Category: Ask the Somm

Semi-serious approach to survive a wine list

Choosing a wine at the restaurant is not so easy as it could seem, but there’re few tricks to safely escape the situation.

In the last 12 months the entire world accumulated an insane quantity of postponed dinners to date to be set. Dinners with friends, relatives, business dinner or with future lovers.

Sooner or later we’ll be able again to put legs under the table and fully enjoy a nice dinner, with any worries but feeling good.

The only setback that can fit between us and a perfect night is the choice of wine. Not for the bottle itself, but for the image of us we’ll show at that stage. This obviously is reinforced in case of business dinners or even more for a romantic ones, not mentioning a first date…

Some restaurant’s wine lists sometimes scares, other times give a sort of embarrassment, sometimes a awe for the quantity of listed bottles.

Seated (hopefully) in good company, if the dishes list makes us feeling a bit unsure because we’d like to try a bit of everything, the wine list seems planned by psychologists looking for subjects to be tested as they try to survive the anxiety in looking for the “right” wine.

But which one is the “right” wine? Many criteria can be used, don’t trust the experts, they’ll always tell you wine need to be paired with food! From a pure academic point of view food and wine pairing is surely the right criteria. But what if we’d like a cheap wine, or try a brand new wine, or if we’d like to amaze our fellow diners or even more make a good impression on a future partner?

Restaurants with a refined wine list offer to their client a wide range of choice, often suggesting winemakers and wines not readily available for private consumer, that is reserved for restaurants. It comes out a wine list able to get attention from wine-passionates, but also able to floor a less-incline to extreme sports customer.

From a non-accurate and super-personal statistical survey over a long period and numberless bad deals – both in term of paid price and wine quality – comes out that the most applied criteria in choosing a wine from a wine list of totally unknown wines is the average price: taken away the most expensive wines (what? 175 euros for a sparkling wine??) and the cheapest ones (what a bad impression with my fellow diners and with the waiter…), we’re gonna stay in the middle.

Once targeted a price range, the second scientifically proved criteria is the one related with the more or less pretentious denomination (G.I, PDO), that in some way lead the thoughts to more exclusive denominations.

It’s not a coincidence that in recent years wines like Vino Nobile di Montepulciano DOCG or Morellino di Scansano DOCG have been amongst the most popular and purchased by Italians, both in supermarkets and restaurants. Their names bring to super quality wine production area, to a clearly viticulture-voted land; and the, wanna bet in choosing a wine paired with a loud “here we go, let’s take this, great wine!”, with high chances of approval by the fellow diners to who the wine name will sound exactly as it sound to us.

Willing to stay on a more conservative mood, once tightened our research range, most of the job is done and in the worst case a few labels will remain to choose from. At this stage we’ll be able to show off courage and risk taking attitude with a nice “I don’t know this, let’s try it!” – giving the impression of knowing the others (anyway, who’ll ever find out we never heard about the others?).

Limiting the range of choice will enable us to engage with the waiter/sommelier, asking for a suggestion between the few selected bottles, being sure not to risk a jump into the unknown on the price side from which would be hard to safely escape.

It obviously exists an opposite approach: going directly to the “names” in order to be sure to hit the target. Famous names, famed denominations, prestigious wines. The food pairing could be be not the best one but who cares? A Brunello, a Barolo or an Amarone on the table never caused anyone to turn up his nose and I call you out to find someone able to complain!

Choosing a top-end bottle you need to know the aim of the most expensive bottles in the wine lists: their presence is not meant to broaden the client’s choice, but to give fame and prestige to the restaurant.

Their presence justify a upward adjustment of the entire list, with remarkable focus on the bottom line. In choosing an “entry-level” wine be prepared to pay a bit more for it if in the same wine list super-premium priced wines are listed.

Let’s make it clear, the possible upward adjustment is not a mere matter of profit, but it’s also based on higher costs due right to the presence of these super-premium bottles.

The dilemma “I don’t know any wine – too expensive – too cheap – I wanna make a good impression” has no perfect solution formula. If you’re trying to solve it keeping the wine list high in front of you to hide your eyes away from your fellow diners you need to make a choice.

You can either decide to simply declare to not knowing any wine and so choosing a wine in the medium-low price segment in order to limit the risks (but anyway trying something new), or asking for help to the waiter/sommelier clearly stating your budget limits.

Asking suggestions to the sommelier, targeting a price range, won’t make you loosing points in his/her eyes but it will rather give the sommelier the chance to work at his/her best, sorting out for you the best available wine, with great relief for you that will not run the risk of a wrong choice (and maybe even costly).

