We’ve always wanted to attend “Taste Washington”, but at $125 a pop it’s a little spendy for us. Fortunately my lovely fiancée, Science Girl, won a pair of tickets in a contest she’d forgotten entering. Huzzah! There would be representatives from 190 wineries pouring over 700 wines, so we’d have a chance to try wines that we wouldn’t ordinarily have access to, either due to their obscurity or their price. Plus there would be booths from local restaurants serving various dishes, so you could pair various offerings with food. Which, when you think about it, only makes sense; wine is meant to go with food, so tasting it by itself is kinda like test-driving a car without being able to leave the dealer’s parking lot. We were both looking forward to this amazing opportunity.

Sadly, though, we miscalculated how long it would take us to complete a few chores we’d wanted to finish before we headed out for the gala evening. The doors opened at 4 PM; we weren’t able to get there until 5:30. Had the event run until 9:00, as I’d thought, we would have been fine; as it turns out, it was only scheduled until 7:00. This left us a little bit at a loss. 190 wineries, 700 wines, and we had about an hour and a half in which to hit them all, take notes, and scramble for a bite to eat.

Needless to say, we were not entirely successful. I would guess that we tasted anywhere from 20 to 40 wines. The notes were reduced to jotting down the names of wineries we both liked enough to want to remember. It’s probably just as well, really. It’s difficult to write about how a wine tastes without vainly resorting to flights of horrible quasi-descriptive glurge and sounding like what I’ve heard British people refer to as a prat. “It’s an assertive little vintage; there’s a flinty, steely – indeed, an almost rusty – minerality to it, with licorice, figs and a slight hint of cat’s piss to the nose, summer-hot asphalt and candied apples on the midpalate, and a long finish like shoeleather wrapped in aluminum foil being shoved down your throat during a hailstorm.” That sort of thing. I tip my hat to those who can do it and make it meaningful.

As for the food… well, we were led to believe that there would be a lot more on hand than there actually was. (Apparently we weren’t the only ones who were disappointed in this regard.) Also, what food there was was quickly being snarfed by clots of self-satisfied 30-something yupazoids, lacking only the coke spoons dangling in their non-existent chest hairs to personify the worst stereotype of the 70’s swinger your mind can conjure, and their pre-cancerously-tanned, make-up bespackled, surgically “enhanced” dates/wives teetering on three-inch spiked heels, their vacant faces emanating waves of banal bourgeois entitlement. Looking like creatures drawn by some bastard child of Daniel Clowes and Ralph Steadman, they spent the evening camping in front of food booths and pouring stations, blocking the aisles, and braying like the drunken asses they were. Truly, anyone who still believes that money confers taste need only attend the nearest wine “event” to be thoroughly disabused of that notion forever. Would that they all had but one throat, and I my hands around it. These are the same people who are buying all the condos that are destroying our once-beautiful city.

Just so I don’t sound like a complete misanthrope* or some sort of sour grapes (heh) guy, let me assure you that we did actually see a few relatively normal people as well. I saw a couple of sommeliers (or at least they were wearing passes that said “sommelier” on them) and a few others actively assessing what they were tasting, and there were folks taking a break from their own booths to go around and check out what the other vendors were pouring. By and large, though, it really did seem as if the majority of attendees were there strictly to get as shitfaced as possible in the most obnoxious manner possible. While I’m no stranger to that strategy on a Saturday night myself, it seemed a tad out of place here. If it had been a wine swilling, they would have been home free; as the event had been billed billed as a wine tasting, such behavior struck me as being, at the very least, a little disrespectful of the winemakers.

Then again, some of the winemakers weren’t entirely respectful of the civilians, either. Most of them were doing a really good job of remaining informative and trying to present their wares in the best light possible, but there were a couple of times where I apparently turned invisible for a moment or two. One guy was in the middle of his spiel about the percentages of different varietals in the meritage he was pouring when he literally trailed off in mid-sentence and turned his attention to the pneumatic brunette that suddenly loomed over my right shoulder. “This wine is 56% Merlot**, 23%...”

long pause while staring at titties

...“Hi, would you like to try our flagship wine?” At another booth, the otherwise really nice winemaker who was opening a bottle of Pinot Noir for me to taste stopped dead in the middle of cutting the capsule and abandoned me for a good three to five minutes while he schmoozed Warren Moon, promising to get him a tee time if he came out to the winery and giving him a bottle of that very same Pinot I was waiting to taste.

Now, I have absolutely nothing against Warren Moon, but let’s examine that transaction for a moment. Here’s a guy who’s made millions of dollars playing pro football. He’s currently doing television broadcasts of college football, for which I’d imagine he’s being compensated fairly well; I don’t think it would be unreasonable to guess that his salary is most likely in the six-digit range. I seem to recall that he owns a least one car dealership as well, but I may be wrong on that count. My point is that he’s not exactly hurting for cash, yet he’s the one getting the freebie. Again, nothing against Mr. Moon, but why blow me off without knowing who I am? For all Winemaker Dude knew, I was some Microsoft millionaire looking to stock my cellar. In his rush to kiss former athlete ass, he might just as easily have blown a huge deal for his winery. It made me feel very much the second-class citizen – a sensation for which I have very little patience.

While it’s true that wine is a middle-class pursuit, those of us on the lower end of that scale shouldn’t be ignored. If you’re anything like me (and may the various gods take pity on you if you are), you find yourself in a “fine dining” environment maybe three or four times a year, for birthdays, anniversaries and the like. That leaves 361 other dinners during the year, by my count, where fine wine would be prohibitively expensive – plus whatever lunches you might have where a little wine wouldn’t go amiss. There is a huge world of affordable wine out there; the fact of the matter is that you can still get a very nice bottle of wine for less than twenty dollars. Next time out, I’ll write a little about how to find it.

*Not that I’m not a misanthrope – I am, very much so. I just don’t like to sound that way.
**The really funny thing was that he wasn’t even remotely close on the numbers. I know because I checked while he was busy blowing me off. He did remember that there was some Merlot involved, so I suppose we should give him credit for that much.