Nothing is Accidental: Two Girls, One Wine
By: Monica O Connor
Tags: Wine, Sommelier, Humor

Nothing is Accidental: Two Girls, One Wine

Ashley is an intro level sommelier. You probably don’t know what that is. You’re forgiven— I didn’t know the details or the the intricacy of the job until she started on her journey to ultimate alcoholism. Sommeliers study wine and all that is involved in the exquisite process that give us the liquid of my people (social drunks). Variations of grapes are regional in countries all over the world, making each a unique and specific fruit. The dirt grapes are grown in affects the taste — I mean, who knew?

Now, I like wine. White preferably, or a light red. Why do I like wine? Mostly because I don’t love people, and wine doesn’t throw shade, or piss me off, or tell me to do things for it. Wine just lets me get a little drunk and relax. Wine is good to me. I don’t care where its been, or where it’s going, as long as we’re together at the end of a long day.

Ashley is very concerned with where her wine has been. She has to know the “why” and “how” her wine came to be. The make up, the essence of wine. She immerses herself in it, sipping slowly as I knock half a bottle back.

Our view from A Voce, overlooking a snow dusted Columbus Circle.

Ashley and I have gone to wine tastings before. Last February, we walked into A Voce in Columbus Circle — her as a potential buyer for the liquor store where she works, me as a social alcoholic — and stumbled out like fools. The other buyers were spitting their wine into communal buckets, which I considered wasteful (and disgusting). Ashley and I tasted 75 wines that day, which ended with us as the youngest, most under-dressed, drunkest people in the room. We asked for the wine list at dinner and waiter denied us. It was 4:30pm. Moral of the story, we know how to taste wine but Ashley has been practicing “blind” tastings, an integral part of the sommelier certification test. I thought it would be interesting to see how Ashley, well on her way to being an expert, understood wine as opposed to an uncultured swine like myself.

I walk into her house without knocking. I can hear her sitting in the kitchen with her mother, shouting at the Yankees as they lose to the Houston Astro’s. She’s clapping at the television, nods in my direction like a brute. I lay on the floor with her dogs.

This is our friendship.

Eventually, fed up with a Jeter-less squad, Ashley sets up her dining room table for our tasting. Two bottles of wine, two sheets of printer paper, four glasses and a glass pitcher. This already seems like too much for me.

“We’re going to be testing a theory”, she explains, placing the various items in perfect photo-op position. “We’re going to determine if decanting makes a difference.”

I stare at her blankly. She shakes her head and continues. “Decanting is the process of letting wine breathe. When the wine touches the air…” This went on. I am interested, but I just really, really would like a drink.

“Wine is starved of air, especially if it’s a Stelvin, or a screw cap. A cork lets a very small amount of air in, but air nonetheless. The second the air hits the wine, the wine is like “OH SHIT, HELLO!” and it’s characteristics usually end up changing. We’re here to determine the difference.”

Ashley pours the entire bottle of the deep crimson liquid into the pitcher. “This will allow the wine access to air a little quicker,” she adds, drawing columns for tasting notes on the sheets of paper she laid out. “Did you cleanse your palate?”

“Excuse me?” I know I have a foul mouth but now she was just being insulting.

“Rinse your mouth. You just ate dinner and drank raspberry ale. It’s gonna fuck with your tastebuds….I’m serious, Monica cleanse your damn palate!” I lethargically walk over to the kitchen sink. “How much longer do we have to wait for the wine to breathe?” I whine.

“Ten minutes.”

We wait. Ashley is taking pictures of wine glasses, I’m petting her dogs, and bantering with her mom. We are still waiting for this wine to catch it’s breath. I’m getting impatient. Finally, Ashley tells me its time and pours the wine into one of my glasses, which I instantly scoop up and dive into taking a sip, ready for it’s warm, boozy embrace on my lips.

“WAIT! We haven’t tested it yet! Stop holding it by the glass, you’re going to heat the wine and change the taste,” she scolds, grabbing the glass from my hand. “Jesus, your hands are hot as fuck.” I’m baffled.

“So you’re telling me I can’t drink yet…” What kind of cruelty did I subject myself to? This was my idea, wasn’t it…

“We’re going through the steps. First is sight.” She holds the glass up to the paper, attempting to look through the liquid. “This is a Shebang Ninth Cuvee, which is basically just a fancy way to say ‘a bunch of shit mixed into a barrel together.’ It doesn’t really make any sense to me. The middle is blood red — notice how you can’t see anything? There’s no opulence, but its lighter on the outside. The color hints whats in it, how old it is, the alcohol content. Makes me think that its blended Zinfandel, Petit Sirah maybe…we’ll check later.”

