Wining Whining

I must confess that I am woefully lacking when it comes to wine knowledge.

While I know the rudimentary facts, can tell a bad wine from a good wine from a great wine and can manage basic wine/food pairings, I certainly cannot blind-taste a wine and tell you the region, vintage or even the grape. I’ve read the very best wine books, gone to a few wine-tastings and always listen carefully to the opinions of oenophiles, but I just cannot seem to get motivated to really learn more.

So in my own defense here are the Top Ten Reasons why I’m so uneducated about wines…

10. Vanity. Pure and simple. After a night of drinking, I look my age. And don’t even get me started on the calories.

9. Laziness. When it comes to choosing wines, I typically default to the Blanche DuBois approach ("I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."). Sommeliers and wine merchants certainly know more than I ever will.

8. Procrastination (or the Scarlett O’Hara approach, since I am quoting female fictional characters). “I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow.”

7. Lack of motivation. Our home wine rack is perpetually full without my buying a single bottle. We entertain enough and drink so little that wine brought as gifts by our guests keeps us very well stocked (until the in-laws come to visit).

6. Ditziness. I cannot memorize numbers to save my life. I frequently assume the “deer in headlights” pose when asked for my phone number or zip code. So that vintage… was it 1959? Or 1995? Or 1895? Or 2005… ???

5. Side effects. I am a lightweight on allergy meds. One glass of wine and I’m rather inert for the rest of the evening.

4. Uptightness. And when I hold off on the prescription meds, I am still a lightweight control-freak. I have much more fun when in command of all my faculties and do not need to worry about the appropriateness of the words coming out of my mouth.

3. Memory overload. My brain seems to have a finite amount of space and, if I cram in factoids about wine, it might crowd out vital sci-fi trivia.

2. Preference. After nearly a score of years of drinking pretty much only water, I’ve lost my taste for drinking anything flavored with food.

1. Likeability. I am tedious enough with my spontaneous spouting off of facts regarding food, plants, birding, baking, baseball, horses, science and so on. I am afraid that if I add wine information (with its considerable pretentiousness potential) to that list, I’ll no longer have any friends.