Barnyard Pinot
Sometimes I really think that people just miss the point when it comes to wine. I was watching a show while sipping my morning coffee and what I heard I really couldn't take without laughing. Well the host said that a good Pinot should smell like a barnyard. Now come on. I've read this before but you can't be serious. Petrol in good Riesling, manure in good Pinot. Are people insane, on groupthink, or just want to keep all the good stuff to themselves.
My point is: Why do you drink wine??? I really don't want to smell donkey doo, I want to enjoy myself and the wine. Prior to meeting tso, I would periodically travel to the Roundhouse to buy expensive wine. One holiday, I managed to break the $100 dollar mark for ingredients for my dinner. Yup, just for me. Barolo, veal chop and it was excellent. But I will gladly trade all that for a bottle of ‘Summer Sun'
on my patio with tso waiting for the ‘shrimp on the barbee'. What I mean is that wine is to be enjoyed with other people, to laugh, joke, enjoy.
Does a good bottle help. Certainly, that is just reality. But when you open a bottle with friends, do you all sniff it, compare notes, roll it in the glass then sip and comment. Not my friends. We pour, may take a sniff, have a swallow then say, man this is good, or it goes with dinner quite well, or ‘why did you open this bottle of carburetor cleaner when I wanted the Gewurtz'. We look for the good points, the enjoyment, and often, the choice isn't proper to their taste and they preferred the previous bottle, but hey they usually finish it.
It's like golf clubs. People go buy the latest works of art, pontificating how adding little weights on the perimeter will stop them hitting the ball into the next fairway, how the irons are so good that it gets them five stokes; then I proceed to hit it just as far and sometimes just not quite so right as them and my irons shots may clear the grass and my stuff is ancient, but I enjoy playing, meeting all the trees and shrubbery, saying: ‘hello mr squirrel, please don't kill me' and the famous "can I play my ball from your pool". The fellow with the best just misses the point and I see it with the wine snobs too.
That point is ok with me. I'm happy to drink local stuff, enjoy it and see it for what it is. It's not Opus 1, but it certainly isn't bad. I've never smelt one that smell like donkey doo(nor want to), I want it to smell like berries and stuff like that but that isn't the whole game. It needs to taste good. That's all-it needs to taste good. It could cost $6 or 60(I'd like it closer to 6), it doesn't matter. If you enjoy Bulgarian Chardonnay, good for you. If you must only drink wines from Napa, I really feel sorry for you. Life is short, enjoy.
