wine-y things.

Let's make it a wine three-fer, shall we?

Thing 1: Dr. Bob has met everybody.
And I mean everybody. I'm not just talking about the kind of everybodies that make wine dorks choke on their sample tastings of Cabernet with awe and jealousy. He knew Timothy Leary. Calls him Tim. He hung out with Ken Kesey. And - he used to work with the guy that played Lazar Wolf in the movie version of "Fiddler on the Roof." Okay, so Ken Kesey was probably a lot more important, but man, Lazar Wolf. Dr. Bob is awesome.

Thing 2: Science is romantic.
I'm taking only one class this semester, called Wine and Grape Science. Wine seems to be a straightforward enough beverage: you grow a grape, you squash it, you wait awhile, you name it something in french, you drink it. Voila! It's easy to forget that fermentation is a scientific phenomenon. Plus, I am here to tell you that there is a whole crapload of science behind making wine. It's true that there does not have to be: a lot of winemakers forego the scientific aspect, I suppose because it's not very romantic or because they don't know how. Ah, but science is romantic! Anyway, I'm loving this class. We do basic chemistry experiments that expose certain qualities of a wine and then we talk about how the science stuff translates into the taste of the wine. I think this is part of what I like about wine: it combines science and art. I have a similar feeling about computer science - yes, it is technical, but to be good at it, you need imagination. Wine is the same way. You can do all the measurements you want to help you along the way to great wine, but at the end of the day, you still have to taste it and judge it on very subjective terms. Me, I like to use both halves of my brain, and winemaking is a much better way to do that than, say, writing technical manuals.

Thing 3: I know what I'm doing.
I have this wine day-by-day calender for 2006 that I bought at the Dollar Tree when the year was about 1/6 over. It has various tips and trivia and wine etiquette guides, but it also occasionally has a recommendation for a bottle of wine to try. A lot of them are in $20-$30 range, which is a little high for me to buy solely based on description. But if the description sounds enticing and the price tag looks reasonable, I'll head down to my local wine superstore and pick up a bottle. There are so many wines out there that you really have to be kind of adventurous in your tasting. I was doing just that a couple weeks back - there was a $7 bottle of Spanish wine that was recommended. I found it on the shelves and noticed that right under the supply of bottles was a copy of the page from the very same calender that I had. In fact, I had a matching page in my back pocket. A salesman happened by, a little garrulous guy with a stereotypical New York accent who I like quite a bit because he's so enthusiastic. He wanted to see what I had picked out and was immediately impressed. I almost pulled out my calender page, but I was so flattered at the fact that someone thought I actually knew what I was doing in this vast and varied wine world that I decided to let the ruse stand. In fact, I was so flattered that I bought a bottle of a wine that he recommended to me based on the one I was already buying. Hrm. I bet he compliments everyone on what they're buying.