Wine knowledge for normals: An introduction

Booze Noob triumphantly returns with an introduction to the world’s most pretentious-seeming alcohol — wine.

Welcome, kittens! On with the learnin’!

What’s the funnest thing about drinking wine? Impressing people with your super advanced palate! Duh!

Opening wine in a field and other experiences

Okay, actually — the funnest (or fine — “most fun”; put down your Strunk & White, geeze) thing about wine is, well, drinking it. Yet once you grow a little older/actively decide to start trying more of this “delicious food and drink” you’ve been hearing about that exists in the world, you can actually grow to appreciate wine for being damn tasty.

Wine can be more than “that thing I can easily snatch from my parents’ meager cellar (the closet in the basement) of homemade wine that’ll get me right buzzed at Kevin’s bush party”.

Though I’d argue that if you haven’t had to improvise on how to get a bottle of cheap Chardonnay open in the middle of a field without the aid of a corkscrew, you haven’t really lived.

Along with all that “personal growth”, you will also begin to notice — like I did — those people who call themselves “wine connoisseurs” (always said in a hoity-toity voice, and always speaking, somehow, through their noses). And you’ll hate them immediately. I know I did.

There’s that caricature we all know: the guy who pores over the wine list, bragging endlessly to his date about his vast knowledge of “Old World wines” or some shit. You know, the one that inspects the front and back of the bottle that’s brought to him with his monocle, and takes an obnoxiously loud sniff off the damn cork.

Holding the wine to the light. The damn endless swirling of the glass. Wait… Is he using that wine like mouthwash?

THAT guy. (Image courtesy of eyeballpress.com — this is some funny-ass shit.)

So whack.

Lucky for me, over the years I’ve met people who have taught me just how much depth and pleasure a glass of wine can hold.

I truly do feel lucky, and not just in the sense that I’m lucky to be able to unlock new realms of good things to enjoy.

I’m lucky because the study of wine is, after all, a privilege. It’s not something that’s readily accessible or deserves to be most people’s priority.

That being said, the people I know who are super knowledgeable about wine are all pretty cool and down-to-earth dudes and chicks. They’re not like M. Pinot up there at all (and they know to not sniff the cork, because guess what you’ll smell? That’s right — cork!). Studying wine has helped all of them enrich their careers in some way. Vast wine knowledge is a highly sought-after skill in much of the dining scene right now, whether your establishment is big or small.

However, as anyone who’s become obsessed with a hobby and managed to parlay it into a career (like I did with dance that one time…) will tell you— you have to work at it for a pretty long time before anyone is willing to pay you money to do it.

But look, learning to the extent that you can be hired as a sommelier is totally unnecessary in order to enhance your basic appreciation of wine. And if you truly feel you don’t give an eff, and that your “basic appreciation” begins and ends with “red or white (but screw that pink stuff, that shit’s for pussies)”, hey man, that’s totally cool.

Did you know you can also become a beer connoisseur? Yeah, that’s what I’ve always wanted to be, too.

I done got myself edumacated

Recently, I took a one-day intensive course: the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (or WSET) Level 1 wine class. For eight hours, I sat and read about wine, listened to people talk about wine, looked at wine, sniffed wine, tasted wine — I basically drowned in the most fundamental level of wine knowledge you can get.

I want to distill that knowledge down even further for you to ingest in even smaller, bite-sized pieces. Because if you have a basic interest in learning about good food and booze, this wine shit is just plain interesting. And you’ll feel way more legit knowing it. Trust.

So classy, brah.

Over the next series of posts, I’m going to cover what I feel are the three most important aspects a casual lover of booze needs to grasp if they want to expand their knowledge of wines juuuuust enough to know what bottle will go best with whatever they’re having for dinner. Basically, I want to cut down the amount of time you spend wandering aimlessly between liquor store shelves so you have more time to go home and drink.

You’re welcome.

The three aspects of wine basics I’m going to educate your ass on

1. A basic understanding of which wines are which. Don’t tell me you grew up knowing that Pinot Grigio was white and Pinot Noir was red because you are a damn liar.
2. A basic understanding of the noble wines. These are the “big mama” wines, and the most common types (or “varietals” in wine-speak) of wine you’re likely to encounter on any given day. This is where I’ll show you what aromas and flavours to anticipate when tasting specific varietals. This was the most interesting part of the WSET course for me. It’s like my nose grew a brain!
3. A basic understanding of what wines work best with what foods. Though I’ve said I’m a huge supporter of the idea of drinking whatever feels right for you in the moment, there are — honest to god — certain foods and wines that are just, like, enemies, man. And if you can wrap your head around the very basics of what works best with what, you’ll save yourself some real potential culinary disappointment in the future. No one wants to spend all that money on a fancy meal only to have it be killed by a badly paired wine. Wine has that power.

Image inspired by Mulder, conceived by me, created by my boyfriend. Awesome.

So if you’ve ever wanted to casually impress your date by—in a very subtle and tasteful (and sexy) way—recommending a wine based on what you’ve each ordered, I highly suggest you come on back to Booze Noob-land and read on. At the very least, you’ll learn why the hell people swirl their glasses and swish their wines around in their mouths like morons before actually swallowing.

They’re not morons. That’s their superpower. Like Spiderman. Don’t you want to be more like Spiderman?

I literally googled “spiderman wine”. I’m satisfied.

Keep reading the series if you do!

Marta S is a freelance writer and bartender living and working in Toronto. She also has a nifty monthly column called Behind the Boîte, profiling the personalities in Toronto’s independent food & beverage scene. Email her at marta@behindtheboite.com.