D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
March
2009
A Glass Half-Empty
Drink no wine before its time — which happens to be right about now.In my particular circles, there isn't much time spent uncorking wine bottles.
There is a certain progression of alcoholic consumption that begins with cans of domestic beer and ends with bottles of domestic bourbon, without anything in between except some kind of domestic grilled animal or exotic dancers (which are actually domestic as well). There is a conspicuous lack of wine because it is associated with a certain, well, lack of manliness. I am proud to prove an exception to that rule, and I present myself as a man of solid heterosexual upbringing who can appreciate a good wine, and can actually demonstrate my substantial savoir-faire on all topics viticultural.
Learning to appreciate wine involves more than just grabbing a Mason jar and a box of wine. It requires an understanding that everything your palate tells you tastes good — chicken-fried steak, Twinkies, Velveeta cheese — is bad. It takes a mouthful of expired grape juice to make you appreciate just how wrong your palate actually is most of the time. A hearty swig of cheap sweet wine, which your mouth tells you tastes delicious, like sugarcoated little angels dancing on your lips, is the precise opposite of what wine aficionados will order up.
Wine should be difficult and bitter and angry.
Wine should make your mouth hurt.
To find out exactly what kind of wine you like, it is important to sample a wide variety. I personally recommend canceling all your appointments for a weekend, taking the phone off the hook, removing all sharp objects, loaded firearms and impressionable children from the area, and opening an array of bottles. There is a protocol to wine tasting, and it must be adhered to in order to fully appreciate the anal-retentive nature of the French.
First, start with a sweet white wine, like maybe Thunderbird. Swirl it around in the Mason jar, and breathe in its essence. If that doesn't cause temporary blindness, gently sip about a tablespoon of the wine into your pie hole. Swirl it around in your mouth, and let the flavors play off the tongue. If you have a lick of sense, you will now spit the Thunderbird out of your mouth like red-hot kerosene, which it essentially is, and wipe your tongue off on your shirt. Congratulations. You now have a baseline of how bad wine can be.
It is important to remove the taste of the previous wine from your mouth before moving on to the next variety. This is called "cleansing the palate," which after the Thunderbird could very well involve abrasives and pressurized hot water. Most of the time, all you'll need is a cracker or a drink of water to cleanse the palate. I've got a friend named Cleetus who uses frozen waffles and horseradish, but that boy ain't right.
Once your palate is refreshed, proceed to the next white wine, which should be less sweet. A nice Chardonnay would work here. If you have a lady-friend who wants to participate, now would be a grand time to bring her in, as Chardonnay tends to make girls giggly.
If you have no feminine accompaniment, I might suggest you skip the Chardonnay, the Gewurztraminer, the Pinot Grigio and the Riesling and get to the heart of the matter, the reds. There is a common belief among wine drinkers that the dry red wines are the only ones that really matter, and that is only because it is true. White wines are primarily to be consumed by people who don't like wine. So cleanse your palate (take it easy there, Cleetus) and pour a sample of a sweet red table wine, which is actually made from sweet red tables. Just pour it, don't drink it, and look around the room to see if there is a burning cat or something. If so, use the sweet red table wine to put out the fire. It can serve no other purpose.
Now you're getting somewhere. These are the varieties that define the very nature of wine, with solid names like Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Pinot Noir, Zinfandel. These varieties are to wine as Johnny Cash is to country music. Pour a dram of any one of them into your jar, and breathe deeply of the soil and the stems and the sunlight. Smell the perfumes of time and oak. Hold your jar up to the light, and see how the viscosity of the liquid clings to the side of the glass, and how the grapes diffuse the light trying to muddle through it. Pour a sip into your mouth and hold it there. Merge the senses of taste and feeling as the fruit settles into your palate and imparts its small liquid gift to you. A proper connoisseur should spit it out now, but that seems like an unnecessary waste of perfectly good wine to me. Go ahead, swallow it, and feel its melancholy burn all the way down your gullet.
Wine not only gives you a good buzz, but it can make food taste better. Wine snobs call the art of matching food to hooch "pairing," but I call it "drinking on a full stomach." When you find a big, full-bodied dry red wine that makes you feel 10 feet tall, slap a fat rib-eye on the grill. The combination of fatty meat that's bad for you with antioxidants and alcohol can be like a party in your mouth, and you will find more excuses to eat beef. It is said that white wines go better with fish and chicken, but I wouldn't know, as I pretty much will drink a nice Cab with anything, including enchiladas and pizza.It's just wine, people.
There aren't any rules, even if the snobs tell you that there should be. If you like your wine in a box because it tastes better longer (it does), then go nuts. If you like to pour Sprite in your white zinfandel because it reminds you of high school, knock yourself out. No matter your personal drinking philosophy, it is important to at least be aware of what wine can offer, and how it is an important aspect of your inebriated journey. I guarantee you will find something mesmerizing about wine, and stumble across tastes wholly unique and wonderful. Our old friend Galileo had it right when he explained that "wine is sunlight, held together by water." Cleetus is far less erudite as he says, "Bless the fruit, damn the skin, open yer mouth an' pour it in!" I raise my Mason jar to you, dear Cleetus, and cry you a hearty salud!
Henry Lightcap stocks his wine cellar in Las Cruces.