“Mindful Wine”
Or an alternative approach to tasting
Back in autumn 2023 when I was studying for my WSET level 3 wine exam, I was also writing an annual report for a private bank (aka The Day Job). It’s a project that can be time-consuming and stressful, with feedback coming in from 20 stakeholders at once. I would get to the end of the working day and then head off to wine class, already exhausted but dragging myself through the Dutch November weather regardless.
And then an odd thing would happen: I’d put my phone on silent and out of sight in my bag; I’d start tasting wines along whatever theme or region we were covering that day; and I’d go into a sort of meditative state. Not only would I stop thinking about the rewrites to the strategy chapter I’d need to make the next morning; I’d engage all five sense in the contents of my glass. The aromas and flavours of course, but also the colour and opacity of the liquid and its texture as it passed from lips to tongue to gums to throat. I’d never had much success with meditation or mindfulness in the past, but this – strangely – seemed to be just that.
Fast-forward a year and I was looking forward to a weekend away with my closest girlfriends. Judge this however you like, but the weekend had taken on a “wellness” theme (get five women together in various stages of perimenopause, burnout, unemployment, motherhood and career crisis and this perhaps makes sense) – and we’d each been tasked with arranging a short workshop along the theme. I had various ideas and eventually plumped for the one I could more or less make up on the spot: it would be called “Mindful Wine”.
From mindful to stream of conscious
My plan was to lead people through a blind tasting (based on a wine they’d likely never have come across before) the way that mindfulness practitioners have described using a raisin: engaging every sense in fully experiencing the present moment. Only using a fermented grape instead of a dried one. It seemed simple enough.
And yet what took place was less mindfulness, more free association. Rather than focusing strictly on the appearance, aroma, flavour and texture of the wine in the glass, our thoughts flowed freely – creating connections, associations, personae – a sort of wine-inspired stream of consciousness.
Bejewelled
Looking at the liquid in the glass, one friend saw amber glinting in the sunlight, another saw tiger’s eye, with its dark contrast, its spectrum of autumn colours and its silky lustre. A feminine wine, bejewelled in gemstones, reflecting soft candlelight.
The aromas took us to a Persian souk, a stall full of brightly coloured spices carried by the warm breeze. Cinnamon, cloves, turmeric, saffron. A kind of old-fashioned exoticism. But also a darkly lit bar at night – perhaps an underground speakeasy – a swarthy gentleman nursing a cut-crystal glass of something strong and fortified.
The flavours left some in their Persian fantasy, while others were transported straight back to England in the ‘90s: the taste of a Werther’s Original, with its nostalgia for the toffees your grandparents always carried in their pockets.
Is there a right way to taste wine?
As you’ve gathered, our so-called “Mindful Wine” tasting was not particularly mindful. Nor was it remotely technical – the descriptors I’ve shared are mostly evocations of memory (although there were certainly spices and toffee and fortified notes in the wine). But by the end of the exercise, I was left wondering: is there a right way to taste wine?
My colleague at the wine shop advocates for the systematic approach to tasting (SAT) in order to taste as objectively and technically as possible. And this makes sense: he needs to sell wine, so his primary concern is to make sure it has well-balanced acidity, integrated tannins, the kind of primary, secondary and tertiary aromas that a customer might expect from a particular grape or region (or a very good reason to diverge from that).
But in a different situation, perhaps such a narrow focus is less necessary. The friends I roped into this tasting are not “wine people”, although they all enjoy a glass or two. Some of them expressed worries they’d had at previous wine tastings that they were going to “get things wrong” or that they would fail to grasp something important about grape varieties and terroir.
Creative tasting
Admittedly, these are also pretty creative people to begin with (three of them are designers), but they all agreed at how refreshing it was to taste a wine in this way – with its freely ranging associations and memories rather than a rigid expectation to talk about types of fruit and levels of acidity. I’ve done wine tastings with some of these friends before and their tasting notes are amazing: evoking an entire scene (“a soft seductive evening by a sunset and a man you know you shouldn’t be with”), while my notes say dull things like “medium-minus tannins”.
There is, of course, room for both approaches. And certainly in different contexts: technical tastings are important from a commercial perspective because they allow people in the wine industry to make good business decisions. But a different approach to tasting could be far more interesting for, say, a team-building event with colleagues, a fun activity for a bachelorette party or just something to try at home on a Sunday afternoon.
What do you think? Would you be interested in trying something like this? Would you hire someone like me to lead the tasting? I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this one.
Technical tasting
By now some of you might have figured out we were tasting an orange wine, and I felt I’d do the wine folk of Substack a disservice if I didn’t share my technical notes with you as well.
Featured wine: Rkatsiteli Qveri, Georgia (2020)
Specifically, we tasted the 2020 “Amber Dry” made by Koncho from Rkatsiteli grapes grown in the Kvareli region of Georgia. The wine is produced in the traditional Georgian clay amphora (qveri) in contact with the grape skins and seeds to lend it that amber colour and full-bodied texture.
From a technical point of view, the wine had aromas of marmalade, apricot jam, cloves, cinnamon, caramel, with a smooth nuttiness on the palate and some light oxidative notes. The tannins were less prominent than I’d have expected, but I’ve struggled to find out exactly how long the juice stayed in contact with the skins. It’s a fascinating wine that I’d urge you to track down (I bought this bottle from Bilderdijk Wijnhuys in Amsterdam, but it’s undoubtedly available online as well).
That’s all for this week. Until next time, drink mindfully, or creatively, or technically – it’s up to you!
Well, this is what tasting is all about. You can surely follow the parameters of the sommelier assiciations or Wset if you want that, but we are humans tasting and wine is not really an objective science no matter how much rigid standardized schemes try to say so. Of course, when judging wines in competitions we strive to be as objective as possible, and exclude bias blind tasting the wines.
I would say that doing as you call it creative or mindful tastings means you have grown, started to use yiur critical thinking and not just follow the very standardized patterns. 😉
I love this. I spent 3 years doing the WSET way of tasting and how effing boring. Super glad I nixed doing Diploma since I am focused on one country now. It works for blind tasting and taking their exams. However, outside of wine course nerds it sucks to read. I much prefer the mindfulness approach. Let your stream of consciousness go- there is no wrong answer since we all perceive aromas differently. I love your girls trip it sounds like my kind of trip.