Drink your wine… the world doesn’t care!!

I was in Bengaluru recently and met a finance honcho at his home. Knowing my background, he instantly let me see his collection of wine bottles, all Indian which he had bought at a ‘shut down’ sale. The collection included everything from a shiraz to a merlot to a cabernet sauvignon, all grape varieties and even a Goan port wine which is overwhelmingly sweet unlike all others which were dry (not sweet).I asked him his favorites and he said he like them all, his said his work involved a lot of stress and the customary glass of wine with dinner gave him a good night sleep and he also cited the health benefits from the red.  In this case the wine was more therapeutic and the finance man he was, he just spent wisely!!

Another therapeutic use of a wine I stumbled upon with good evidence was when businessman at a plush Delhi hotel ordered a 12 liter bottle of sparkling wine. This therapy was psychological, he asked the server to get the bottle with all pomp and show to his table and then take it to his car, yeah he did not open it since he knew he couldn’t finish it between two of them, all he got was the eyeballs from fellow diners and he left a happy man after paying close to a million rupees in cash!!

As most of you would think, I am trying to pass some judgement about the people in contention above!!  No, what I am trying to do here is to demystify wines and want to tell you that people won’t be passing judgments about you when you did not know your wines!!  Did you know about hops in a beer when you had your first or did you know about peat when you really liked your first Scotch whisky, you perhaps still do not know about them; then why does wine come with such a halo that people almost take wine drinking like an examination!!! Please stop believing that people around are sitting to test you on wine jargons, they are there to enjoy their tipples and so are you.

Your wine drinking should start with a random bottle of wine; the price would depend on your propensity to pay but ideally; start lower.  Savour the wine and pass your judgement, you liked it or you didn’t; to begin with and as you gain more experience with them; you can create your own scale. Wine becomes complex as there are close to 5000 grape varieties and all are distinct in their flavor profiles, the more you taste the more you know. Hence making small notes of the wine you have had becomes imperative as it is easy to forget and you could someday go back and pick the same bottle of wine you did not like!! Wine expert reviews are only good to begin with as you would eventually understand if or not your tastes match. Lastly try to pick up a short course on wines, well it surely can help you impress people if that’s your agenda but importantly it will help you drink better. Like someone has said, life is too short to drink bad wine..

“ Give me a sweet wine’ asked a seemingly well heeled customer at a prominent South Mumbai wine store and the store associate handed him a bottle of ‘port no X’ without even a blink. The customer left happy but not before confirming, ‘Pakka meethi hai na’ he said. Well sweetness could be one of the factors that influences and perhaps the reason why a group of mid-management executives whom I ringed in the New Year with, drank sweet fizzy wine worth 350 a bottle and also declared their love for port.   Is it that simple when it comes to people’s buying behavior in the country which consumes around 10 ml of wine per capita as opposed to France’ 40 litres!!