Story By gary Jasinek
Vintimidated? Get Over It Tasting tips for the wine amateur 56
Foothills
November / December 2012
S
ampling the wares at one of North Central Washington’s dozens of excellent wineries should be a pleasure, an exploration of the senses, perhaps accompanied by convivial and sophisticated conversation. Or, if you’re like me, tasting wine in public is more like one of those student-anxiety dreams in which you’ve skipped classes for a month, and when you finally do attend, there’s a midterm you’re totally unprepared for, and you’re naked. Well, maybe the naked part is some other dream.
Don Seabrook
It’s best to come clean with the pourer about how much or how little you know about wine. That will impact your interaction with the wine expert.
But the point is, when some of us put our bellies up to the bar at a winery, they’re full of butterflies. We’re vintimidated. In my case, there are many reasons for this. One is the language of wine. I can never remember whether the first syllable of Riesling rhymes with the Asian grain or the peanut-butter cup. Gewürztraminer may as well be the German word for “you shouldn’t even try to pronounce this.” And when attempting to describe a wine’s flavor, my vocabulary fails. This wine good.