive. Most shops and restaurants did not have WiFi and information was not as freely available as today. So educating myself had to be very intentional.
More to keep pace with my much more wine-savvy friends than for any other reason, I enrolled in my first wine course at Boston University. Taught by 2 Masters of Wine. I had no idea how privileged I was. And it was fabulous! I had finally found my passion. It took a few years to get back to it. I had to realize that I wanted to change career paths - but since then, I’ve taken 6 more courses and a few Master Class trips to Sicily and Tuscany through BU, plus various other courses through the Wine and Spirits Educational Trust (WSET). And in spite of all those classes, the learning never stops! It is a huge world of not just wine tasting - in fact that is almost the least of it - but also history, culture, soils, climate, grape varieties, wine making techniques, business models and more.
So now, today, how do I think of wine? It is bifurcated. I have my more analytical mode - in which wine is more of a puzzle to be deconstructed and examined from all angles. And there is the I’m-switching-off mode when it is about pure enjoyment - an enjoyment that really is enhanced for me and hopefully those with me in knowing what about the wine stands out or rates notice, knowing perhaps something about the varietal character, history or a story about the producer. It is a luxury to lift a glass, look at the color, smell the bouquet and savor the palate and know what you’re doing. But it is also a simple pleasure - choose what you like, choose what you eat with it and choose your companions carefully! Life is short. Santé!
