Jose wrote:
> > I didn't put her down. SHE said she was very dissatisfied with her
> > experience. I explained why.
>
> Uh... you said, "It sounds like you have no clue as to what you are
> doing.". Then you said, "You have NO CLUE as to what you are doing."
> You followed that with "How...charmingly naive...." after which you
> started shouting at her in all caps, ending with "DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"

That was after her reply that she was "too tired" to cook.

> In some circles that would be taken as a put down.

My initial response was not what she wanted to hear.

> >>You trust the seller's "tasting" over yours?
> >
> > Yes. I have no confidence that I can judge a wine apart from food.
>
> You might find that if you do both for a while, you will learn how to
> associate what you taste (alone) in a wine with what it will taste like
> with food.

But I have no interest in doing it, so I won't.

> For example, a wine that is very tannic will probably not
> taste all that "good" by itself. However, upon tasting it by itself, I
> will note that it is tannic. This tells me that it probably wants some
> big food to go with it - a steak for example. A wine that is not tannic
> is likely to pair well with something lighter, like duck or lamb.

Most reds are tannic, some are highly so. No mystery what to do with
red wines (for me).

> Similarly, if I taste a chardonnay by itself, no matter what it tastes
> =like=, I can taste oak (or not), butter (or not), and these are clues
> to me as to what they might pair with.
>
> The more I do it, the better I get. You can too, if you can get over
> the idea that doing so somehow betrays the idea that wine is meant for food.
>
> > But a trailer of a film is not like tasting a wine without a meal. The
> > trailer is something made of the parts of the film; the wine is exactly
> > the same, in different circumstances.
>
> The analogy can work if you consider that each individual scene is
> exactly the same, but in different circumstances. The classic example
> is that a smile can be made into a leer by pairing it with an
> appropriate prior scene.
>
> > Despite deacdes of reading about and drinking wine, I cannot fathom
> > wine review language, other than 'dry', "highly extracted", 'raisiny',
> > and 'elegant'.
>
> Neither can I. And I don't understand some of your words, though some
> of the words that don't resonate with you are in fact meaningful to me.

'Extracted' means highly concentrated.

> Earthy, for example. Perhaps it's because the wines I've had have
> been different (from each other) in that respect, and the wines that you
> have had have mostly been similar in that respect, so it never came out
> of the background for you. But that doesn't make the use of the words
> we =do= know into snobbery, or the betrayal of wine's essential nature
> with food.

Typical "tasting notes" are largely opaque to me.

> > Sicilian and southern Italian wines, which are so
> > vastly different, confuse reviewers, who downgrade and
> > dismiss them because they are so different.
>
> So don't listen to them. That doesn't make =your= (or my) tasting of
> wines into a bad thing.

I don't follow you. My point was that the language used in the trade
has evolved largely to refer to F_____ wines and Northern Italian wines
based on Nebbiolo, and to a lesser extent Tuscan wines. Piedmont
produces wines most like F_____ ones. In addition, tasters who are
quite familiar with F_____ wines may not 'get' Sicilian wines such as
Nero d'Avola or Sardinian wines such as Carignano or Campanian wines
such as Taurasi Riserva. None of these wines tastes remotely like Pinot
Noir.

> > Feel free to ask me about Italian wines, any time.
>
> I asked about Tocai Friulano. But talking about wine isn't the same as
> drinking it. I'm looking forward to opening that bottle, perhaps with
> eggplant as you suggested, perhaps with scallops, with which I suspect
> it would also do nicely. I'll get four tries at it.

The eggplant sandwiches were a huge hit when we made them. Phenomenally
appealing!