It was a Saturday afternoon and the place was buzzing with activity at Breathe Wine & Culture in Huntington, with people streaming in off the street to buy wine for dinner or to get free samples.
At Breathe, a dueling tasting event was held.
Just to the left as you walk in the door, Kentucky’s Country Boy Brewing (makers of Cougar Bait and Shotgun Wedding) was showcasing their line of hard ciders and handing out some tidbits of merch.
To my right was the owner, Cheryl Hardman, offering a tasting of wine from Garzón Winery in Uruguay.
“Uruguay is really an emerging wine country,” Cheryl told me as she poured herself a generous glass of white. “Argentina and Chile are known for their wine, but a few other countries in South America also have wine.”
I wasn’t really sure where Uruguay was until she mentioned Argentina, Chile and South America.
I got a C in geography in middle school. I got a lot of C’s.
Wine from Uruguay is becoming increasingly popular among discerning wine enthusiasts who previously turned up their noses at wines made in the southern South American country.
I knew very little about wine, and even less about wine exports from South America. I didn’t doubt Cheryl’s information. Alcohol can be made anywhere. Mancave Distillery in Weston, West Virginia makes award-winning rum. I was impressed, since rum is traditionally made from sugar cane.
Sugar cane doesn’t normally grow in West Virginia, but maybe there’s a workaround and the rum is made from Tudor’s biscuits or something.
Cheryl looked at me. There was wine in the glass. I was supposed to taste it.
So I tried really hard to taste something other than wine, because that was the purpose: to taste more than just chalky fermented grape juice running over my tongue, to smell fruit or flowers or maybe even raccoon.
I swallowed it and thought it had a taste I wasn’t expecting, which was outrageous.
When I started learning about wine this month, one of the things I was worried about was that I would come across as an imposter. I’ve seen movies and TV shows where people taste wine and wax poetic about the different flavors they experience.
I never expected to develop sophisticated taste in a month, or even a few years.
I drink multiple cups of hot black coffee every day. I go to a coffee shop and order black coffee while the other people in front of or behind me in line order a latte or cappuccino or chocolate milkshake that has coffee in it somewhere.
I also eat two or three of the same thing every day for dinner, usually with a generous smear of hot sauce.
Deciphering the flavors of a Uruguayan white wine seemed as difficult as finding oil in a parking lot, but I was up for the challenge.
“Does it taste like pepper?” I asked.
Cheryl simply smiled and said that in many wines you can detect flavours coming from the surrounding region, from the soil itself.
It wasn’t a no, but it wasn’t a yes either.
“You’ll notice the taste changes as you drink it,” she says.
I’d had similar experiences before, mostly with cheap beer in college, and it wasn’t too unpleasant after the first few cans.
“After the initial shock, your taste buds adjust,” she said. “Try another bite.”
It also tasted a little different – maybe it had green apple in it?
“The problem for me is that wine can be a little intimidating,” I said. “You go to the grocery store and there’s a long aisle of bottles (sometimes two) that all look the same, and they’re not.”
“I have no idea where to start,” I told her.
One of the first mysteries solved was the name.
“This is Albariño,” she said.
“It looks like an albino,” I said. “That means it’s white, right?”
“It’s a type of grape,” Cheryl said, “and wines are usually named after grapes.”
In other words, Pinot Grigio, Malbec, and Merlot are just varieties of grapes.
Also, oddly enough, Pinot means “pine,” an unusual name given to this grape centuries ago, which people have told me about in letters.
After drinking the Albariño, Cheryl suggested switching to red wine.
“It’s good to start with white and then move on to red, but not from red to white,” she says. “When you move to red, the flavor overpowers the other ones.”
This wine was called Cabernet Franc.
These grapes are black in color and are often used in wine blends.
Cheryl explained that some wines are not made purely from one type of grape, but rather are mostly one type of grape with other grapes mixed in for flavor or color.
She told me to place the bottom of the wine glass on the tablecloth and carefully but vigorously swirl the contents.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked.
“This adds air to the wine,” she says, “which changes the flavor. Some wines taste better with more air.”
I tried a Cabernet Franc, which I didn’t really like, but the color was pretty.
Cheryl told me that wine flavors change all the time.
“It’s aged in barrels and bottles,” she said.
They are also sensitive to heat, so they are stored tilted in the basement to prevent the cork from drying out.
Some wines can be stored for decades, Cheryl said, and some are very good, but others just can’t keep that long.
“And the wines will be at their highest prices,” she added.
While a bottle of rare ancient wine may sound like a fantastic treat, Cheryl says there’s no way to know for sure until you open it.
And wine doesn’t last long once opened: Cheryl says most wines go bad within a few days, or maybe a week at most.
“And maybe a little funky,” she said.
Wine is a matter of taste. Just like beer, whiskey, and soda, different people have different tastes and different wants.
“Most people start with very sweet wines, dessert wines and fruit wines,” Cheryl explains, but then they want to see what else there is out there.
“Okay,” I said, “Then sell me a bottle of wine. Sell me a good wine for a total beginner to try if they want to like wine.”
She led me to the back of the store and pulled out a bottle of Cantina Traminer Gewürztraminer, a German white grape grown in Italy.
The back of the bottle states that the wine was “vinified in stainless steel barrels to preserve the exotic aromas of rose, apricot and cinnamon.”
“This is a bottle I’d like to try,” she said.
It was cheap, only $15.
Cheryl also assured me that once I’d had a few glasses of this wine and gotten a little tipsy, I’d have more fun than if I’d had something like Chonky Boi Barrel Aged Imperial S’mores Milk Stout.
“It definitely has a marshmallow flavor to it,” I told her.