In case you missed my pun, there's a classic folk song--probably Pete Seeger or Woody Guthrie--called "Aint Gonna Study WAR No more." Its an ironic tune, meant to mock America's long practice of starting a new war every 20 years.
By analogy, there are the wine wars...by which I mean that big vintners (Gallo, etc.) buy up the fields and the boutiques and dominate the market, taking home our cash, even when we think we're poking around in the esoteric zones.
I also believe they have shaped our preferences by controlling the shop talk and the wine media. But I hadn't considered grad school, until I found this brochure inviting me to take a long distance class to learn all about wine.
They used to call them "correspondence schools." You'd turn in your weekly lesson and get a grade ...and in six weeks you'd be smart as a whip.
So --without bothering to sign up--I offer these thoughts based on hints hidden in the promotional brochure.
1) Right away they promise to teach me about 'which regions make the best wine.' That's a subtle reference to 'terroir.' It makes me want to see a terroir film. But I never worry about terroirism. I taste, I swirl the incarnadined juice, I decide what I like.
Just yesterday I sampled the current release from Garrison Creek (Walla Walla). I have no idea about their terroir, but liked the Cabernet a lot, the syrah almost as much. (He oaks the wine 32 months!)
2) The next temptation they offer me is to "learn why some wines pair well with certain foods and others don't." I used to believe that
claptrap. I used to believe in the Easter Bunny, too. And yes..it's true that a mouthful of chocolate truffle explodes on the palate when you add a sip of syrah. But (a) I'm not always near chocolate, and (b) I am trying as I grow older to shrink my consumption of calories, and my wife hates it when I bring home chocolate. She's addicted to it, even without the aid of syrah. So I favor a simple cracker and a simple slice of Comte or Gruyere without fussing about how perfectly it pairs with wine.
3) Other promises in the brochure include that I will learn how to tell where a wine grape was grown (ho hum); how to store wine so it is neither too warm nor to cold; and most of all, implicit and ominous, is the promise that I will be able to talk good about wine.
Enough about the brochrue. You can take the course if you wish (it'll show up in your mailbox with other GREAT COURSES on Aristotle, Plane Geometry, and othe things smart people think about).
My only concern here is to distinguish between drinking wines that please me, vs. showing off about wine. I once deceived a showboat pal by pouring Paul Masson $7 burgundy into a carafe and hinting that it was from an exotic new vineyard. He raved.
So what's my better reason for drinking (especially with friends)?
First answer: the friendship, which if it's worth having, will outlive
the worst wine on earth. Second answer: to slow down the drinking by chatting about how the wine feels in the mouth. Is it too tart? I don't care if it's been open half an hour or a day..if it's tart I'm not going to drink it again. Is it shallow (my word for a wine that reminds me of Kool-Aid)? If so, why am I taking a 2nd swallow?
I like a wine with body and some kickback in it. I don't need the vintner's lingo to say what I notice. That way lies madness. Yesterday I sampled a domestic Barbera from Walla Walla and said, "Wow..it's..velvety."
The winemaker's eyebrows jumped. He was happy to hear that...would have been equally happy to hear, "I love it!" but my spontaneous comment told him it had a quality that came close enough to what he hoped to produce.
And that's my final word. We're all just looking --in these wine-soaked moments--for what the poet Ted Roethke called "a steady storm of correspondences, or taking a philosophic leap to Italy, what Ugo Betti meant when he wrote, "Perhaps you, and only you, can listen to me and not laugh."
We look for confirmation, for joie d'vivre, for the silent shining eye that says, "Yeah...I liked it, too."
PS
It's not in the brochure.
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