Free Wine

Wine is funny stuff. It’s slippery. So many people want to nail it down to a 100 point scale it is almost comical. The reason it’s so funny is because it can’t be done. It’s like watching someone try to rake water uphill.

There are a lot of things at play, but I want to focus on two: matters of taste and matters of the mind.

Wine, more than many other foods, is dramatically affected by what has immediately preceded it. This is one of the reasons I’m always concerned when cheese is served at a wine tasting. If you are eating cheese, your perceptions of the wine will be drastically different. You can try this at home if you like, it just takes a little concentration. Try the wine before you have a bite of the cheese, and again immediately following the bite and note the differences.

Other factors are involved in the physiology of how a wine tastes. It’s temperature, the size and shape of the glass the wine’s been served in, the age of the bottle, the storage conditions of a bottle, the condition of the cork, and even other ambient smells, are just a few of many. But in some form or another, these things can be controlled for.

It’s the matters of the mind that are much trickier.

There is a reason prestige bottles of wine don’t always win blind tastings. It’s because the things that set them apart are their history, scarcity, and demand and not just the juice inside the bottle. If Screaming Eagle could have produced an identical wine while increasing production to 100,000 cases (up from about 500), it would be just one of a number of very good expensive wines, and not the cult phenomenon it became.

But because of its scarcity, it is very expensive. And that expense, in addition to the high expectations that are the wine is now imbued with, absolutely affect the way a consumer tastes it.

It actually works both ways, but I don’t think they cancel each other out.

1)    If one pays a lot of money for a wine, one will want to like it regardless of how it tastes
2)    If one pays a lot of money for a wine, one will have higher expectations for it, which it may not fulfill

Perhaps this is why some of my best wine experiences have involved wine that was free.

No kidding. The chardonnay that changed my mind, the amazing wines on the VIP tour at Mondavi, the stunning bottles friends have shared, and the generous gifts we have been given over time have done more to shape my love of wine than the bottles I have purchased myself.

And I’ve bought a lot of wine. Some of it has even been very good.

I’ve also found my way to a handful of my favorite wines because I first was introduced to them for free. Two immediately come to mind. One was the sauvignon blanc that I was served at a party that just knocked me off my feet. I had to inquire as to what it was, so I could run out and buy some for myself. The other is a gewürztraminer only available at the winery, my first free tasting of which was so exquisite that I kept on coming back year after year.

Now, I mention all of this because I will hopefully be getting some free wine in the near future in the service of this blog. Naturally, I’ll be telling you a bit about it, although I doubt you would expect it to be evaluated on a 100-point scale.

But I do believe that in many regards free wine tastes better than wine you pay for. So that will need to be something that you keep in mind as you read future wine posts. But don’t worry. I’ll be entirely transparent, as always, when I’ve gotten something for free. And as appropriate, I will link back to today’s post.