by Selena Templeton (Tue Jul 28, 2009)
I'm a hard liquor kind of gal, albeit with a splash of something fruity (which actually sums up my personality fairly well: strong but fruity). For me drinking is about the destination, not the journey; there's really nothing about the burn of pure vodka coursing down your throat to stop and savor along the way. And if you spit it out, why you're just a wasteful cretin and don't deserve to be drinking it. So when my woman-of-the-world friend Sara announced that she was taking me wine tasting for the first time, I kind of felt like Eliza Doolittle in ‘My Fair Lady.' Oddly, I began to curtsy and drop my h's.
As with most of my first-time experiences, I had this grand vision of how it would go: I saw myself sipping a vast array of wines, nibbling on well-aged cheese, making the other tasters laugh with my clever fermented-grape humor, discussing the velvety undercurrent of a Cabernet Blanc....or a Sauvignon Merlot? Crap, I was lost already. I couldn't identify a wine to save my decanter.
We drove up to Solvang, a small town in the heart of wine country north of Los Angeles, where they filmed ‘Sideways.' It was beautiful up there, all green and lush, and I instantly felt my sophistication rise up a notch or two. I'd seen the movie so I made sure to spit out my gum in advance (and next time I'll remember to roll down the car window).
We walked into the first tasting room, which was a combo of cozy shop and stylish bar, and sat down. For ten bucks you got a choice of five reds or five whites. I chose white based on the only wine knowledge I had: red stains the teeth. As the extremely good-looking man behind the counter sidled over to pour our drinks, I was especially grateful for my choice. He dribbled a tiny amount of booze into the rather large wine glass and I turned to Sara. ‘Why, it's no more than a taste!' I muttered to her. ‘Um, yeah,' she said, giving me a look. ‘That's why it's called wine tasting and not wine guzzling.'
I mimicked Sara as she swirled, sniffed and sipped, since I had no idea what I was doing or why. Even after doing it I still didn't know what I was supposed to look for. All five of my samples, from the Chardonnay to the White Zinfandel, looked, smelled and tasted the same to me. Good, but the same. Sara shook her head sadly.
By the third tasting room, I'd forgotten about the staining of my teeth in an effort to expand my vineyard-covered horizons, and had moved on to red wines. I sipped (okay, swallowed voraciously) a particularly sweet and spicy red and immediately announced with glee, ‘This tastes like Christmas!' I downed the rest of it (hey, it was only a taste) as Sara discreetly inched away from me. I'm pretty sure I heard the words ‘retarded cousin' slip out of her mouth, but the server seemed to be amused.
I followed Sara from one tasting room to another, which were spread across the small village, and by the last one I was, well, drunk. So much for taking a stab at being classy. Unlike Eliza Doolittle, I didn't undergo a magical transformation into a wine connoisseur, but I found out the long way what I do and don't like anyway - in my own terms. Liquid Christmas - good; beef jerky without the beef - bad.
Now ‘ere's to new experiences!
