It's fine not knowing everything (about wine)

No matter how much you know about wine, it doesn't matter if you don't know everything all the time...

Photo by Gabriel Garcia Marengo on Unsplash

How many times have you been asked the question:

'Is this wine good?'

Maybe a bottle is flourished in front of you, green-glassed and screwcapped, white label marred by a silver medallion sticker in the upper right-hand corner.

You have never seen it before in your life.

And how many of you have earnestly taken it and examined it and tried to squeeze every hard-earned, WSET-internalised drop out of the information on the label to show that you KNOW SOMETHING about that wine.

What it will be like, the best way to serve it, and what to serve it with.

I have. Previously. We all have.

But it doesn't matter. Just admit it.

Say: 'I don't know.'

Never seen it in my life. Don't know it from Adam.

Sure, I know the region. It’s probably this grape or this blend. But I have as much of a scooby as you – until either one of us tries it – as to whether it’s ‘good’ or not.

Sometimes it's fine not knowing everything.

Setting out

There's been a bit of chatter around wine communication and education recently.

I've thrown my hat into the ring with some thoughts on what wine writing is missing (and what it currently has too much of).

And I've also laid out my opinion that a big part of learning to appreciate wine is to lean into the unknown.

You have to have an open mind, be prepared to try things, take a risk occasionally, and bounce back from bottles that didn’t quite butter your crumpet.

Sometimes you have to step into the unknown.

Crossing the Alps

I love history. It's really a greater passion than wine (yeah, you heard me), and I listen avidly to the Rest is History podcast.

In one episode co-host Dominic Sandbrook laments a tendency among some historian types to not admit that they don't always know everything.

Where, for example, did Hannibal cross the Alps? We don't know precisely.

Yet, some people have dedicated their lives to searching the main Alpine passes to trace microbial evidence of elephant dung, which would – definitively and conclusively – prove their theory of where he did.

But – does it matter?

And it made me think that maybe this is also true of wine sometimes.

Those who know about wine can sometimes be so desperate to show that they know, to not lose face in front of those who know less, that they strain to their utmost to try and have answers to everything, no matter how obscure.

And this just compounds the perennial problem that wine is viewed as obscure and overly Byzantine, with obscurantist rules and weird obsessions.

All of which sets us up for the usual one-half-step forward, two-quick-leaps back fandango of wine education.

Dan Kirby touched on this in a (timely) recent post, and I was very much in agreement:

Question: “How long should I keep wine in the fridge?”

Answer: “Until it tastes weird, precisely the same way you’d treat a carton of orange juice or a pint of milk.”

Nothing more required. No chat about number of days, or time, or sulphites and preservatives, no difference between sweet or dry wines, no difference between fizzy or still, no chat about certain grape varieties.

There’s no need to delve so deep – just cross the Alps.

Photo by Daniil Silantev on Unsplash

Be more Hannibal

For those who don’t know as much, the fact of not knowing is off-putting. ‘Should I buy this? I don't know it. Then I won't.’

It doesn’t matter that you don’t know everything. You don’t need to.

In fact, when you’re starting out in wine, not knowing should be part of the fun.

Each experience can be formative. A coup de foudre that will send you head-over-heels in love with a region or grape might be beneath the next cork.

Honestly, non-wine geeks don’t know they’re born.

It’s like being able to start again with a blank slate, read that book that changed your life completely anew, and watch that film without knowing the thrilling, gut-wrenching final twist.

If you treat not knowing as an opportunity, a chance to experience new wines and flavours with wide-eyed wonder and make discoveries, then you will realise that not knowing is not a limitation.

Learning about wine can feel like climbing a mountain. But did Hannibal quail before the pale range?

Channel your inner Hannibal. Climb the mountain*. The rich plains of Italy await you, ripe for the plunder.

This is your chance. Seize it, for it will not come again. And you will look back with different eyes.

Taken by surprise

Once you are a wine geek then you can never get back those moments of precious innocence.

Serendipity feels ever like an ever rarer luxury as you write your endless list of flavour descriptors and reach for increasingly arcane varieties of lemon to spice up your tasting notes.

You know too much about oak regimens in Rioja, diurnal ranges in Vulkenland and planting densities in Patagonia to be truly thrilled by the simple, carefree act of drinking anymore.

Every sip becomes an assessment. Every wine label must be second-guessed.

You have become the historian too bogged down by detail. You have forgotten the art of giving your subject a suitably broad and epic sweep.

You too must climb the mountain – but for a different reason. You must be reminded that the mountain range is boundless, and there are always other peaks to conquer.

And you must accept that you will never summit them all. No matter how much you already know, no matter how much you try, you will never know everything.

But the view is magnificent in its grandeur, and you must sometimes look up from the yeast strains and take it in, and realise there will always be discoveries to be made.

So, the next time someone waves a bottle in your face and asks you if it’s good, you might know the answer.

Or you might not.

It doesn’t matter.

You will find out.

VPQ

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*I should point out that Hannibal’s famous traversal was a gruelling, pitiless endeavour in which thousands of people died – so, much like the average Master of Wine course.