I'm not a wine expert -- I just play one on a pay-per-click, start-up Web site.
A little knowledge is not only dangerous -- it's intoxicating. In wine evaluating, as in life, perception is queen. I repeat over and over in my reviews that my findings are all my own. I am beyond candid about my personal antipathy for overoaked and malolactically fermented California white wines, and I admit with a modicum of shame that I know next to nothing about wines from countries other than the United States. I taste most wines alone (in terms of both company and food) and when I do reach for evaluation sustenance, it's most often of the rice cake and string cheese variety.
Even though I explain that my online handle, a four-letter woman's name, actually belongs to my hyperkinetic puppy, and that her palate is useless to me for wine evaluating purposes due to her proclivity for cat scat, people are inclined to give me far too much power and praise.
Being on the front lines with a visible e-mail address is the quintessential double-edged blade on a waiter's corkscrew. A sampling of the pleas for help I have received in the penning and posting of some 150-plus wine reviews goes something like this:
"I'm about to review a Concord wine from Pennsylvania. What components should I be looking for?"
"My husband swears that the Louis Jadot Beaujolais-Villages, any vintage, is the best wine on earth. Will you review it for him?"
"I opened a Chardonnay to sauté my chicken breasts in and threw away the cork. What can I use instead? How long will it keep? PS. My wife likes that Arbor Mist wine. Can you recommend a Chardonnay she might enjoy?"
"I am about to post a review with four hors d'oeuvres recipes. What wines would you pair them with?"
"I have a bottle of 1984 California Chardonnay in the garage. Is it ready?"
"I'm dining out next month in San Francisco. Here's the link to the wine list. What should my wife and I drink with our seafood?"
"I don't drink wine. I drink Dr. Pepper. I need a fabulous wine with which to woo a fabulous woman. You know her taste in wine. What shall I show up on her doorstep with?"
"When you say a Sauvignon Blanc tastes and smells like grass, do you mean marijuana grass or cow grass? I've never eaten grass. What does this mean?"
And then there is the occasional ruffled-feather e-mail, usually from an overly protective wine rep: "Since you seem to like so few of the Pinot Noirs you review, I suggest that you find a new varietal to drink or start spending more on your bottles."
But just as frequently come notes from people who have actually heeded my advice and lived to share the outcome.
I love to hear that I helped to make a special dinner a bit more memorable -- that a few wines I recommended were served at a tasting or enjoyed at a dinner party. I enjoy reading that when the wine list fell into the lap of an unsuspecting woman attending a business luncheon, she recognized a selection that I had reviewed favorably and wowed her companions with her good taste.
The way I rationalize it, if in the personal pursuit of my own wining and writing passions I can help to demystify wine and take the intimidation factor down just one tiny notch, my efforts are validated and my conspicuous consumption redeemed. Above all, if I had to reduce my most profound, sage advice on wine drinking to one sentence, it would be: "Your palate is never wrong."
I often wonder if the glut of consumer Web sites filled with reviews and articles written by "lay folk" will put more wine on American tables. I think it will. Obtaining wine education and buying advice (and the equally important, not-buying advice) from a peer-group-populated cyber-community can bolster the retail buying -- and restaurant ordering -- courage of the wine-curious collective. It will encourage the many people lurking in the self-conscious shadows to walk with us in confidence and strength toward the glowing and welcoming wine-loving light. I'm glad to be of service.
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