Do you want to pick up the cheapest wines during a romantic dinner? Easy! Let’s reason your choice as an accurate analysis of quality/price ratio of the selected wine! “I never found this wine at this price, they probably got wrong…let’s take it, you’ll like it”!

Anyway let’s remember the number one rule in these situations: let’s take it easy, if you’re asking you thousands of questions in front of a wine list because you have no clue of what picking up, then very likely wine is not your primary passion – at least not yet – so too your expectations will have no their nose in the air like those of a wine passionate ones. Let’s then choose with levity, you’re at the restaurant to enjoy the dinner and the company, wine will just be a decoration. Let’s treat it accordingly.

As you’re knowledgeable, would you suggest me a good wine?

This is probably the more frequent question people are gonna ask you as soon they will get to know about your knowledge on wine, regardless you are a wanna-be sommelier at his very first lesson, a worldwide famous expert or a very experienced wine drinker.

Personally, when I’m asked this question, I have a double reaction. On one side I’m happy as I take it as a positive curiosity from the questioner who’s asking me a suggestion to raise his/her level of pleasure; on the other hand I’m often afraid of the question being a mere continuation of the chat and that my suggestions will end up nowhere

If I think about it, however, what’s the matter about the aim of the question? By the end of the day wine, as many other life pleasures, has a personal purpose and, in being so, it can’t be judged, so questions welcome!

Let’s assume the question is genuine, asked by a person really interested to get to know a new wine to increase his/her tasting expertise.

If the question is easily understandable, the answer is not so straightforward. Having said that “good” is clearly subjective, the problem in answering is to understand the palate and the sensibility of the person I’m suggesting the wine to.

It often happens to me to be present at situation in which someone suggests a wine to someone else and this is part of the beauty of wine, the sharing. Unfortunately too often the suggestion is exclusively based on our own judgment, on what we liked. The needs of the person who asked the question are usually not taken into consideration, given the fact that if a wine is good, then is good for everybody!

Willing to give a reasonable answer, first of all it’s necessary to understand the habits of the person we’re talking with about wine, his/her ability to comprehend given differences between different wines and other elements. It’s necessary, above all, understand the aim of the purchase: personal satisfaction, dinner with friends, present, thousands of other reasons?

This rapid analysis also require the ability to interpret the indications of the questioner who, if not “trained” to the oenological slang, could easily be not technical and very subjective.

Recently I gave as present to a friend of mine a bottle of white wine with few years on its shoulders, to make him tasting it and possibly, selling on his bar. The wine had very specific smelling and tasting notes, clearly derived from evolution in bottle as well as from the winemaking process. Regardless the introduction to explain the wine and making my friend ready for a taste I was sure he was not accustomed to, it has been firmly marked as oxidized and old (I can guarantee and other tastings can guarantee, it was not!). I love that wine!

The difficult part in suggesting a good wine is in the end to connect the wine with the person, creating a link between them, a kind of blind date. We need to be the friend that makes two persons meeting, hoping that they will like each other and potentially fall in love with the other. It’s not an easy task, nor simple, you can run the risk to give a delusion because you’ve not been able to understand the other’s need or simply because you don’t have a hand the right tools.

So if you ask me a suggestion, be ready for a short interview! Made for the pleasure to share with you some nice experiences. And be suspicious with those answering to your question too quickly, because they would give the same answer to everyone or just thinking about his/her own tastes instead of yours… After all wine is a means of connecting people, so why should we waste an occasion to get to know each other a little bit?

Can you too smell a sandal get wet by lake water, at sunset, in a warm end of July evening?

Let’s admit it, looking at an expert tasting a wine in front of an audience is fascinating. The ease of observing, of sniffing, of tasting the wine and talking to the public about the characteristics, about the flavours and the tastes, make the audience hanging on his lips.

The tale of the flavors is, even just itself, a show. The ability and the ease for the expert to detect them is something out of reach, his confidence is that each one of us would be willing to achieve and, above all, his flavours database could make a maitre parfumeur jealous!

Nobody can be emotionless in front of the quantity of flavours that can be detected in a glass of wine and, first of all, in front of the quantity of flavours totally unknown by the majority of us. They might be already heard names, but our brain wouldn’t be able to recognize, nor to remember.

