A taste of humility

By MICHELLE CHOAT

There’s a saying that all you ever needed to know you learned in kindergarten.

That’s not true. Last week I learned that all I needed to know, I learned in my wine appreciation course at Chico State University. Sadly, I should have paid way more attention.

Each month, the St. Helena Star/Napa Valley Vintners Wine Tasting Panel tackles a different varietal. They invite winemakers, buyers, media and sommeliers from around the valley to participate in a blind tasting of whichever wine is on tap that month.

This month, it was zinfandel and I was among the tasters. Within about three minutes of being in the room, I realized I’d made a vital mistake. I should have Googled “characteristics of zinfandel” before going to the tasting.

What do I know about wine? I’m clearly not a winemaker. I could maybe tell you the difference between a cab and a zin. But to tell the difference between 16 zins? How?! They’re all so similar.

At the start, we were presented with a tasting flight of eight wines. The guy next to me started swirling. The lady in front of me was holding her glass to the light. The dude on the other side of me was rolling his glass around on the counter — with the wine in it.

I’m panicking. I’m trapped in this room with the brightest minds from Signorello, Peju and Corison. What was I thinking?

Yeah, I took one class for one semester. As I recall, it was an online lecture with an in-class lab. I think I maybe watched two lectures. I’m pretty sure I missed the lab on zins.

The tasting felt like a test. Intellectually, I know it wasn’t, but that didn’t help my nervous system.

I found myself starting to cheat. I looked over to my neighbor’s paper. Seriously? I couldn’t come up with anything on my own? The best I could do is cheat off Hugh Davies from Schramsberg?

It’s not like it was the SATs. My future was not dependent on this one wine-tasting moment. But that’s what it felt like — like someone was going to read over my notes and judge me for being completely oblivious.

Finally, my pulse slowed. I remembered I’m smart enough to do this. I’m not a total wine moron. I know something yummy from something yucky. I know what I would buy and what I wouldn’t.

I realized I was the consumer in the room, the one who isn’t the expert and the one who, frankly, these smart guys and gals should be aiming to please. I started to conquer my tasting sheet by pulling terms out of the air like “tannic,” “full bodied,” and “fruit forward.”

I confess there was a wine on which I commented, “Smells like dog poo.” I quickly realized that “earthy” was a better term.

It turns out I wasn’t off-base. The poo-wine was, indeed, everyone’s least favorite. The wine I chose as tops was No. 1 across the board.

So I may not be swishing, swirling, sipping and spitting perfectly. But, I know a good wine when I come across it. Next time, though, I think I really will bust out my Winetasting 101 textbook.

Girl on the Go appears every other week, alternating with Jennifer Huffman’s Surrendering to Motherhood. Contact Michelle at mchoat@napanews.com.

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