On (not) being a wine nerd.

[lagilman]

Yes, this is one of those posts that just falls out of my head when the rest of me is focused on fiction....
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Many years ago, I kept (okay, mostly my then-spouse kept) very detailed notes about each wine we bought: Where we got it, how much it cost, how many bottles we had in the cellar, the various professional scores (if available) from Wine Spectator, Robert Parker, etc, and what we thought of it and what we drank it with each time. Everything went into the database and was updated every time we bought or drank a new bottle.

Honestly? After a while the need to maintain those records sucked all the joy and fun out of wine, for me*. If I was thinking about how much a wine had cost, or how many bottles we had left, I was thinking in terms of a commodity and not the pure sensual enjoyment of the wine itself.

That wasn't what I wanted my wine experience to be.

While I'm still in many ways a wine nerd (I take great pleasure in knowing details about the process, and the vines themselves), I shed a lot of the other trappings of wine nerd-dom.

These days? My cellar book consists of bare facts of the wine (who made it, what it's made out of) and my impressions of it in ten words or less -- just enough to tell me if I liked it, and why I liked it. That's it. No prices, because really, does it matter it a wine was $10 or $50, when you're drinking it? And no # of bottles, because, well, I've gone from having a 200-bottle cellar to a 50-bottle cellar. (Ah, the joys of being a single freelancer. Not.) On the plus side, that limit does make it easier to decide what to have with dinner....

So if you're new to the wine-drinking world, and worried about how much effort it requires, my advice is to relax. The minimum required is that you own a wineglass** (and a corkscrew, for a certain percentage of wines). Anything after that is up to you.


I will say, tho, that if my Hollywood ship ever comes in? I am so buying a few cases of my favorites. Oh yes. You hear that, wine industry? Go noodge your film-biz friends!




*Disclaimer: this is my personal feelings, and not to imply that anyone who enjoys detailed record-keeping of such things is in any way wrong. This is why they have spit-jars, as it were...

** yes, you can drink it out of a water glass. But I really wish you wouldn't. You lose a lot of nuance over a thicker-lipped glass.

Comments

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

The next time Mary Robinette-Kowal and her husband Rob are in town, we really should see if we can get together for a dinner at L'Ecole. Expensive, but with good food and great wine pairings.

[irishkate.livejournal.com]

only reason I can see to keep record of costs is that if you have a choice between a $10 bottle and a $50 bottle and they both gave as good an experience you could get 5 of the $10 bottles...

But then I think it all tastes foul so what would I know ::grin::

[lagilman]

generally that's noted in my write-up -- "really good for the price" or "on the expensive side." The actual $$, for me, focuses too much attention on the wrong thing. I want to know if it's a good value/worthy indulgence not the precise cost. But, as I said, this is purely me/my reaction.

[irishkate.livejournal.com]

That also makes more sense considering that if you have had the database long enough exact prices stop making sense...A $10 bottle 10 years ago was pricier than today...

[lagilman]

That, and having the price listed can make you think "that's too good to drink on a 'normal' night, or "that's too inexpensive to serve to so-and-so."

If the wine is good, drink it. Then again, I also use the silver for everyday...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Yeah this. I pulled a bottle out of the rack last week, looked at it, thought "Nah, that's too good for me just to drink, because I want-- oh, wait."

Reader, I drank it. And it was good. Too good? You decide.

[kradical.livejournal.com]

It's funny, I never had the urge to take notes on wine. It might be a holdover from college, when I realized that I retained things better when I didn't take notes, because I was so focused on writing stuff down that I stopped paying attention to the substance in order to make sure the words were written.

My brain is weird.

Anyhow -- yeah, the whole point of any nerd-dom is to do it the way you enjoy it, otherwise it's not being a nerd, it's being obsessive....

[lagilman]

I'm not sure you qualify, actually, tho, Keith. A drunk, yeah, you're on that bench with us. But you're far more a whisk(e)y nerd than a wine nerd....

[do you have a specific wine icon? That's a clear warning sign...]

[kradical.livejournal.com]

Fair point, though I don't take notes for whisk(e)y, either..... *grin*

[girasole.livejournal.com]

I love that shot of Keith, drinking a scotch in Las Vegas from the year he was born.

I love wine, but I am quite restricted in how much and how often I can drink it. What this means is that I narrow my focus quite sharply. I know I love full-bodied whites, French (Sancerre is a favorite) and some Italian, so I restrict myself to those. I love to be able to go to a place like Mario Batali's Otto, and say, I love a white with a fullness and fruit, not crisp, not dry, and have them put something in front of me that's perfect and delicious.
I have been dreaming of a vinho verde I had in Chicago last year though, that seemed to me the perfect summer wine, and I need to find it back.
I no longer drink reds. Sigh. They do not agree with me.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I was so focused on writing stuff down that I stopped paying attention to the substance in order to make sure the words were written.

I feel like this with a camera in my hand: so busy looking for the photo, I forget to look at the view...

[mtlawson.livejournal.com]

** yes, you can drink it out of a water glass. But I really wish you wouldn't. You lose a lot of nuance over a thicker-lipped glass.

I won't even tell you about my mother-in-law, who has been known to slip an ice cube into her wine glass.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I will say, tho, that if my Hollywood ship ever comes in? I am so buying a few cases of my favorites.

Oh, that. When I can, I am just going to walk into my favourite wine merchant's and say, "Alistair? I need a little help here. I just bought a house with a cellar, and now I have to fill it..."

[lagilman]

*snork* Same here. I've already warned the guys at Acker that some day I'm going to walk in and say "let's go to the back wall, boys..."

(that's where the Expensive Wines are)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

** yes, you can drink it out of a water glass. But I really wish you wouldn't. You lose a lot of nuance over a thicker-lipped glass.

Tell me about it.* But I have to; I'm not allowed stemmed glasses at the desk here any more, not since Mac overtipped one and ruined a fifty-quid keyboard...

*Actually, tell me why? I do not dispute the effect, I acknowledge it: but I don't think I understand it.

[lagilman]

Anyone more scientifically-inclined can leap in here, but the way it was explained to me was that a thin lip allows the wine to slide evenly from the glass and hit the right spots of your tongue, while a thicker lip (the kind with the "we won't shatter" rounded edges, specifically) interrupts the flow, and accentuates any flaws the wine might have.

In other words, it may not make a bad wine taste better, but it will show off the best of a good wine.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

When I go to the Haggens grocery store, they sometimes have wine tastings from local vinters, this last time, they had ChocoVine, made in Holland.

Yes, chocolate and wine blended together. It wasnt that bad.

Neither was the pomegrante wine from the other stand, because I do like my sweet fruity wines.