I absolutely love wine and I have become the biggest wine snob probably in the United States of America including Australia, Latin American, and yes, of course, France. Honestly, I am probably not the biggest, but a I am a wine snob. Every sip of wine I take, I try to figure out how I became this way.
When I was in my college years, I would drink any type of wine to get a good buzz. I was pinching every penny at school and wine was just a change up from beer or hard liquor. Two bottles of wine at the time could be bought for about ten dollars; to me it did not matter too much how the wine tasted. I would drink five dollar gin just to get drunk.
After graduation, I started to make a little money and I upgraded from the ten dollar upchuck wine to the fifteen to twenty dollar bottles. What a difference in the taste I thought at the time. I did not know the difference between a Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon; however, I started to try different wines. Then I really became more of a wine drinker than a beer drinker. My road to being a wine snob was starting to be paved.
My first wine tasting was an incredible educational experience. I signed up for a bi-weekly wine tasting club and each meeting introduced me to a different vintage. The wines started to creep up into the thirty dollar range but my wine palette was starting to develop. Zinfandel, Syrah, Pinot Noir, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Chianti were just a few of the wines that were part of the club. A wine representative from the distributor would come in and bring 10 different wines to sample. The presentation included an overview of each region the grapes were grown in and an overview of each vintage. Understanding more about the region the vintage is produced in helps tremendously to determine how good the wine will be.
Believe it or not the grape is not just a grape. At the most basic level, it’s immediately apparent that the same grape varieties grown in even subtly different locations will make wines that are somewhat different, even when treated the same way in the winery. These differences are due to variations in factors such as microclimate (through differences in elevation and aspect, for example) and soil properties (certainly drainage and water availability, but possibly also chemical differences). I learned so much about wine when I started this club; I learned not to just enjoy the taste of the wine but I also learned o enjoy the wine process itself. *
On a trip to Orlando for business, I had the pleasure of tasting some really expensive wines at a great Steakhouse. From my first sip of wine I was hooked. I spoke a good game when we sat for dinner and started to order the wines, but my wallet could not afford these on an every day basis. I know I wanted to be able to drink these on an everyday basis.
I joined a few clubs over the years and wine was becoming more of a religion to me than a hobby. I went to every tasting I could and never refused a class on either wine making or producing. It became clearly apparent to me that I could never go back to the cheaper wines.
Along with moving up the corporate ladder, I was able to afford the sixty and one hundred dollar bottles of wine. Wine is not always about the price but there is a reason better wines cost more.
Wineries whether big or small each have a home in my wine cellar. I have enjoyed so many different experiences in my travels looking for perfect wine. I have shipped wine to my home from every where in the world always looking for that diamond in the rough. All of the knowledge I have accumulated over the years go through my head now with every sip.
My transformation into a wine snob just did not happen because of taste. The knowledge you get from studying wine makes for the complete wine experience. I would never have enjoyed wine as much without starting from the bottom and working my way up. A good wine education begins by learning what wine shouldn’t taste like to experiencing what it should taste like. Appreciation of the wine as in all of life’s simple pleasures is a learning process. You need to crawl before you can walk.
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E-mail me at drcchasse@verizon.net
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