A Layman Explores Wine 4

by William Powell

Although I usually know pretty precisely what I want to look for, I am always more than happy to be inspired: by packaging, product promises or—simple soul that I am—little gimmicks that come with the product.

The wine has to be dry

I actually take a similar approach to wine. I know I want, say, a dry white wine that also has a little fruit and will not impoverish my descendants unto the third generation … and I come home with some overpriced rosé swill that could only charitably be called off-dry and only really tastes good if you first numb your mouth by sucking excessively on ice cubes.

How could that happen? Well, for one thing, it was a really very pretty bottle with a very understated label—that speaks of class and simply appeals to the humanistically educated person in me. Secondly, the wine came from Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's own wine estate in France and was a limited edition to boot—I simply had to snap it up (screw humanism).

My wife hates it

My wife was not exactly thrilled that I had bought a whole case of the stuff—especially once we had opened the first bottle and, after the first sip, stared at each other with our eyes wide in utter disbelief. Afterwards, the wife merely muttered “Aha!”, firmly put her glass back on the table and left me to wrestle with the rest of the bottle. That did not, however, stop her from flogging the remaining five bottles on ebay at a profit … probably to people like me.

The marsupial around the bottle's neck

And yet I have already improved. For years, I kept buying an Australian red wine because a little golden plastic kangaroo dangled from a gold elastic band around the bottle. Fancy stuff—I had to have it. I no longer remember exactly whether I thought the wine was very good or very bad, but I know (and actually knew even then) that at €2.98 a bottle, I was not necessarily buying quality.

And yet that blasted marsupial on the bottle's neck kept waving at me with remarkable regularity, and so the wine ended up in my trolley every few weeks. Until one day I realised that we did not actually drink it at all, and my wife snapped at me that more than a dozen bottles of it were languishing in the cellar. Whatever became of them?

Someone has to be to blame

I maintain that my mother is to blame. Seriously—she herself told me that, at the tender age of three, she supposedly had to stop me from plunging into alcoholism. Sounds commendable, but what havoc did she wreak when she bought a bottle of lightly sparkling wine with the lovely name “Kellergeister”.

According to my mother, I found the ornate gold label, featuring a monk and two little devils, so enticing and magnificent that I moved heaven and earth to get a sip from the bottle. Of course, I was not allowed, was bitterly disappointed and therefore hold this childhood trauma partly responsible for the ease with which bottles with fabulous presentation find their way into my shopping bags. Unfulfilled dreams, you see.

The spirits I summoned

And, astonishingly, the consequences go even further, because at almost 29 I happened upon my long-lost “Kellergeister” at a party and finally took a hearty swig … and ever since I have known—well, “fun” lightly sparkling wine really is not for me. Does that stop me buying this stuff with the stupid ghosts every damned May (and then pouring it away again in June—to the mocking laughter of my beloved wife). Of course not! Why? Perhaps you should ask my mother?

I am glad that these days there is good wine in cool bottles too—incidentally, I currently find the labels from Weinfamilie Weinmann particularly pretty … but then I do not know that many yet.