How To Become a Wine Geek Part II: "Taste Like a Banshee"

This post is the second in a multi-part series where Dude will give you a ‘wine insider’s’ take on how to seriously up your ‘wine geek’ knowledge (and hone your overall wine-tasting skills along with your “impress your party goers” wine profile).

Some of you may recall my recent post on the first step to wine geekdom – reading about wine. If you’re new to this blog, it might be a good idea to review that post first. This post will explore the second (and most important) thing you need to do in order to up your wine IQ – Taste.

To know wine, you need to taste wine. There are no shortcuts, and it’s pretty much impossible to overstate the importance of building up your tasting vocabulary and knowledge via the simple act of tasting a glass of wine. Don’t just take my word for it – to underscore the importance of this, I asked Eric Miller, owner and winemaker of one of the largest and most successful PA wineries (Chaddsford), for his views on how wannabe wine geeks can best increase their wine knowledge. His response: “The important thing is to taste like a banshee.“…

Eric also added – “Go to the myriad of shops that do tastings and begin to get vocabulary in tune with taste. If that is not available, throw a series of parties and have a hell of a range of wines for friends and you to taste.” Throwing a wine tasting party is probably the most fun way to gain wine knowledge and is easier than you’d think – it’s actually tough to find people who *aren’t* interested in learning more about wine. There are great free resources on the web that can guide you through this (Jancis Robinson’s How to Taste offers some primers on hosting tastings, but you gotta pay for it). If you don’t taste, you won’t know what you like, and you won’t know how to describe it if you do like it!

Be consciously in the moment. Dude is not trying to get too Zen on you here – just make sure you taste and not gulp. If you want to get to know wine, you need to spend a little time with it. You do NOT need to become a snob, put on airs, or hold a wine glass up to a special light bulb for 15 minutes pretending to examine its contents. You only need to give it a sniff and really concentrate on tasting what’s in front of you. How to Taste also offers amazingly good, practical advice on this.

Experience before judging. Keep an open mind – you won’t learn much about wine if you enter into a tasting with preconceived notions of what you will and won’t like. Wine will surprise you and it will open up new worlds of delight to you – you just have to let it! Wine reviews are great for starters, but your own experience should always be the final determinant in setting your wine views. Eric Miller offered this advice urging wine newbies to taste and gain their own experience: “Avoid tight-assed views stuck on old world rules and regs. I teach a twice annual class on what wines taste like, the words to describe them with an international selection under the primary headings of: light fresh fruity dry (white and red), light fresh fruity sweet (I only show a white), med to full body dry white, med to full body red usually a Cabernet, Pinot, Syrah or Shiraz, and a fortified sweet red like LBV Porto. My suggestion would be to get the terms down in an environment like that.“

Record what you taste. Admittedly this is usually a pain in the ass (try not looking like a geek when sipping a glass at a nice downtown bar and then whipping out your journal and scribbling notes furiously), but it’s essential for upping your Wine IQ. Find a nice journal and record your tasting experiences. Don’t worry if only you can understand them – the important thing is to build a vocabulary that helps you identify what you’re tasting in a way that works for you. Over time, you will go back to these notes, if only to dig up information on a bottle you had a few weeks back that you really enjoyed and can’t remember the name of (this is how wine geekdom begins!).

Don’t Be Shy. Good things come to those who ask. If you really want to get to know wine, it doesn’t hurt to be bold. Most of what I learned about enjoying wine, I learned while talking informally to winemakers – and none of them have been unapproachable. “Go as close to the source as you can,” offers Eric, “Wine lovers like me will talk eagerly to someone truly interested. (You get a dozen newbies together and i will speak).“

Thanks, Eric! Anyone out there in the Philly region willing to take him up on that?

Cheers!