Wine

Last month I had dinner with a few friends in a swish Byron Bay restaurant. We took a seat in the bar for pre-prandials and my mate Tim, being the flash bastard he is, goes and orders a bottle of bubbly. “My treat,” he says. And not just any old bubbly either, but the mid-priced bubbly. Like I say: flash bastard. Went down a treat, mind you: Tim’s $90 treat.

At the table, the sommelier hands Tim the encyclopaedic wine list and the two of them engage in a protracted – and to my uneducated mind, pretentious – discussion about what flavour of booze would best compliment everyone’s menu choice. It’s all “acidity” this, “crispness” that, and “floral notes” the other.

Whatever, it tastes alright.

Soon enough, the sommelier’s back. Would we care for another bottle? “Your choice this time, Dan,” says Tim. Emboldened by the first two bottles and motivated by a wish to keep the bill semi-respectable, I scan the list. My method of choosing wine is pretty straightforward. I don’t go for a particular “varietal” or vineyard. Like a superficial woman, I’m only interested in one thing: money. If it’s too cheap (a rarity in the restaurant environment), I avoid it on the grounds that a) I don’t want to run the risk of having to pick the threshers’ corn plasters out of my teeth, and b) I don’t want to look like the cheapskate I am. If it’s too pricey, I avoid it on the basis of it being too pricey.

Anyway, by this stage of the evening, everyone’s half-cut so it doesn’t matter what I choose. I’m glad to see that the wines are not listed in order of price so it’s less obvious that I am a Philistine: deliberately choosing the cheapest bottle in the house. My eye drifts to the right and I scan the numbers. The smallest one is $40. I follow the line back along to the left and it’s something unpronounceable. So, like Little Britain’s monosyllabic faux-quadriplegic, Andy, I just point and say: “Dat one.” Excellent choice, sir.

Whatever, it tastes alright.

At the end of the meal, I get up to nip to the loo and ask for the bill. When I return to my seat, said bill is waiting for me, along with three apparently speechless friends. “What’s up?” I say. And then I look down at the bill. “Oh.” It’s nudging $1000. “Ah.” I look up and still no-one’s saying anything. They’re just staring at me. “What?” And then I look again. That $40 bottle I ordered in the above paragraph? Turns out it was actually $340. I’d misread the list. No wonder it was such an excellent choice, sir. “Shit…My treat. Shit.”

All of which is a rather long-winded way of saying: I am absolutely clueless when it comes to wine. Like many of us, I hate being crap at anything, especially those essential life skills that blokes are meant to be good at. Choosing wine, reverse parallel parking, golf, carving meat, assembling flat-pack furniture, sex, opening jam jars. Unfortunately, that means I spend an unhealthy part of my life in a state of hate. Which I also hate. Furthermore, I hate admitting I’m crap at something almost as much as I hate being crap at it. Which means, this cathartic column aside, I rarely admit it. I just allow my all-too-apparent goonery to do that for me – and then hate myself for it. Nnng!

But pretty much top of the whine-list is wine. You see, the grape is something a fine upstanding modern day GQ-educated epicurean should know all about. He should be able to navigate a wine list like a bookie reads a form guide, picking a winner every time, occasionally taking a punt on a good tip, but leaving the rank outsiders to the clueless masses. You don’t see James Bond sitting there, burying his sweating, furrowed brow into the wine list, looking for something – anything – he can both pronounce and afford. No, he says: “Now look here, my good man, I’ll have a bottle of your Château Angélus. And make it a 1982.” And then he fixes the waiter with a look that says: You try and palm me off with a 1990 again and I’ll shoot you in the scrotum and seduce your wife.

My wine education, however, starts and finishes with a fondness for the film Sideways. (“If anyone orders Merlot, I’m leaving. I am NOT drinking any fucking Merlot!”) And so it was that I took myself off for to the Hunter Valley last weekend to try and get to grips with grapes.

First stop was a vineyard called Tyrells. “What shall we start with today?” asks the winemaker, setting out some fresh Tyrells glasses on his counter. He’s sizing us up. If I say, “Could we try some of your 2007 Verdehlo? I hear it’s extremely good, perhaps even on a par with your 2003” he’ll know that we know our wine buff stuff. So? “Erm [beseeching look to girlfriend for help – none forthcoming]… how about some white?” I stammer, as a wave of self-loathing crashes over me. “I’m sorry,” I continue. “We don’t know very much about wine so you’ll have to guide us through it.” He smiles. “Not a problem,” he says. “That’s what I’m here for. And it’s good to hear someone admit they need a bit of help for a change.”

He takes us through the whole range, getting us to hold the glass up to the light and look at the colour and clarity. It’s clear that wine comes in many more shades than just red and white. Then we swirl each wine around in the glass and take a good sniff of the bouquet because smell is a very important part of tasting. If you don’t like the smell, you probably won’t like the taste. Then we sip each one properly and compare it to any aftertaste, describing what we’re smelling and tasting in simple, everyday language – a bit like Violet Beauregarde’s chewing gum in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. These days there are no rules such as you have to drink white with seafood and red with steak, apparently.

Within a couple of glasses, I’m tasting “citrus fruits, a bit of passionfruit, maybe some hint of walnut in the aftertaste” with the best of them. I still don’t really know whether an aftertaste of walnut is something to be savoured in a wine, but it’s a certainly a more sophisticated appreciation than “Whatever, it tastes alright.” “Of course, the only way to tell whether or not a wine is any good is to taste a lot of the stuff,” says the winemaker. Sounds good to me. Pass us the wine list, would you?



Need any help with the wine list, sir?
Take these top tips from Jason Hoy, manager of the Ultimo Wine Centre (www.ultimowinecentre.com.au)

1. Aim for the mid-range rather than top or bottom price on the list. The bottom is for money-making house wines of poor quality.

2. Order your food first and do not get forced into ordering wines first. Why screw your meal with a wine that doesn't fit?

3. Ask for two recommendations and go with the second: it is usually a little more thoughtful and inspired rather than the 'wine to shift'.

4. Blends (both red and white) can be safe choices in unfamiliar territory. They tends to iron out the lumps and bumps of single varietals.

5. Relax. Start with a glass of sparkling and give your self time to formulate questions about the rest of the list.