Fine Wine
Tempranillo varietal wine bottle and glass, showing colour Shot with Nikon D70s (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“Wine improves with age. The older I get, the better I like it.” – Anonymous!
or, as Alexander Fleming so rightly put it . . .
“Penicillin cures, but wine makes people happy.”
There’s nothing quite like a fine wine to really help to enhance a good meal, good food and good company with a fine wine . . . one of life’s most civilized pleasures indeed.
Okay, so wine has been around since the year dot, or, thousands of years before the year dot actually, but we’re not just talking about any old wine here, we’re talking about fine wine. What makes a wine fine? How do you distinguish between a “fine wine” and a “not so fine wine”? What is the opposite of “fine wine”? How do you get a job as a fine wine taster? So many questions . . . all usually becomes clearer after a glass or two!
Fine Wines
We all have our favorites, the wines which we enjoy, the wines which we prefer, the wines which we drink because our more knowledgeable peers have told us it’s “fine wine”, and the wine which we drink because it’s all that’s left on the rack. But how do you differentiate between fine wine and normal wine. The word “fine” implies very clearly that it is of the very highest quality, but the perception of quality from one person to another can be remarkably different. I’m not making this very easy am I . . . surely there must be some way to describe what is indeed, a fine wine!
Fine Wine Labels
So what words do they use on fine wine labels to let us know just how fine these wines are?
- Balance – yes, I can usually balance okay after a couple of glasses of fine wine, but then I do get a little bit wobbly.
- Complexity – mmm, not sure about this, I’m a pretty straightforward type of gal, although I tend to think about things in a very different way after a few glasses of fine wine, whilst I’m busy putting the complex issues of the world straight!
- Length – well, I’ve fallen my length once or twice as a direct result of fine wine so I can’t deny it!
- Concentration – pass, I do concentrate very hard when trying to put the key into the lock after a few glasses of fine wine, only to end up banging on the door until someone takes pity on me (and the neighbors) and lets me in.
- Elegance – not a chance!
Is Fine Wine Always Fine
Wine is only as fine as the grapes which have been used to produce it, but grape crops and quality do vary from year to year depending on the weather etc. What if the grapes were a little poor one year, what if the wine making didn’t go quite according to plan . . . can a vineyard produce a fine wine one year and not the next? Are they likely to admit to it? Once you’ve been declared as a maker of “fine wine” is that it, or does each and every individual bottle of wine need to be judged and classified accordingly? Crikey, it’s a complicated business, I wonder what the experts say?
Fine Wine and the Experts
I’m talking about real wine experts here, the one’s who go on TV or are wine buyers for the really huge wine sellers, not that woman across the road who thinks that she’s an expert because she’s joined an exclusive “wine club” and drinks it by the crate load to try and look sophisticated. How do the experts distinguish a fine wine. Well, they generally classify them as something like;
- Very good
- Fine
- Very fine
- Grand Vin
But is one man’s “fine wine” another man’s “cheap plonk” . . . it would appear so. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and “winery finery” is in the tastebuds of the drinker.
We can’t really finish this page without paying homage to possibly the finest wine drinker of them all . . . .