Wine Lessons Learned

Over the last four weeks, our group has had the pleasure to sample a wide variety of a product for which Italy has become internationally famous, wine. Within the general red and white categories, there is so much more to the complexity of each brand's taste. Everything can affect the aroma and palette of each variety, from the land on which the grapes were grown, to the way in which the grape juice was extracted, to the conditions in which the fruits were fermented.

Some of these reasons for why a wine has a certain taste is shared among local wine makers, the most obvious example being terrain. This causes a whole region to have it's own distinct taste, and thus creates a collective regional reputation.

Even with this reputation, it seems that every single wine producer has their own signature characteristic to their product, however subtle the change is from another, it's there . . . And I don't taste most of those differences at all.

Maybe it's my untrained tongue, it's not like I've been drinking wine for that long. Who could I turn to in this time of ignorance? Surely the wine experts know what they're doing. They have fancy terms to describe their wine tasting experience, like crushed rock, sweaty fruit, and bicycle gears. Well, one of the authors who's article we read definitely disagrees. He explains very professionally that what the critics say is "bullshit," and compares their reviews to a randomized word generating software he invented. I suppose I agree, but only because of some various studies showing conflicting blind taste test reviews.

The Author's Seemed Depiction of a Wine Critic

I don't know what to think about wine, it seems that whatever you think tastes good could taste completely different to someone else. So as for me, when I can buy wine, I'll just support the local economy and find a nice Washington wine to favor.