Perfectly said. I wish there were more venues to experience wine however we experience it, without studying it. Sadly, even tasting rooms are often lecture halls. Estates, vineyard sites, fermentation processes, all make it feel like we should know something about wine before we talk about it.
The biggest lesson I've learned running a tasting room is that participation usually comes before education, not the other way around.
Too often wineries (until relatively recently, I'd have had to include my own winery) treat wine knowledge as the admission ticket rather than something that grows naturally from experience. People don't need to understand vineyard sites or fermentation before they're allowed to enjoy a glass of wine. In fact, most of us learned to love wine long before we learned any of those things. I've always felt the best tasting rooms start with, "What are you noticing?" rather than, "Let me tell you about the soil." The technical details can enrich the experience, but they shouldn't be a prerequisite for belonging... which is exactly what i discovered while running my own.
It's compelling to imagine that the reason many people don't "get" wine is all our own fault. Then we could just stop doing that thing which is crushing the souls of legions of potential wine lovers - and they'll just flood in and save the day. But there is a very real reason why a person can identify a fresh strawberry but not feel confident about identifying strawberry in the glass.
It's because the whole experience of the strawberry- or any other fruit or vegetable or spice- is not in the glass. Just a component of the original, removed from the whole experience. Like an oboe yanked from the symphony, playing its own little part, hoping you'll recognize the song the whole orchestra was playing. The reason people find this sort of identification difficult is not just because they haven't learned to let go and trust the force. It's because it requires some time, and experience. It's not an innate skill, it has to be learned.
There's a certain contingent advocating the idea that if we people the impression that they need to know something to appreciate their wine, or music, or food, that will just make them feel dumb and drive them way. The golden path, they say, is to lower all the barriers - don't make a product that requires anything of anyone - only then can you be appreciated by everyone! The music industry has almost carried this to its inevitable conclusion. Let's not do that with wine. Let's not saddle ourselves with the idea that anyone's sense of wine as requiring some effort to appreciate is because of something we've done to them. Certainly, there are ways to do this wrong, but your mean piano teacher doesn't justify the idea that everything worthwhile in life should be effortless, and if it's not, then that is somebody's fault.
Perfectly said. I wish there were more venues to experience wine however we experience it, without studying it. Sadly, even tasting rooms are often lecture halls. Estates, vineyard sites, fermentation processes, all make it feel like we should know something about wine before we talk about it.
The biggest lesson I've learned running a tasting room is that participation usually comes before education, not the other way around.
Too often wineries (until relatively recently, I'd have had to include my own winery) treat wine knowledge as the admission ticket rather than something that grows naturally from experience. People don't need to understand vineyard sites or fermentation before they're allowed to enjoy a glass of wine. In fact, most of us learned to love wine long before we learned any of those things. I've always felt the best tasting rooms start with, "What are you noticing?" rather than, "Let me tell you about the soil." The technical details can enrich the experience, but they shouldn't be a prerequisite for belonging... which is exactly what i discovered while running my own.
It's compelling to imagine that the reason many people don't "get" wine is all our own fault. Then we could just stop doing that thing which is crushing the souls of legions of potential wine lovers - and they'll just flood in and save the day. But there is a very real reason why a person can identify a fresh strawberry but not feel confident about identifying strawberry in the glass.
It's because the whole experience of the strawberry- or any other fruit or vegetable or spice- is not in the glass. Just a component of the original, removed from the whole experience. Like an oboe yanked from the symphony, playing its own little part, hoping you'll recognize the song the whole orchestra was playing. The reason people find this sort of identification difficult is not just because they haven't learned to let go and trust the force. It's because it requires some time, and experience. It's not an innate skill, it has to be learned.
There's a certain contingent advocating the idea that if we people the impression that they need to know something to appreciate their wine, or music, or food, that will just make them feel dumb and drive them way. The golden path, they say, is to lower all the barriers - don't make a product that requires anything of anyone - only then can you be appreciated by everyone! The music industry has almost carried this to its inevitable conclusion. Let's not do that with wine. Let's not saddle ourselves with the idea that anyone's sense of wine as requiring some effort to appreciate is because of something we've done to them. Certainly, there are ways to do this wrong, but your mean piano teacher doesn't justify the idea that everything worthwhile in life should be effortless, and if it's not, then that is somebody's fault.
Great visual :)