In movies of a certain kind (think The Third Man, Port of Shadows, Brief Encounter) fog plays a prominent role. Its presence evokes mystery, doubt, and a vague anxiety – all lovely things when you’re longing to sink into something entertainingly noirish. Wine and fog have some associations, too. There’s the noble grape of Barolo, Barbaresco, Boca, and Valtellina known as nebbiolo (in Italian, nebbia = fog). There’s also the celebrated fogs of San Francisco, or more properly of San Pablo Bay, which roll up through Carneros into Sonoma County and produce effects in the area’s vineyards I suppose you could call pinot noirish.
There’s another way in which fog and wine are related – and that’s in the mystery, doubt, and vague anxiety all of us feel at one time or another as we try to find our way through the innumerable place names, soil types, grape varietals, and flavor profiles that wine confronts us with.
Wine is so very rich in detail that it’s notoriously easy to turn around once and discover that you’ve lost your bearings. While it’s often suggested that there’s something inherent in wine that brings this disorientation on, it’s hard to see how it differs from other fields in which there is much to know and the learning curve is correspondingly steep. Still, many of us, having made a start, quickly find ourselves adrift in an unmanageable cloud of detail, lost in something we might legitimately call the fog of wine.
And it’s not just newbies who become confounded. There isn’t anyone involved with wine either in the trade, or as a journalist or critic, or even someone who actually makes the stuff who hasn’t at one time or another found himself or herself embarrassed by wine, made to look foolish or downright dense. My own experiences along these lines fueled suspicion that wine had it in for me – but I’ve changed my mind.
Over the years I’ve sat at table with Burgundy experts who couldn’t correctly identify a Burgundy in a blind tasting. Ditto for a world-renowned producer of German riesling. You’d think he could nail that 30 year-old white wine for what it was – a German riesling – but, no. He couldn’t manage it. Wine has embarrassed me more times that I care to count.
I stopped taking it personally when I realized that wine wasn’t singling me out for humiliation. Engulfed in the mist, you can forget others are similarly befogged. Wine does this to everybody. In practice, few who set out to pursue an interest do so to the point of mastery. More commonly we apply ourselves to subjects for just as long as we find them compelling, entertaining, and not too difficult. For some of us, wine has remained an obsession not despite its complexity but because of it. It’s marvelous to continue to be delighted by something for all the same reasons that attracted you to it in the first place.
As for the occasional humiliation, I’ve decided it comes with the territory
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-Stephen Meuse
Taste, talk and learn about wine this weekend in the FKC wine corner . . .
THURSDAY, JANUARY 23 3-6 PM – PEA SOUP
2018 Adèle Rouzé Quincy, $21.95
2017 Venica Collio Merlot, $19.95
2010
Finca Nueva Rioja Reserva, $26.95
FRIDAY, JANUARY 24 3-6 PM – IS THAT YOU, SHERLOCK?
2017 Vignoble du Rêveur Alsace Riesling “Vibrations,” $23.95
2017 La Chapinière Touraine Gamay, $14.95
2018 Camarda Nerello Mascalese, $24.95