Wine and Friends

For those of you who know me, you know I am not much of a sophisticate. In fact, I am to sophisticate as Keanu Reeves is to extraordinary thespian. If you don't know any better, you might mistake either of us as our respective pairing.

This past weekend was a wonderful experience for my wife and me. Some friends invited us out to dinner and a wine tasting. Now, as fairly recent graduates from the school of "White Zinfandel is the only wine I know", we were in over our heads. And I was intimidated. We were to meet a third couple for the dinner. Both of the other couples are quite well versed in wines.

We explained very early in the evening that we knew little, if anything, about wine. Once confessed, I felt better. At least I didn't have to pretend. But much to our delight, they were more than happy to help us learn. Through the entire five course meal, they explained the origins of the various wines, the flavors, and the proper pairings with particular foods. They showed us how to take in the boquet, swirl, sample the boquet again, and finally taste.

Of course one evening does not make us experts. This is certainly an area of knowledge where the more you know, the more you realize how little you know. It takes years to develop a proper pallet and decades to become an expert.

But it took only one evening to make good friends.