The Subjective Response
The appreciation of wine is in it’s essence is a subjective response. While with exposure and experience one can make learned comments about the “nose” or the color or expound on the presence or absence of any one of those various wine speak attributes one hears at wine tastings, at the core, you have a very personal reaction to wine that may have very little to do with the inate qualities of the wine itself. And there is nothing wrong with this.
Wine, particularly red wine, is often consumed with a meal in the presence of friends. The purpose is not to get a buzz on, but to slow down, to relax, to savor the moment, the companionship. At the end of the meal you savor the last sips of wine in the glass, your tummy is full, you feel a nice glow that has nothing to do with inebriation. As much as I enjoy beer or a good scotch, they never quite give me the same feeling that I get after a good meal and a good bottle of wine.
I freely admit that there are some wines that I like not because of the wine, but because of a very positive experience or association with the first time I drank the wine.
Some years ago, while attending a wine tasting at the Porta Bella Wine Bar, I had a lengthy and pleasant conversation with a young man representing the Cosentino winery. It turns out he was a nephew of the owner of the winery who was attending college in Illinois and making a little money on the side by acting as the winery spokesman at wine tastings in the area. He obviously knew a lot about the wine and the winery from a different perspective than your average wine distributor. To this day I view Cosentino’s wines with a friendly eye. Don’t get me wrong, Cosentino makes some fine wines, but my personal reaction goes beyond what is in the glass.
On a trip to wine country several years ago, we were looking for a place to have a picnic lunch. At a tasting at Sinskey Vineyards they mentioned that there was a winery just down the road with a nice picnic area. This was Pine Ridge which we had never heard of before. We went, did the tasting, bought a bottle of wine and had our lunch of cheese and bread overlooking the vinyard and the Silverado highway. It was a very pleasant experience. Pine Ridge makes some very well regarded Cabernet Sauvignon which we drink with some regularity, and which still brings an image of the sunny hillside where we had lunch.
Sometimes, it is the memory of finding a particularly nice wine and at a good price that gives you a warm feeling. One of my first real “discoveries” was the Zinfandel of Ridge. This was the 1989 Sonoma County Ridge. It was $8, which at the time was a couple of bucks more than we had been spending on a bottle of wine (this was a long time ago). We fell in love with he big bold flavors and finally ended up buying four and a half cases over the course of a year before the liquor store ran out of that particular vintage. Now there are a number of good Zin’s out there, some of which we drink regularly, but when I think of Zin I think of Ridge. Of course, it’s now single vinyard bottlings and the price is $30 a bottle, but the affect is the same.
There are other wines that have associations beyond the qualities of the wine itself, Penfolds Bin Number 2, Matanzas Creek Merlot, Cline Ancient Vine Mourvedre. Each has a personal story for me. They are all good wines, though not necessarily great wines, but they cause reactions that I don’t necessarily get from wines that I know are “better”.
So, it’s ok to like a wine for reasons other than what’s in the bottle. A memory, a shared dinner, even a touch of sadness can make a wine special. And, this may explain why you just don’t get a certain wine that a friend raves about. It may just be their memory and not yours.
There is a reason that poets have written about wine for eons in a way they never do about beer of spirits. Wine is a very personal experience. The best thing to do is enjoy it until the bottle is empty and the glass is dry.
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Hello Greg. I particularly enjoyed that piece, partly because the person from Cosentino you had mentioned was me. Mitch Cosentino is still in charge making award winning wines and my family is still actively involved with the business. We have surpassed our expectations how enjoyable this enterprise would be! I was bartending at Porta Bella in the mid nineties while I was still going to school. It was meaningful to me to hear what a nice experience you had and still remember it to this day. Please come visit us in The Napa Valley as I’d like to prepare another memorable experience. I can always be reached through our website – http://www.cosentinowinery.com . Happy trails~
Ben
This is a very insightful post. I spend much of my free time visiting wineries and talking to the owners and the people who work there. I find that if the owner and staff are friendly to me I tend to enjoy their wine more than if they’re not. Whenever I open a bottle that I bought at a winery, it reminds me of the experience I had there and probably causes me to like the wine more or less than I might have otherwise. Thanks for the great post.