Wine Tasting is a Slight of Hand

It is my wont, in these balmy days of leisure and lunacy between the late recent terror of winter bottling in Orange and the appalling challenge of another damp (sic) Spring, to take in the odd wine tasting.

Now those of you who have been party to such vinous rituals at the Bloodwood Cellar Door will understand that the use of the word "odd" is a pejorative of the kindest order and any observations here are certainly not directed at you. After all, you do know the difference between a spittoon and a water jug and come the final swig, what really is "normal" about a public wine tasting anyway?

When you think about it, the very concept of a tasting is a slight of hand given that your fellow tasters spend not a little time judging you on your ability to spit the stuff out. And what meets their eyes? Not for you the pathetic open-mouthed forward arching dribble over the impossibly narrow antique silver goblet (improbably imitating a real spittoon), no, not for you. Yours is a purposeful venerated jet of cheese-flavoured mauve spittle which fires cleanly and precisely from your delicately pursed lips into the geometric middle of that narrow impossibility every, anxious free, time. The ease with which this is accomplished says more about you as a worthy human being than it could ever possibly say about the quality of the wine under examination. Not that there is any sort of public acclamation with the successful execution of such feats. No, all you are likely to sense from your fellow tasters, is a slight elevation in the angle of an occasional dandruff-encrusted eyebrow, or, if you are really extraordinarily lucky, the ever so flimsy flash of a gold tooth as UN-impressible lips reluctantly part. The upside is that, with each splash-free spit, you will feel a palpable sigh of relief amongst the anxious kitchen staff black and whitely arranged in battalions along the linen-encrusted walls of the executive room of the Snobs Rest Motor Hotel B.Y.O. Brasserie.

But to the tasting proper. If it's a mass event with a bewildering number of wine styles in a specified order of tasting within a pre-determined time limit, the early progress will be genteel and ordered; a studied glimpse at the tasting guide; a measured swirl and sniff of each wine followed by a cryptic annotation to the "official" notes. You know the sort of thing. Scratch out "complex" and insert "oxidised"; substitute "honeydew" for "smoked oysters"...ignore "finesse" and pass the bottle please. Actually the Riesling styles, appearing as they usually do early in the proceedings, often receive an inordinate amount of concentration and consideration. Is there the whiff of apricot betraying a battle with Botrytis; do the aromatics lean more or less toward the lime or the citrus realm of things; is there enough fruit weight in the palate to balance the sometimes austere aromas which greet your first whiff? Yes, early on, each taster gives their all and even including the socially ignored sadly-suited gent lilting upstage right in the fortified section, the Irish linen embroidered table cloth beneath each spittoon remains pristine. (St. Vincent de Tokay doesn't seem to have any need for a spittoon). And yet, things abstemious are about to change. There's still some control come Chardonnay time, even enough leeway in the light reds to excuse the occasional accidental splash leaping out of the rapidly filling silverware, but by the turn of the full-bodied Cabernet-based reds, all social pretence is out the window. Time, Gentlemen, is running out.

The well-dressed jostle for position sees conservative school ties surreptitiously loosened as the effects of earlier indiscretions can no longer be delicately disguised under carefully placed water jugs and scattered cheese platters. The Irish linen is biliously developing indigestion, while the remaining bread sticks and chunks-de Fromage lose all identification in a sea of very second-hand red wine. Meanwhile, St. Vincent de Tokay is unceremoniously urged downstage left where he nevertheless finds biliary solace amongst the caustic remnants of the Riesling table. A full-scale frontal attack on the fortifieds is gathering pace. By now, no one knows the whereabouts of, or has even the slightest need, for a spittoon. For all the wine now landing within its phenolically stained walls, it may as well be located in Ireland.

As the tasting enters the home straight, all privately schooled etiquette and social restraint is abandoned. As Muscat after Tokay after botrytised Semillon barely touches the palate on the way down, the minutes, Masterchef style, flash by. Yes, friends, it's value-for-money time. The Plimsoll line, lately representing the proscribed boundary poured into each glass is subject to permanent inundation. The tasting guide mutates into a social weapon used as it is to swat competitors aside while maintaining a bee-line to the next sticky. All pretence of order and sobriety is well and truly down the proverbial. But that's what St. Vincent and the Irish in me really like about such choreographed wine tastings. In the end, they are the greatest of social levellers which should teach us all to be a little less indifferent towards those more fortified than ourselves. Cheers.