Behind the Enigma of Wine

Behind the Enigma of Wine  

So when or how did fruit juice become an institution? Yet this is all that we are essentially talking about, just an agricultural product belonging to the same category as carrots, lettuce and figs.  But when was the last time you ordered a fine bottle of tomato juice in order to impress a date or waxed poetic over a bowl of green beans.  The cynic may point directly to the mood altering capacity of alcohol.  

Granted a little buzz does wonders when spirits are low yet if that was ones only aim why waste all the time and effort on grapes when the fermentation of potatoes would do the trick. 

The anthropologist might say that our fascination with wine stems from some subconscious link with our past when wine was the most efficient method for storing and transferring the calories harvested from wild vines. I would counter that if our ancestors wanted to store this harvest raisins would have been the obvious choice.               

What if the cipher to this riddle is to be found much closer to home, somewhere much more intimate?  What if the search for the element behind the enigma is actually our humanity?

Before you scoff at this uber romantic extrapolation, allow me to share with you my own experience as a wine professional, or rather more succinctly why I love what I do.

A sommelier/wine steward’s job is more than just sipping someone else’s Bordeaux with one’s pinky in the air.  Most of your time is spent shuffling invoices, analyzing product mixes and haggling over prices.  It requires thousands of hours of rote memorization of obscure facts such as the colloquial name of some ‘special’ dirt found only on one hillside in Spain or the metric volume of some medieval Hungarian bucket used to measure ‘special’ moldy grapes.  To make matters worse, one is constantly trapped in conversations about the latest clone or biological agent with semi-deluded, starry eyed winemakers stoned with the organics of an industry ruled by technocrats.   Yes, you get to drink a lot of wine but that also loses its allure over time.  It is also not about some perceived status symbol obtained by knowledge of the finer things or some short cut to hobnobbing with the elite.  For me it is actually about facilitating the making of memories.

As I approach a table to recommend a pairing or bottle of wine, the thought that a stranger would grant me the honor of orchestrating their time away from all the responsibilities and demands of their everyday lives, the most precious time they have, still leaves me in reverent awe.  What an honor to be invited to share in something so human as time spent in intimate exchange.

My wine list is my tool chest.  Each wine a tapestry of flavors that I hope to weave into a mix that will fulfill my goal of making someone else’s evening memorable.  The enigma is, therefore, in the symbolism and not the substance.  That wine can be seen as the luxurious trappings, the chant touch with which we dress up the times we cherish most is for me the mystery and the wonder of wine.