Sommelier India: Wine Alchemy

I want to tell you a little bit about how I put together this dinner as a background for your presentations. On a whim, I bought a few bottles of Amarone. As some of you may know, I am not a fan of Amarone. I find it to be too heavy-bodied, but I wanted to see if my wine tastes had changed, so I tasted the Amarone that we are trying out tonight and found, to my surprise, that I loved it. The curation began with the last wine. Since Amarone is from Veneto, I wondered if I could pull together a curation of just wines from Veneto, but discovered that finding high-quality wines from a tiny sub-region, was hard.

To make myself feel better, I turned to Burgundy. Of course. Like all of us, I’ve been drinking Sancerre, but I find that I like New Zealand version of Sauvignon Blancs better, probably because I can identify them easily 😊 

I bought the Domaine Chanson a long time ago because the person who sold it to me told me that it was run by two women. Call me biased, but I think women wine makers handle the Pinot Noir grape with exceptional finesse 😊

So then I wondered if I would do an Italy versus France type theme, Even though that felt too easy, too obvious, I began searching for an Italian white wine to pit against the Sancerre. At Astor Wines in New York City, I discovered the ancient Timorraso grape, often celebrated as the white Barolo. The store manager, again a woman, who sold it to me, said that it was an incredible grape that had been rescued from the verge of extinction by an alchemy of circumstance and people. 

“But then isn’t all wine alchemy?” she said. And in her words, my theme was born.

At the same Astor Wines, I bought two bottles of the champagne that we are drinking tonight. Somehow, to me, bubbles represent alchemy.

Alchemy. Transformation. Making something better than it is. This ancient and esoteric practice spans four millennia and three continents. Indians called it Rasayana, the Arabs invented it, and the Chinese perfected it. In a way, it is fitting that we are dining at a Chinese restaurant tonight.

So then I had to fit the wines I had to the concept of alchemy and also acquire more wines fitting the concept. At this stage, I turned to AI and sent a photo of the wines I had and prompted it to connect how these wines were linked to alchemy. 

I knew that all wine is alchemy, and I sort of knew what it would say as well. Champagne is an alchemy that makes still wine sparkle. Amarone is an alchemy that involves reduction. I knew that the Timorasso was a rescue act alchemy. But I could not come up with an alchemy connection for the Sancerre or the pinot noir. In those two wines, I had help with AI.

So here we are. Each bottle on the table represents a different way in which a grape becomes nectar. A grape becomes something that we all love. A grape becomes wine.

Of course, the elements of this alchemy are well known to all of us, and these are the words that we use all the time: terroir, time, patience, human intervention, neglect, pressure. These are terms that all of us use. 

These are all dramatic things, and since I love drama and theatre so much, I thought we would mix up the usual presentation format and make it theatrical.

So here is my request. If you volunteer to present the wines, and I hope you will, I would like you to do it with some flair and panache. Give us the history and the facts, of course, which we always do, but make it interesting, an argument even. Think of yourself as a lawyer, historian, storyteller, theatre director, magician, philosopher, or alchemist. Wear a hat and a cape a la Harry Potter. The evening awaits your acting.

Of course, those of us who are inspired by women and sirens such as Sophia Loren, Rekha, Marilyn Monroe or Madhubala can channel them and other men and women with theatrical flair.