Things to Say to Show Off Your Wine Knowledge (Part 1 of 2)

Now that you’ve established that you’re the master of your wine domain (or at least know everything that’s been written on the back label of your purchased wine), it’s fair time to wow and impress the crowd at your general wine knowledge.

NOTE: the first thing to realize when you want to make statements about things in which you don’t have depth of knowledge BUT you still want to sound knowledgeable is that your statements must be firm and definitive YET never lead to follow up questions, like, “Why?” Or find friends who passively listen and tend to nod their heads to any verbal communication directed at them.

Let me give you a quick glossary of basic terms

Terrior: the dirt the wine was grown
Vintage: year the wine was made
Varietal: type of grape
Micro-climate: micro-climate

Okay, now you’re ready to talk wine with about 99% of the population in the world. Other than the wine maker’s (sorry, one more: vintner = winemaker) style, the factors that lead to a wine’s quality and taste are, you guessed it: terrior, vintage, varietal, and micro-climate. Leading to the first statement you can make about wine:

Other than the vintner’s (Oh, you don’t know what that is? It’s the winemaker.) style, the main factors that lead to a wine’s quality and taste are terrior, vintage, varietal, and micro-climate.

I suppose this is an obvious statement, but it sounds impressive, yeah? And really, it’s so innocuous and general, no one can argue with it.

Onto the second lesson for next time: we’re going to get into a little chemistry here, so put your lab goggles on.