I’ve always hated wine. Until yesterday.
Most red wine that I’ve tasted has this bitter characteristic about it (which I just recently learned comes from the immaturity of the wine — how young it is — and the tannins in it) that lingers on the back of my tongue and makes me gag.
I know that makes me sound like a bratty 18-year-old. There are circles of people I know that love wine — whether or not they appreciate it or know anything about it, they love it. They love drinking a glass of wine at night with dinner, or after a long day while sitting in front of the TV, or with a cigarette most any time, or enjoying a bottle by themselves while sort of reading a high brow novel. That’s not me.
The bitterness of the tannins — which I also learned is amplified if the wine has been aged in any sort of oak barrel — destroys my taste buds. I used to describe it as a buttery taste because I could find no words for it. Aside from that, I also have a really simple palate. I hate most cheeses, mushrooms, spicy food, herbs and spices, fish, olives and creamy sauces.
So I probably hated wine because I wrote myself off as having no taste for it. I can’t differentiate between all the different “notes” and flavors that hide in there. But on Friday I was dragged out to Seattle with my parents (by dragged, I mean that I very willingly hopped into the car the same way my dog might because I was going stir crazy from a week of staying home recovering from the wisdom teeth extraction), who were planning on visiting several tasting rooms from Pike Place to Ballard as part of a research project for the startup that my stepdad works for. You know you’re in the right industry when doing a legitimate research project on a Friday afternoon means driving to Seattle, tasting great wines and making friends with local winemakers.
Aside: My stepdad is a brilliant businessman, as is my mom. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in both my parents. About eight months ago, my stepdad and a few of his coworkers from former projects began a mobile wine industry software company that makes every part of the vintner’s job easier — from monitoring the grapes in the fields to tracking sales. Vinops is still in the development stages clearly, but it’s taking off.
By the time we got to Pike Place to check out the first tasting room, I was so thrilled about leaving my couch coma and being in the city that I was even willing to try a few of the wines. The last thing I wanted was to be the pouty, obviously immature and unseasoned kid (getting carded each time was obnoxious enough) among sophisticated adults tasting wine and partaking in intelligent discussion about the flavors, process and origin. I still was, though. I texted under the bar multiple times, sighed loudly and nearly spat out a few tastings.
But by the time we were at the second tasting room, I was warmed up (clearly the wine helped this) to the idea of opening my nose and palate and actually tasting it. I asked to see the tasting notes for each of the wines we tried and began paying attention to the different characteristics and intended flavors of each.
Some are aged longer than others, and in different types of wood barrels, both of which alter the flavor. Some have more alcohol, different pH levels. Some are peppery, spicy or loaded with dark fruits, or hints of citrus. Some have a back taste of tobacco, or chocolate, or walnut. Some are dark and biting and leave your mouth salivating. Some are light and tart. Some are tight; they were just opened, maybe they weren’t ready. Some are loose and smooth and set your mouth at ease, like talking to an old friend.
Each one is different. The grapes are different, the climate and soil where they were grown is different, the process is different. But all the vintners I met were more or less the same — friendly, easygoing, fiercely passionate, slightly eccentric.
The one I liked the most was a white wine — clearly a tasty wine for beginners — at the Vintner’s Annex in Ballard. It was loaded with citrus without being overly acidic. It tasted like grapefruit and smelled a bit like hay and fresh air. It was young and pretty. Had this wine been a person, it would have been a light and airy but natural blonde, with freckles splattered across her nose and peach fuzz white hairs lighting on her arms and the back of her neck.
There are 90 wineries in Woodinville, the town where my parents and I live. We live less than a quarter-mile from 18 different tasting rooms, and there are dozens of others within walking distance. It’s always been a part of the culture here — Chateau Ste. Michelle was the first, and as my mom describes it, so many of the others spawned in a related manner from wine enthusiasts who originally worked there, then moved out and began making their own wines nearby. And so on.
My parents are extremely knowledgeable about wine. They’re members at most of the wineries and know all of the winemakers by name. I had been to all of them, talked to the people there and admired the beautiful granite counters and careful lighting of the tasting rooms, but never felt a connection to it because I had this intense dislike for the taste, and sort of the accompanying lifestyle, of the product itself.
