Talking About Wine…. Should You?

“I don’t know the right words.” I hear so many in the tasting room say.  Or, “I don’t know how to describe it.” Wine is about our experiences and observations absent of perception of others.  Wine begs free thought and vocalization.  Every time I go tasting, which isn’t often, I don’t say that much.  I invite the person hosting do the talking, all of it.  Of course, if they ask me what I think or for some reaction, I’m happy to give it to them.  But I don’t like to talk when tasting.  I let the wine talk to me…. No, I don’t “let” it, her, she just does.  Wine, listening.. that’s where we’re enriched immeasurably as consumers and are encourage to delight and fly in and around all the shapeliness of wine’s interconnected narrative.

You don’t have the right words?  Don’t worry.  There are none.  NONE.  There are your words, and the words of the people around you.  Experience and time, appreciation of life and the moment you’re in.  That’s what wine is, what wine necessitates.  She’s in no way a stage for contest.  Wine educates me in that she’s telling me what not to do.  And what we shouldn’t do is let the preoccupation with what to say detract from the moment with whatever wine you’re sipping, tasting, drinking at a table.  When you’re with people you love, or just friends and are out tasting wine, the furthest thing from your thinking should be sounding multisyllabic and pompous, prolix.  “I like it” and “It’s okay”, or something else, again simple and not a loft listing of tags and exhaustively repeated descriptions, is more than fine.

Why is this a perception of wine?  I understand it and don’t.  When I first started writing about wine, or what brought me to writing about wine, was all the literary qualities I experienced and saw in its presence.  That’s my experience and past, brought to the counter when I taste.  I vocalize very little of it, and that’s my election.  But, even still, when I’m tasting, I’m tasting.  I’m jamais (never) stressing over word deployment.  You don’t know the right words?  Great.  That means you’re in the most beneficial position as a consumer.  There are no right words.  There are only your words.  And whether you choose to share them is your trigger to pull.

(2/7/18)