Creating Wine Memories
A wine that is memorable has made its mark. As with an unforgettable human being, a feature or a personality facet is the trigger for the rest of the character to reveal itself. If you want to remember wines, you will. If it is important to you to recall wines, you will do so. Once the habit starts, it’s irreversible.
“There are more memory cells in the brain than there are bubbles in 20,000 litres of sparkling wine”
Usually, you remember wine because the occasion was so memorable; you drank an unusually delicious and rare sauvignon blanc at a dinner party, say. How can you forget such an occasion? It doesn’t happen every day. But what if you could turn the tasting or drinking of all wines into memorable occasions? You’d remember all the wines.
Just remember to remember and make notes. Every wine you taste will, with practice, offer up descriptive ideas as each is tasted. Every wine stands more chance of being mentally filed. Memory is a filing system. If the wine isn’t put in the filing system it can’t be found. How do we file things? By orderly references.
After a while, if it matters enough to you, you will find a simple flavour/style analogy for every wine you drink. It will get filed away under that analogy and be capable of recall when you consult a wine list or look at wines on a shelf.
The more wines you drink, the more wines you will remember. Happy thought, isn’t it?
From The Sensational Liquid, Malcolm Gluck (author of Superplonk)