Ruminations on Waste, Taste, and Efficiency
So, this morning I poured out the last half of last night's disappointing Côtes du Rhônes, which provoked a fair degree of guilt about waste. Throwing out perfectly good wine just bugs me, even though it's the logical thing to do. I'm the only wine drinker in this household, and I don't get out to tastings much. This means I only get to taste a new wine every 2-3 days, because that's about as fast as I can drink a bottle. Why should I spend my time working through a bottle that I darn well know I don't like, and what's more is not a good embodiment of the characteristics of its varietal and style? The answer is, that would be a silly thing to do. There's a lot to learn, and therefore a lot of tasting to do, so it's best not to waste time dawdling over a mediocre bottle. Even more so because the wine industry is producing more wine than consumers are drinking, and they have been doing it every year for quite some time now. This is a buyer's market for wine, and consumers should be picky and demanding about their wine. Like a game of musical chairs, there is more wine than there are gullets it can go down, and some bottles are not going to be drunk. Why settle for second best?
Throwing the wine out reminded me of another wine-tasting practice that I haven't yet tried: using a spittoon. Here again, I see the logic, but there's just something that bugs me about the practice... here you are, with perfectly good wine in your mouth, and you spit it out. Counterintuitive, no? Plus, I can't help but feel that my mother is going to appear over my shoulder, scolding me for spitting at the table! (chuckle) So, I will of course use a spittoon whenever I get into a tasting of enough wines to make it necessary. It's probably the kind of thing you get used to and then do without even thinking about it.
Which brings me to a bit of anxiety about tasting... The last tasting I attended was at the Biltmore Estate, in their tasting room. (I actually attended two tastings there, one was a pay bar, one was the free tasting room. ) This was a bit intimidating. For one thing, there were people everywhere, and it was like sharks in a frenzy for blood. I suspect that's normal for free tastings, and if so, it's worth the money to attend events with an admission fee. I'm used to tasting in the peace and quiet of my living room, or at the very least over a meal in a restaurant, so I wasn't used to all the hubbub.
But the most distracting factor was the pace at which the couple next to us were going through their wines. They had gone on the tour of the winery with us, and clearly knew their stuff. Watching them slurp, spit and evaluate and then do it again, spending maybe 1 minute on each wine was a bit disconcerting. I tend to sit down with a wine and take at least 5 minutes for an initial impression and another 20 to make up my mind with certainty. I can go a bit faster, but I feel that I begin to miss some nuance at that point. So here I was, next to the expert speed-demons, and can't help but notice that I'm a slowpoke still trying to evaluate my first selection when they'd been through 5 already. (They were very nice people, and any awkward feelings were entirely in my own head.) Also, to be honest, after tasting 3-4 different wines, I get a little burnt out or overwhelmed, and the quality of my perception and analysis goes down, even when I've been careful to go from whites to reds with a palate-clearing cracker between each wine. Of course, I'm sure analytical abilities gain speed with practice. And hey, more practice is definitely going to be fun!
Throwing the wine out reminded me of another wine-tasting practice that I haven't yet tried: using a spittoon. Here again, I see the logic, but there's just something that bugs me about the practice... here you are, with perfectly good wine in your mouth, and you spit it out. Counterintuitive, no? Plus, I can't help but feel that my mother is going to appear over my shoulder, scolding me for spitting at the table! (chuckle) So, I will of course use a spittoon whenever I get into a tasting of enough wines to make it necessary. It's probably the kind of thing you get used to and then do without even thinking about it.
Which brings me to a bit of anxiety about tasting... The last tasting I attended was at the Biltmore Estate, in their tasting room. (I actually attended two tastings there, one was a pay bar, one was the free tasting room. ) This was a bit intimidating. For one thing, there were people everywhere, and it was like sharks in a frenzy for blood. I suspect that's normal for free tastings, and if so, it's worth the money to attend events with an admission fee. I'm used to tasting in the peace and quiet of my living room, or at the very least over a meal in a restaurant, so I wasn't used to all the hubbub.
But the most distracting factor was the pace at which the couple next to us were going through their wines. They had gone on the tour of the winery with us, and clearly knew their stuff. Watching them slurp, spit and evaluate and then do it again, spending maybe 1 minute on each wine was a bit disconcerting. I tend to sit down with a wine and take at least 5 minutes for an initial impression and another 20 to make up my mind with certainty. I can go a bit faster, but I feel that I begin to miss some nuance at that point. So here I was, next to the expert speed-demons, and can't help but notice that I'm a slowpoke still trying to evaluate my first selection when they'd been through 5 already. (They were very nice people, and any awkward feelings were entirely in my own head.) Also, to be honest, after tasting 3-4 different wines, I get a little burnt out or overwhelmed, and the quality of my perception and analysis goes down, even when I've been careful to go from whites to reds with a palate-clearing cracker between each wine. Of course, I'm sure analytical abilities gain speed with practice. And hey, more practice is definitely going to be fun!
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