{"id":1720,"date":"2020-12-29T18:46:24","date_gmt":"2020-12-29T18:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=1720"},"modified":"2020-12-29T18:46:24","modified_gmt":"2020-12-29T18:46:24","slug":"the-importance-of-being-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=1720","title":{"rendered":"The Importance of Being There"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s always fun to discover that an unknown wine from an obscure location is really pretty good.\u00a0 But with all due respect to the Mavrud grapes of Bulgaria or the sparkling wines of Brazil, there\u2019s a reason why the world beats a path to Bordeaux, Tuscany, Napa Valley, Burgundy, the Rioja and Sonoma County: They\u2019re the best.\u00a0 If you want to be a knowledgeable wine taster. before you get off the beaten path, you\u2019d better be familiar with some if not all of the premier sectors of Wine Country<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the big deal about being there, in the most famous locales?<\/p>\n

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For one thing, there\u2019s a pleasure when you open a bottle in remembering what the region looked like or even better what the winery was like.\u00a0 There\u2019s nothing like the experience of touching the actual grapes (or maybe filching one to see what they\u2019re like) when you pour what they made from them.\u00a0 Except for winemakers themselves, most of us couldn\u2019t tell a Cabernet Sauvignon grape from a Pinot Noir, but it\u2019s fun to believe you could.\u00a0 And you can only pretend to do so if you\u2019ve actually been there to see them.<\/p>\n

Of course, you can look at grapes anywhere they grow them.\u00a0 But when you\u2019re standing in front of Ch\u00e2teau Margaux touching the grapes (which we have done) you know that these are among the greatest grapes in the world.\u00a0 You have to be there.<\/p>\n

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Ch\u00e2teau Margaux.\u00a0 Photo courtesy of Forbes.<\/em><\/p>\n

Wine is made of grapes but people make wine.\u00a0 It\u2019s a wonderful experience meeting these people in their own environment.\u00a0 For the most part, they\u2019re very nice.\u00a0 And why shouldn\u2019t they be?\u00a0 You\u2019ve come a long way to taste their wines and you chose their winery for the purpose.\u00a0 If you\u2019re serious about wine tasting \u2013 and you must be, because you\u2019re there \u2013 they are as eager to know something about their customers as you are to engage with the winemaker<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We were in Burgundy\u2019s C\u00f4te d\u2019Or many years ago, having a picnic in a churchyard.\u00a0 A man walked by and spotted us and came over to talk.\u00a0 We thought he was going to tell us to move but, no, he wanted to see what we were drinking with lunch.\u00a0 When he found that a couple from the other side of the Atlantic was having a premier cru<\/em> with our jambon<\/em> and baguette<\/em>, he was quite pleased.\u00a0 \u201cQuelle pique-nique<\/em>!\u201d\u00a0 It turned out that he owned a few rows of vines in the adjoining vineyard.\u00a0 We think of him every time we open a top Burgundy.\u00a0 To do that, you have to be there.<\/p>\n

For us, wine is a beverage to accompany dinner, sometimes for meditation, a subject of eternal fascination and, in wine tasting, an avocation that has taken us to vineyards around the world.\u00a0 We can and do enjoy the wine from the store around the corner, but it\u2019s not the same experience.\u00a0 The pleasure of wine tasting, as opposed to drinking, comes as much from the tastes, memories and feelings as much as from the wine itself.\u00a0 And to get that experience, you have to be there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s always fun to discover that an unknown wine from an obscure location is really pretty good.\u00a0 But with all due respect to the Mavrud grapes of Bulgaria or the sparkling wines of Brazil, there\u2019s a reason why the world beats a path to Bordeaux, Tuscany, Napa Valley, Burgundy, the Rioja and Sonoma County: They\u2019re … Continue reading The Importance of Being There<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1723,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720\/revisions\/1723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}