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Self deception can be the pathway to some interesting revelations.
After taking two years of German in college, I thought I knew the language. A few years later I found myself stationed in Germany, and I thought it would be cool to have conversations with the Germans I knew. I need an excuse here. I know! It had been almost four years since my last German class, and I could be excused for not remembering the language as "perfectly" as when I first learned it, right?
What I learned from what I thought was this: two years of a language does not make one fluent nor does it teach all there is about a foreign language. I had some very confusing conversations, and we all went back to speaking to each other in English. My German contacts were better at speaking English than I was at mutilating their language. An interesting revelation!
Well, I do know wines! Careful there, laddie! Tell the whole story of your Sauvignon Blanc experience.
In my learning years (When will they ever end?), I thought all Sauvignon Blanc wines should taste exactly the same. As I tasted the wine from different regions around the world, I began to notice something. Each wine had it's own personality based on a number of circumstances.
For instance, Dark Horse Sauvignon Blanc from California had a very soft pleasing lemon-lime taste with a clean finish. OK, got it! That's what such a wine should taste like, and then I tasted Matua Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough, New Zealand … It honored me with soft mango flavors with a touch of lime, but still had the clean finish. What's going on here?
As you may know, a wine's taste is determined by where the grape is grown, how much sun, rain and wind embraces the grape on the vine, how it is made and in what it is made, is it aged, and sometimes even by whom it is made. So many variables and that gives us the differing tastes of the same grape. I thought I knew, and it was revealed to me, I didn't know. We'll not go any further with that sentence.
Do you enjoy playing trivia? When I was first asked to participate in a trivia game, I thought it would be an easy win. Well, let's just say that if my college German teacher had to give me a grade on the trivia answering ability, she would be nice and give me a "C." She was nice and that's probably why I passed those college courses. Once again, my self deception led me to the revelation of how much I still need to learn.
Going back to wine, all Chardonnays taste the same, right? Again, originally I thought so. All Chardonnays should have that nice buttery taste to them or they have gone bad. Looking back at that thinking, I can see how much I had to learn about wines.
Chardonnay is one of the most popular wines in the world, and for good reason. It matches most foods and settings because it has many tastes. That buttery taste comes from malolactic conversion in which the acidic nature of the process is toned down to allow the buttery nature of the process to be more pronounced. But, why does another Chardonnay have a yeasty taste? Well, the lees are left longer in the barrel and the result is a yeasty tasting wine.
Some Chardonnays have a mineral taste, and that's a result of them being grown in soils with high clay and limestone content. Other Chardonnays can have a spicy taste like cinnamon which comes from being aged in new barrels.
So many choices from one grape varietal. Thank goodness the wine gods are nice to us and give us so many choices. Likewise, thank goodness for teachers who have pity on their students and pass them when the student thought they knew something and didn't.
Do I know wines? Darn right, I do! Oh wait … what's that first sentence in this article?
As always, eat and drink in moderation but laugh with reckless abandon!
Cheers!