We paced our tour well yesterday and munched on French bread in between tastings. By the time we left the Vintner’s Annex, I thought I kind of liked wine, especially the light white ones that reminded me of the outdoors, or the way the woods smell in the middle of summer. I will continue to steer clear of wines aged in oak and heavy in tannins, but the underlying current of passion and personality that lingers in the wineries will be harder to stay away from.
Adventures in the News Hole 
26
Apr
Learning to love (or live with) website comments
(Note: The material in this post came in part from a staff editorial I wrote for the Barometer in November 2009)
As managing editor of the Barometer, one of my responsibilities was to moderate comments on our website. Through College Publisher, comments can be submitted, but won’t be posted to a story until an administrator approves them. This means reading through every word of each comment and deciding if they were too offensive, off-topic or nonsensical to approve.
This ultimately depressing and tedious duty was my happy privilege for more than six months. It was depressing because, while the Barometer is easily the most-consumed student media venue on campus, it has its fair share of haters (when working at a daily newspaper, you quickly discover that the loudest voices are those of the people who hate your coverage — the ones who like it rarely speak up).
There are certain people who I got to know by name or e-mail address because they would literally wait until each night around 11 when the Barometer would be published online, read every article, and rip each story and its author a new one via comment. However, these comments were usually well-written and totally appropriate, so I had to approve them.
The work of moderating comments can be a privilege and the bane of our existence. The democratic principles of newspapers can take their purest form in article comments. It’s wonderful to know what the audience is concerned with and talking about, and sometimes the conversation is lively, informative and engaging. If article comments will keep newspapers in business, at least online, then they’re irreplaceable. As Mike McInally, editor and publisher of the Gazette-Times, pointed out, those who comment on stories sometimes drop important news tips. But they can also be a source of serious frustration.
In keeping pace with the democratic traditions that newspaper people hold dear, we generally like the concept of article comments. News outlets are meant to serve the community and to allow for conversation. There is no better new media example of participation in a public forum than this. However, many of us feel more reverence to good old-fashioned letters to the editor. They tend to be more conceptually mature, articulate and actually make a discernible argument. At the Barometer, they are limited to 300 words, can be included in the daily print edition and, best of all, include the person’s name and contact information, so they’re held accountable for their response.
Article comments on newspaper websites were designed to be an open, constructive method of encouraging community and reader feedback and allowing the reader to interact with the newspaper and its audience. They allow readers to have a voice, to let us know what they appreciate and what didn’t work. Unfortunately, this privilege is frequently abused. Because comments allow for anonymity, people post vulgar, offensive and sometimes threatening responses because they can’t be held responsible for their views or their lambasting.
Sometimes, newspapers are forced to disable comments on certain stories because they know they will be inflammatory and offensive. While habitual posters may kick and scream because they feel that their right to democracy is being jeopardized, some stories simply speak for themselves. At a workshop with Steve Bagwell’s copy editing class last Wednesday, McInally said that the Gazette-Times disables comments on stories involving race or sexual abuse charges, because the comments can quickly degrade into predictable, offensive swill.
As moderators, we’re constantly on the lookout for not only spammers, but for “trolls” as well – people who post controversial and generally off-topic responses to articles to elicit a response from other readers. And while there are the occasional heart-warming posts commending a writer for their reporting, most of these comments are knee-jerk reactions to a detail of the story that the reader didn’t like.
But I can’t write this post in good conscience without mentioning the silent savior, the shining star of Barometer website comments. There is one particular reader (he or she goes by the free text reader name “Anon”) who could write article comments for a living, if such a job existed. Anon’s e-mail address remains the same each time, and on more than one occasion I’ve considered writing to him/her (this person is definitely a him in my mind, so I’ll stick with that) just to find out who he was and offer my appreciation. Even if he disagrees with something the Barometer has published, he is articulate, polite and informed. Instead of arguing, he offers his point of view — which is always brilliant and makes me wonder why he follows dailybarometer.com so closely in the first place.
Hats off to you, Anon. Thanks for keeping it real on the Baro website.
While some news outlets have probably suffered enough abuse that they’ve had to disable all comments, at this point it’s a venue that people are so used to that it doesn’t make sense to take it away. If it keeps democratic traditions alive in news media outlets, it’s a necessary evil.
And, as always, don’t feed the trolls.
14 years ago Short URL Comments
Gravity in the never ending news hole
College Publisher/Mike McInally/news media/The Daily Barometer/the Gazette-Times/trolls/website comments