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"Don't Overanalyze Your Wine. Enjoy It." by Terry Theise in zesterdaily.com


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Somehow, Terry pulls this off as not sounding condescending towards beginners at all, but boy was he riding a slippery slope the whole way down. This is a thoughtful little piece.

"Don't Overanalyze Your Wine. Enjoy It." by Member Number 4: Terrencium Thiespian.

I think that he is spot on, and I actually find that most beginners are intimidated by all of the technical noise that is spewed at them. It is very overwhelming and gets into the way of what I consider rule # 1 or being a wine lover; drink what you enjoy (rule #2 is try as many types of wines as you can as it makes following rule #1 much easier, rule #3 find a decent vintner – I have not other rules when it comes to wine).

I also wonder if these people really love wine or just love knowing about wine, or even worse love people knowing that they know about wine (I also include score chasers and people that rattle off every flavor they can smell on the bouquet in this group).

It is just grape juice that makes you feel good, enjoy it.

That said, that does not mean that I have no interest in hearing about interesting things about how the wine is made, but when I go to open the bottle a week/month/years later I will not remember that the wine maker only uses barrels made with oak from his family’s own forest or that the yeast used was originally cultivated from wild yeast the winemakers great-great grandfather cultured at the winery.

There are times when some technical data is good to know, for me I definitely want to know if a Brut Champagne has zero dosage before I drink it (I like them, but if you are not expecting one it can be a kick to the palette) – otherwise I am generally not interested in the amount of dosage used.

Of course if you ever plan on growing grapes, making wine, or becoming a Master of Wine then it all matters, I just plan on drinking what I enjoy and live in blissful ignorance of most of the technical data he describes.

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I'm kind of surprised that people are so interested in the technical details over the taste. But I also can't understand why people memorize baseball stats, so there you go.

Ironically, I've been to several Orioles games with Terry. He is a baseball fiend. :)

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