How to out-talk an oenophile and hold your own at a wine tasting

You won’t fool a pro. This advice is intended for those gatherings where everyone is amateur, and you’re more amateur than most. How do you know everyone there is an amateur? If they actually knew something about wine, the tasting wouldn’t be happening at the YMCA. Or the airport Raddison. Or the CFO’s backyard. And yet, everyone around you gives the impression that Under the Tuscan Sun could have been written from his or her private vineyard. How?

Everyone around you is lying - well, not lying, exactly, but exaggerating their meager wine knowledge. Even genuinely genuine people, the same people who never fail to change the print toner at work, the same people who always wash their hands in public bathrooms, who buy a stamp for the harried mother who can’t locate her change purse among the 12 lbs of baby and 95 lbs of baby gear she’s stuck schlepping into the post office because Officer Dickhead won’t let her lock the kid in the car for two minutes with the window cracked for air - gasp - even those people become conniving, elitist pricks in the presence of fermented grapes. They can’t help it, and neither can you, evidently, since you’re reading a cheat sheet like this. Before you picked up this guide you would have recycled some bullshit you think you remember from the Sandra Oh interview a few summers ago, which brings us to the first lesson: do not spout out any lines from the movie ‘Sideways’ unless you want to blow your cover.

In fact, your goal is to say almost nothing at all, but say that something with unquestionable authority. Your blank slate of a brain can work to your advantage; your fellow wine tasters (opponents) have amassed a lifetime of half-truths and bad habits from the entertainment industry and their own friends and family. You, on the other hand, don’t know enough to be dangerous to yourself.

STEP ONE: CONTROL YOUR MOUTH AND YOUR MOVEMENT.

Someone sets a cork next to you on the table. The temptation is to pick up the cork and feel the edge or smell it. Wrong! Don’t touch it. Glance at it once and then ignore it. Every move you make should appear thoughtful and smooth, no matter how banal.

STEP TWO: LISTEN TO THE TALKING HEAD, DISMISS EVERYTHING HE OR SHE HAS TO SAY.

Even the lowliest wine tasting need someone to introduce each bottle, the strengths and weaknesses of this or that year, price of wood casks, the effects of Azorean wine guzzling mosquito on the Madeira production, etc. These are all random facts your host or hostess looked up on Wikipedia fifteen minutes before you arrived, so don’t be intimidated. Don’t be tempted to go there yourself, either, it’s too obvious. In fact, if you have time, go to Wikipedia the day before and spread misinformation on the wine. That would be hilarious, should your coworkers say to you “I heard that Port was named for the Porter scene in Shakespeare’s MacBeth.” “Really?” Another will pipe up. “I heard it was invented by Portia De Rossi in the early nineties.”

The host or hostess is only trying to get the conversation started for winos who would be snobs. You must hang back and think carefully about the ten pieces of information you’ve gathered in advance, (not from wikis, we’ve been revising them all night) culled from a solid wine book at least three years old. The odds of getting caught plagiarizing, therefore, are extremely slim. Listen to the blather, and mentally cross off any info found on your list to avoid repetition.

STEP THREE: TASTE QUIETLY. HAVE THE LAST WORD.

The tasting is highly ritualistic, and the rules for handling the glass and its contents alone could fill a book. You haven’t got that kind of time, so you should hang back until everyone else is raising their glass - in effect, blinding themselves - and take a quick swig. No one saw you? Good. Keep your face neutral and resist commenting at once. You’re savoring.

Everyone around you is murmuring mild approval and checking everyone else’s reactions. No one is certain what their own reaction should be, lacking suitable palettes. Finally, someone will take a chance: “Hmmm. Complex, and expressive.”

Both were on our list, but that’s okay, we’ve got more. Try “connectedness” and “well integrated.” If the wine is a German white, use “appropriate tension.” Try to be the last one to comment, every time.

STEP FOUR: MAD METAPHORS

The wine tasting is circling the drain when your opponents begin attributing trippy tastes to a simple Cabernet: “I’m getting a hibachi grill/Internal Revenue Service/country line dancing kind of taste.” Don’t play the “my metaphor is bigger than your metaphor” game. Keep it real. Say “Is that code for Tannin?” (Tannin always makes our list of ten factoids, but we save it for the reds). Never describe any wine as “oaky” even if it is.

STEP FIVE: ESCAPE ON A HIGH NOTE.

You’ve done well. Now, get out before you embarrass yourself. If you feel up to one last score or think you have a shot at scoring with some other good-looking man or woman at the wine tasting, use whatever you have left on the list. Sidle up to the lucky man or woman and say, “These all tasted pretty good, but the sweeter ones you were drinking reeked of chaptalization.” When he or she asks you what that means, shrug and say, “From what I understand, it’s the process of adding sugar to a low alcohol wine to increase the alcoholic content. Need a ride?”