Last night I attended a meeting of the Association for Women in Communications. During the cocktail reception I talked about my passion for wine. Sitting next to me was a vivacious brunette who reminisced about the first time she tasted a really fine wine. She didn’t remember what she drank, but she said that glass completely changed the way she thought about wine. I told her I had the same experience.
The first time I tasted a wine that shattered all my expectations I was sitting in the antiques-laden livingroom of my inlaw’s Montclair home. My father-in-law, who always struck me as having walked off the set of a Fred Astaire film, entered the room carrying a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape. I don’t know the vintage or the producer—didn’t pay much attention to that back then. The wine was presented to me and my husband as being something very special. I sipped the dark wine and let it sit in my mouth, where the liveliest things began to happen. I was awe-struck by the dimensions of flavor I was tasting. First fruit. Then leather, then something earthy, was there a smokiness there? There was so much going on in my mouth I was awestruck. And that was it. The genie was out of the bottle. I knew. I knew what I had been missing, what all the fuss was about, why certain wines command hundreds or even thousands of dollars. My ideas and expectations for wine were never the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment