There’s a game that I like to play with the sommelier course students, but also at events where self-proclaimed wine connoisseurs.
It cannot be avoided to note that the majority of these persons – luckily not everyone! – already at the beginning of their study/knowing start to ignore the cheapest wine, in Italy the Tavernello being the most famous, judging it an awful wine, not to drink, dirty water, not suitable for their sensitive tasting buttons.
Beyond the personal tastes what makes me smiling, but also thinking, is that the judgment is simply based on the fact that this wine is absolutely cheap and packed with TetraPak that, in their eyes, is enough to conclude it tastes badly.
But how many of this wannabe sommelier / connoisseurs really tasted it? A few. Really a few. Let’s admit, those who like wine for sure don’t even think to buy a TetraPak wine (not in Italy at least), rather choosing very chipped bottled wines. But, for those studying or for those calling themselves experts, these wines too should be in the to try list, they are anyway on the market and, for this, they must be known. Not even talking about the fact they are sold in very large quantities.
The first time I made the students of a sommelier course first level tasting a Tavernello, rigorously blind tasting, I presented it in a flight of other 4 wines. I asked the students to fill in the tasting notes and then comment them live. In the end I asked them to express a personal judgment on which wine was their preferred one in general. A number of them placed the Tavernello at the first place against the others! The funny side have obviously been showing them the wine…and proudly looking the faces of who voted it as the preferred one!
There’s also a much more serious side of this. Too often people who learn about wine assume a totally unjustified snobbishness attitude towards product placed in the lowest part of the quality pyramid by a cliché.
A sommelier (but also a connoisseur), based on studies and acquired critical analysis skill, must be able to judge a wine in a free preconception way, doesn’t matter the preconceptions are positive or negative. This is much more challenging than how it looks like, even after years of experience. In this specific case, a wine like the Tavernello (o similar products) is not necessarily bad tasting nor badly produced. From the production point, at least italian production talking, there are no doubts about the strictness of regulations and on the certainty of a healthy product. The wine itself doesn’t come with any defect, it cannot shows any right for the winemaking procedures that, on one side deprive it of the emotional element and its potential organoleptic notes, but on the opposite side make it perfectly clear, impurity free, healthy and stable.
Becoming sommelier, or name ourself connoisseur, means first of all becoming more curious day after day. Every single difference on the market must be an highlight, must draw our attention and make our sensation and tasting notes experience richer, able then to make us really able to judge a wine in a real impartial way. Moreover, without tasting the potential extremes of a quality pyramid, how could we place different wines in a quality rank? Then, when the curiosity is satisfied, some wines will end up in the sink, others in the span, others will be our company on the sofa with legs under the blanket because, at the end of the day, the best wine is the one we like the most.