It’s a complex world of wines

I remember the first I time I walked into a wine cellar of a hotel. Yes, that dimly lit cold room, cozy And comfortable that no one really pays attention to, not really. It was during the initial days of my Industrial training at Jumeirah beach hotel Dubai, where I found out that this dim lit room (which is Colder than the ambient temperature) is my friend and my only friend in the hotel because no one Could see me inside and I was indeed happy spending time inside, clearing my head and busting

levels of stress by myself. Oh my! Don’t think I was miserable in life; it was just a getaway spot.

But slowly the bottles stacked on the unique shelves of the room kind of caught my attention and I always wondered why these bottles were kept tilted and some were horizontal and some were inside a Chiller inside the already cold room . Being a teenager there are no boundaries to questions that can just pop up in your mind. Why this, why that, why is it this way, why is it that way and so on and things like that. And the only person I could go to at that moment who had all the answers to my question was Miss Elena, who was the then asst outlet manager of Latitude, the multi cuisine restaurant cum coffee shop of JBH. People in the hotel used to call her a junior wine sommelier. For some odd reason my concept of a wine sommelier is a guy who walks around with a tasting glass hanging down his collar who wears a red tie and who has the authority to taste any wine before even the guest tastes it. She neither wore a red tie nor had the hanging cup nor did she taste any wines. Then it struck me, she was called a junior sommelier because she knew the complex world of wines.

So let me tell you my dear friends it is all part of the same old game. Starting from the plantation ,nourishing and harvesting and crushing, de-stemming, pressing and fermentation followed by filtration, clarification and bottling and aging was all what I thought is to a bottle of wine that anyone can grab from a decent wine shop. But fortunately the story of every single bottle is more intense

and sentimental like a life of a human being itself with lot of feelings and emotions planted in by the wine maker himself. Each bottle is crafted and nourished with that same sentiments and love and care like we give the whole world to our children. And to know about these sentiments and these intense feelings you should be able to travel deep down to the complexities involved in the process of wine making. Not just to the countries, the regions nor to the villages or the communes not even the chateaus but to the soil, the climate, the water, the sunshine and not to forget the wine maker himself which the French collectively call “the Terroir”. And so going back to Jumeirah beach hotel working with my manager, the “junior sommelier “ and spending my time in the stress busting room called the “ wine room” that’s all I did- break the complexities of wines, learn the terroir and try and figure out why in the world is it so difficult to understand the language of wines.

 

Each wine gets its distinctive character from the grape varieties that are used and when you blend the varietal with a different grape it’s give an entirely different flavour and guess what’s even more challenging, a sauvignon blanc grown in the cold terroir of France will differ significantly from a sauvignon blanc grown in south Africa and its exceedingly different from what is grown in new Zealand. Nobody ever said that it is easy to know or learn the language of wines. And it was indeed not easy for me too. I blabber a lot about wines about their characteristics, about how beautiful they are on the palate, how unique it is and how the terroir affects the production and so on and things like that but evidently I am just aware of 5 % knowledge of the complex world of wines and the rest 95% is still looking at me and smiling.

So basically the next time when someone tells you that I can get floral and black fruits in the wine or some dried nuts and tropical fruits, go ahead and give them another 100 things that you can taste in the wine. Because you are never wrong as it is your taste buds and they can’t disagree but when you know what exactly you are talking about and you know why and how such flavours develop in a wine and why such flavours become prominent. Then you can proudly say ,”yes I cracked the complexities of the world of wines”!!!

Cheers.