Gallagher's Travels: Wine and Other Libations

A Little Knowledge..

My friend Vanessa writes, "The other day, my eleven-year-old daughter insisted I buy a bottle of wine that had a picture of a jumping horse on it--Leaping Pony or something. For a kid with no interest in wine but much interest in sailing over fences on a pony, the label and name were enough. It cost all of $4.99 and was actually not bad. But you probably already know the creative techniques used by many morons in this country to select their wines...."

If choosing products by label is for morons, count me among them. Wine is for pleasure, and part of that pleasure is the delicious fantasies that brands inspire. How do you buy shampoo? Do you visit the Pantene factory? Study Consumer Reports? I doubt it. Most of us simply let ourselves be seduced by a label promising shiny, manageable tresses. Buying a car because the ad suggests it will catapult you into a world of infinity-edged pools, where women wear their hair up, hubcaps never get grimy and concierges know you by name is fairly moronic. But when the stakes are low, how bad can it be if your comb-over doesn't really become a lion's mane or a wine doesn't live up to its promise?

The Curious Grape, Arlington, VA

Scores of readers have confessed to the label-shopping sin - always with the guilty implication that obviously smart people know better. We consult lawyers, shipbuilders and psychics. We proudly proclaim our inability to program our VCR, when by now most of us know how. Yet we think we're supposed to be wine experts, or, short of that, have no opinion. When people learn I write about wine, they get nervous and apologetic, like I'm about to pop a quiz they didn't get around to studying for.

Just as we suspect other people of having more and better sex than us, of never bouncing checks or eating between meals or peeing in the bathtub like we do, we credit them with knowing more than us about wine. People from the right families learn to tell Bordeaux from Burgundy in the crib, right? For all the help your parents were, you might as well have been raised by wolves.

Michael Apstein, wine writer for the Boston Globe, notes, "You ask people what they think about a movie and you get a longwinded answer. You ask people what they think about a restaurant and you get a longwinded answer. You ask people to comment about wine and you get the deer in the headlamps."

When ordering dinner, you may factor in carb count or peanut allergies, but seldom the waiter's opinion. The wine list is something else: it's as though we're convinced Allen Funt secretly planted a Stupid Wine and if we choose it bells will ring, our pants will fall down and we'll drop into a dunk tank.

True, the pressure with food is not quite so unnerving. The waiter doesn't hover as you cut, chew and swallow the first bite, waiting for your nod confirming the butter is indeed creamery, the sausage; country, and the eggs; farm-fresh.

But it could be just that you have a life. Australian marketing specialist Dr Larry Lockshin divides wine drinkers into two categories: High-Involvement and Low-Involvement. H's read wine magazines and discuss appellations. They spend big bucks, but are also alert to sales and bargains from new regions. L's just want to drink the stuff. They stay with familiar brands and price ranges and don't give a damn about winemaker philosophy or vintage reports.

Since this column originates in the Home section of a daily paper rather than in a wine magazine, I assume it reaches far more Ls than Hs. Certainly the requests for a good $6.99 wine far outnumber those for reports on the Bordeaux futures market. More than one reader has confessed to, a) knowing nothing about wine, and b) reading my column religiously every week. I like to think this reflects their Low Involvement and not my teaching abilities.

It's OK not to make the study of wine one of life's big priorities. Besides, even geeks like me shop by label sometimes. It's fun! And if I pick the right one, there's always the chance I'll find myself sipping it under a palapa while chiseled pool boys feed me caviar and massage my feet. Your kid's onto a good thing, Vanessa. Might as well savor the whole package, from the picture outside to the wine within.

(Speaking of horses and wine, my new book Waiter, There's a Horse in My Wine, makes a great gift for Hs and Ls alike.)

(If you've already read it, and hanker for the exhilarating experience of seeing yourself in print, I highly recommend you go to the Amazon site and write a review. Instant fame! Millions of people will read what YOU think! Good for what ails you!)

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