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ShareI probably pondered longer over what to base today's column on than the time I actually spent writing it! Wine is such a vast field that the toughest thing to do is to try and limit it to the confines of a single lifetime, much tougher in a single page.
Today as I write this 75th entry to my column, I still wonder about what I could possibly pontificate upon that informs the intellectual and tempts the first-timer? Well here goes nothing...
What exactly is this mystery called wine? It's a beverage, fermented grape juice at best; so then why all the fuss over it -- the service and storage shenanigans, oak-aged or not, what grape, and not to mention the abominable costs!
What do we need to taste wine -- a good wine glass, a fairly bright (natural) light source, (some wine, that helps!) and our senses -- the eyes, the nose and the tongue.
We evaluate the colour of a wine because it tells us something about it; a lighter colour indicates either a fruity wine or perhaps a robust-grape wine but made in a cooler climate region.
Deeper colours denote oak-aging and change in colour along the edges is a sign of evolution (wine, unlike spirits, ages even after being bottled).
The nose is a deceptively large organ and two operations reiterate that fact more than anything else: one involves smelling a great wine and the other is getting blackheads removed! We all can tell good smells from bad ones and strong smells from faint ones; you don't need to be a sommelier to do that.
Our olfactory bulb (the actual smelling organ -- the ol' factory) in fact accounts for 3/4th of our perception of a wine. The tongue can tell apart about five different basic tastes -- sweet, sour, salty and acidic (the fifth one is 'umami', the taste of MSG) -- but any nose can smell an easy 200 different smells even with one nostril plugged!
This is further enhanced thanks to the little passage which connects our mouth to our olfactory which ensures that even after mouthing a sip we continue to assess the aromas. Effectively, you can now safely state that the entire tasting process occurs through the nostrils and within the two walls of the mouth.
This is one reason why we needn't drink the wine to taste it and most savants will spit out the wine after tasting it. Add to that the fact that if you decided to gulp down all the wines at a 100-wine tasting, I wouldn't bet on you being safe even simply walking.
Finally, wine is a personal, acquired taste. If we humans can't agree with each other about our choices regarding the food we eat, the place we live in or the people we marry, how then, pray, can we expect to have quorum on the wine front? There is no bad wine; it's either wine to your liking, or not. But then, of course, there are Indian wines.
I've been tasting wines for some time now and even today I feel apprehensive about announcing a grape or a particular note in the wine at hand! What I have learnt is that with wine it is as true as it is with all other things refined -- the thirst for absolute knowledge only generates more doubts.
So you delve further, only to find yourself even more lost in the unending expanse of knowledge. By the end, the more you know the less sure you feel about it. And that burgeoning curiosity with chaotic confusion, strangely enough, is the intoxicatingly addictive reward in itself!