All I know is that I can’t see anything, its red, and kind of pink on the outside rim.

“Swirl it in your glass. Do you notice heavy drippage?” I laugh at the unnecessary sexual innuendo I created in an otherwise unsexy situation.

“Ew,” I giggle. “Drippage.”

“Thank you, Monica. Anyway, the streaks indicate that this has a really high alcohol content.” Good to know, because I need a solid buzz after all of this.

We moved on to the smelling part of the program. I stuck my honker into the glass and started rattling off scents. This is the part I like — early on in Ashley’s studies, we used to just name the things we smelled in wine, no matter how strange or absurd. Cat pee, maple syrup, grass, you name it. No smell was off limits even if it sounded like a strange ingredient for wine, because there was always a reason the wine smelled that way — the soil, or the region, or the grape, or the fermenting process.

“Swirl, smell, swirl, smell, swirl, sip.” Ashley instructs.

I swirl. A deep breath in floods my sense with raspberries and black berries and booze. Swirl again — straight vodka. I feel like my nose hairs are singed. I have a flashback to senior year high school, drinking raspberry Smirinoff in Jonathan’s basement. Mildew and rubbing alcohol and fruit. Lovely. I complete the process and finally, after 15 long minutes of waiting, take a hearty sip of this boozy fruity drink.

Salt walter. It tastes like vodka and salt water and it is disgusting. I swallow and almost gag, my mouth turning immediately into the Sahara Desert on it’s hottest day.

“Oh GOD, that’s fucking terrible,” I spatter, trying to bring moisture back to my cat tongue by guzzling water. “That tastes the salt water and death, and my mouth is SO dry, what is happening!”

“Tannins. It’s a dry wine, so there are a lot of tannins, making your mouth dry. Give it another sip. Let it sit in your mouth, suck some air through your teeth. I don’t think you tasted it right, so try again.”

“Again? Jesus.” I take a less generous sip this time, following Ashley’s specific instructions. The taste is infinitely worse.

“No. This…no, I’m pissed this wine is ass.”

“Yeah it’s not my favorite, but its important that we try the second bottle anyway, so we can determine if allowing the wine to decant actually makes a difference. I guarantee you’ll hate the second bottle more.” Very encouraging.

We now have to go through all of these steps a second time. The sight and smell were mostly the same, but the alcohol aroma was infinitely stronger this go-round. I was not thrilled to be drinking this sandy, boozy wine again, but it was my stupid idea to write about this stupid wine, so might as well complete the task at hand.

Swirl, smell, swirl, smell, sip. Salt water and booze, but less terrible this time. Less dry, more acidity, still intolerable.

We’ve completed the procedure. Twenty-five minutes, two bottles of Shebang, endless complaining on my end, all to conclude that decanting does in fact make a difference in the taste of wine. Ashley confirmed that the grapes she expected to be mixed together, were in fact part of the make up of this wine. The girl has skill. In the end, I preferred the undecanted wine; Ashley chose the opposite. If you’re thinking of giving this wine a taste, you should aim to drink the whole bottle in under 10 minutes. After that, too much air and you’ll be salty. Literally.

It is an amazing process honestly — the knowledge she has obtained and shared with me is so intricate and detailed and sultry and deep. I don’t have the patience for it — I drink wine to unwind. Ashley drinks wine to expand, explore regions of the world she’s never seen; understand a soil her feet have never touched. Her cultural acknowledgement is astounding. Her tastebuds are astute, picking up on flavors and textures my palate recognizes but cannot identify.

When we were cleaning up our mess, Ashley broke out a bottle of white that I could stomach. Pouring a glass, I quipped, “Honestly Ash…that wine was bad.”

“Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s bad,” she replied, evoking a raised eye brow from my corner of the table. “I don’t mean bad in regard to taste. I mean that your disgust doesn’t mean the wine is bad quality. This wine is intricate and bold and…honestly it smells like booze, but there’s a reason. Nothing is accidental.”

What an astounding metaphor. Nothing is accidental. Nothing would be worth the wait, or the taste or the warmth if we took a liking to everything. Sometimes you wait and you get a mouth full of salt water, like an unexpected crashing wave, slamming you in the face. And sometimes, after you let the moment — or the person, or the wine — breathe, you are met with a mind opening, mouth watering something, worth every second.