03/05/07 Sunday Wine Tasting

Welcome to Vine to Wine this is your host Linda Moran. Recently, friends and I went for an afternoon of wine tasting. We had fun meeting winemakers and chatting with others in the tasting rooms. As we talked and tasted, I watched as each person ponder their wines and this was a great reminder of just how subjective wine really is. Yes, we all seem to vary just a bit in our likes and dislikes and that is what makes topics like food and wine interesting to me. There are many options available to the winemaker for stylistic variations and it is from my point of view wonderful. As I eluded to at the start of this program the variations in taste among my friends was interesting to watch  some were lavish with their praise for big "jammy" fruit forward wines. While others were more enthusiastic over wines which exhibited restrained fruit or bigger more tannic characteristics. To me what they were celebrating were the differences not that one wine was better than another. We began observing the different styles and gaining appreciation for the stylistic differences at each of the wineries. We tried all wines with an open mind and a desire to understand the wine rather than to judge it. This was much more difficult than simply tasting it and stating I like it a lot or I don't. If you enjoy wine tasting I recommend you try this sometime. There were no preconceived notions about any of the wineries and with our good intentions we managed to learn so much more. Remember to send your wine questions to Linda at vine to wine dot not and thank you for joining me on today's Vine to Wine.