Attend a tasting by an expert could be a traumatic event for a wanna-be sommelier. After the moment “I wanna be like that”, “oh yes he knows that”, the next feeling will be “I’ll never be so good”… Inferiority complexes will start to come out and will be our best friends every time we’ll face someone more knowledgeable, could be another sommelier, a winemaker, an oenologist. Or it might be with someone we just think is more experienced that us… Every time we’ll be asked to make a comment on a wine in front of someone else, our nose will detect some flavours, our brain will perceive a fraction of these, our mouth will pronounce just a couple, just to avoid to say stupid stuff.

But how did these nose guru learnt all this flavours? And, first of all, are them really able to distinguish those endless shades between the indian jasmine, the spanish and the chinese one? Maybe yes. Maybe no. We’ll never know this because we won’t be able any way to distinguish them, not even mentioning to remember them.

So how did these nose guru learnt all those flavours? And first of all, are them really able to distinguish the endless shades between an indian jasmine, a spanish and a chinese one? Maybe yes. Maybe not. We might never know as we won’t never be able to do it neither, nor remember them.

They for sure studied for long time and made a lot, really a lot of practice, smelling everything it could come at a smelling distance, keeping their training, which is essential. But in real life, talking in front of an audience, we quite often have the feeling that there’s a tendency to look for an excessive research for innovative terms, not really motivated from a practical point of view, pretty useless, useful just for the research itself and for the speaker ego. If there would be a world championship for the extravagance of the flavours identified in a glass, the rank would change day by day.

So? All falsehoods? All show, invention? Absolutely not! Every wine is an inventory filled with the most different flavours, but we’re not all able to identify in their totality, for study reasons, experience and physiological differences. There’s a part of show, yes, and sometimes the show hide the taster’s ability, it makes him closer to an anchor-man rather that to a wine expert, closer to a jester rather than someone who devote a lot of efforts to get prepared. When this happens, everything related to that specific wine, loose some respectability and professionalism by the majority of the audience. Sometimes, it’s really enough not to go too far, as in everyday life.

I don’t drink Tavernello, or maybe yes…

There’s a game that I like to play with the sommelier course students, but also at events where self-proclaimed wine connoisseurs.

It cannot be avoided to note that the majority of these persons – luckily not everyone! – already at the beginning of their study/knowing start to ignore the cheapest wine, in Italy the Tavernello being the most famous, judging it an awful wine, not to drink, dirty water, not suitable for their sensitive tasting buttons.

Beyond the personal tastes what makes me smiling, but also thinking, is that the judgment is simply based on the fact that this wine is absolutely cheap and packed with TetraPak that, in their eyes, is enough to conclude it tastes badly.

But how many of this wannabe sommelier / connoisseurs really tasted it? A few. Really a few. Let’s admit, those who like wine for sure don’t even think to buy a TetraPak wine (not in Italy at least), rather choosing very chipped bottled wines. But, for those studying or for those calling themselves experts, these wines too should be in the to try list, they are anyway on the market and, for this, they must be known. Not even talking about the fact they are sold in very large quantities.

The first time I made the students of a sommelier course first level tasting a Tavernello, rigorously blind tasting, I presented it in a flight of other 4 wines. I asked the students to fill in the tasting notes and then comment them live. In the end I asked them to express a personal judgment on which wine was their preferred one in general. A number of them placed the Tavernello at the first place against the others! The funny side have obviously been showing them the wine…and proudly looking the faces of who voted it as the preferred one!

There’s also a much more serious side of this. Too often people who learn about wine assume a totally unjustified snobbishness attitude towards product placed in the lowest part of the quality pyramid by a cliché.

A sommelier (but also a connoisseur), based on studies and acquired critical analysis skill, must be able to judge a wine in a free preconception way, doesn’t matter the preconceptions are positive or negative. This is much more challenging than how it looks like, even after years of experience. In this specific case, a wine like the Tavernello (o similar products) is not necessarily bad tasting nor badly produced. From the production point, at least italian production talking, there are no doubts about the strictness of regulations and on the certainty of a healthy product. The wine itself doesn’t come with any defect, it cannot shows any right for the winemaking procedures that, on one side deprive it of the emotional element and its potential organoleptic notes, but on the opposite side make it perfectly clear, impurity free, healthy and stable.

Becoming sommelier, or name ourself connoisseur, means first of all becoming more curious day after day. Every single difference on the market must be an highlight, must draw our attention and make our sensation and tasting notes experience richer, able then to make us really able to judge a wine in a real impartial way. Moreover, without tasting the potential extremes of a quality pyramid, how could we place different wines in a quality rank?

Then, when the curiosity is satisfied, some wines will end up in the sink, others in the span, others will be our company on the sofa with legs under the blanket because, at the end of the day, the best wine is the one we like the most.