I’ve blogged about how I got started loving wine, which I did from a hilariously young age, but what keeps me drinking it these days? Here are my top ten reasons why I love wine:

1. Each wine experience is unrepeatable. This is one of the things I love most about fine wine as an art form. Even if you have many bottles of the same wine and pop them one after another the experience of each will differ slightly. It may be due to bottle variation, the wine breathing for different times after opening, or personal factors like who you are tasting with, where you are tasting, how drunk you are and the condition of your palate. When you taste a bottle of fine wine that is a unique experience, never to be repeated.
2. There is an every-expanding amount of wine to taste and learn about. New producers come along all the time, existing producers may go up or down in quality, you can discover new regions and every new vintage in every region has its own quirks and qualities to learn. It is good to learn new things and wine provides a continually changing landscape for the lover of wine things to focus his or her mind on.
3. Sense use in appreciation of wine. Sure, you look at wine just like you can look at everything but real appreciation of it uses senses that are more ephemeral and transient: smell and taste. Most people pay cursory attention to what they taste and almost none to what they smell, yet these are very visceral senses which, if you concentrate on them, can move, delight, intrigue, excite, enlighten, thrill and compel just as effectively as vision or hearing. So neglected are our senses of taste and smell that it normally takes some training to get the most out of them. I was so lucky to attend and then run the Oxford University blind tasting team training sessions; they have forever expanded my appreciation and enhanced my abilities with these ephemeral senses.
4. Wine is great to share. Whether it is a simple bottle popped in front of the rugby or an obscenely fine wine shared with oenophiles wine is clearly at its best when shared. On a basic level the alcohol in wine is a good social lubricant, but just as a good meal will fill your stomach it will also provide things to talk about. Its qualities can generate views and opinions in all but the most unspeakable of philistines.
5. Wine is a good partner to food. Of course, not every wine goes with every type of food, but sometimes the match between the two will enhance the appreciation of both. When I’m noshing on a big piece of meat the tannins in red wine denature the free proteins in the meat and make eating and digesting it easier and more enjoyable. The pleasure I get from the synergistic combination of lamb and Pinot Noir is so enjoyable that it moves a meal with these two to a much higher level of sensory experience.
6. It gets me drunk at the right rate. The alcohol in wine is clearly something to be enjoyed, and the concentration of it suits me very well. If I am drinking beer I normally feel ‘beered-out’ pretty quickly; too bloated and exhausted by the sheer volume of the stuff one has to consume. Spirits are too alcoholic for me; I don’t often enjoy the experience of drinking them and they get one drunk very quickly. Wine, on the other hand, has not so much alcohol in it that you get instantly whammed, but enough so that over an evening spent drinking only wine you can end up pleasantly newscasted. You can drink wine over a long period in a style you cannot do with beer (too voluminous) or spirits (too strong).
7. Wine is marked by its maker. I’ve visited and tasted with a lot of winemakers, and in the very best wines the personality and ideas of the winemaker are displayed by the wine he/she makes. The Fallers at Domaine Weinbach are as buxom and charm-filled as their wines; Christophe Roumier’s refined, thoughtful wines reflect those qualities of the man himself. The interesting ideas of interesting winemakers show in their wines, making a strong connection between the two which undoubtedly enhances the drinking pleasure*.
8. Wines also have a sense of place. This may apply less to the more international-styled wines available today, but a carefully made wine of interest and style will give you a little glimpse into where it came from. Taste a frighteningly acidic but totally harmonious wine from Egon ‘Yoda’ Muller and you are terribly aware that it is the incomparable Scharzhofberger vineyard which you are tasting and is giving you this intense experience. This sense of place can be shown in all wines from refined little Burgundies to bold Zinfandels of heroism.
9. Wine is a great gift. On a simple level, a bottle of decent fizz is a simple gift which is generally appreciated; even indifferent fizz will please the unfussy. But if you know a reasonable amount about wine there are many more options. For example, you can chose a wine that you know will suit the recipients tastes but is more obscure than their normal purchases so they are unlikely to have tried before. If you introduce someone to a new producer or wine region which they really enjoy it can give both giver and receiver a lot of satisfaction; you’ve shown someone a new expression of pleasure.
10. The ‘free meal’ factor. Some areas of knowledge are more acceptable to discuss in social situations than others. If you can manage charm as well as knowledge then wine provides a brilliant topic which will see you right in almost any setting. I have lost count of the number of dinner parties I have been invited to not only because I’ll bring along good wine, but also because I’ll talk about it in an intelligent and amusing fashion. If there are any awkward pauses in conversation I can be relied upon to perform and talk about a subject that pretty much everyone has either views on or questions about. I hasten to add that at dinner parties I largely talk about things other than wine, but it is a remarkably successful conversation topic in so many situations.

*It is not necessarily the character of the winemaker which shines through in a wine; many years ago the rumour was that the wines of Marc Kreydenweiss had the character of his current wife.

My long-time reader may recall that I have paranoid-schizophrenia; this is why I have a generally low-intensity life writing opinionated drivel about booze and food. I developed it during the late 90s whilst I was studying at Oxford for my doctorate. The screaming intensity of the paranoid delusions and hallucinations became so powerful and intolerable that at about this time (2am) on the morning of 24 January 1999, exactly eleven years ago, I tried to commit suicide by slashing my wrists in the bath.

As I am sure you can deduce, this attempt and my subsequent efforts were unsuccessful. It has been quite a struggle living with paranoid schizophrenia, but I remember this anniversary of my first attempt to kill myself because it reminds me that, no matter how difficult things have been, I have still managed to survive. So this is really a happy anniversary; well done me for keeping going all these years!

At the beginning of last year, after literally years of being on a waiting list, I started a course of psychotherapy (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, aka CBT*, to be specific). I cannot claim to have enjoyed the experience, but it was incredibly useful. I applied myself to working out different techniques and new ways of thinking to deal with my psychotic experiences and found that they worked a treat. My life has become a lot more tolerable, and whilst I still experience the paranoid delusions and hallucinations, I am not terrified and anxious all of the time. I am so happy to be able to be at home and not feel constantly harassed and scared. Good stuff, eh?

I may not be the thrusting academic I once was, and a low-stress lifestyle seems like the way forward for the foreseeable future, but I am quite happy to be celebrating this eleventh anniversary and even happier that I know I will not have to try such a thing ever again.

*When I told one of my more colourful friends I was going to have a course of CBT he looked rather surprised and said he didn’t think I was into that kind of thing. I asked him what he meant by ‘that kind of thing’. He revealed another use of the abbreviation CBT that he knew and I didn’t: Cock and Ball Torture. I am glad the National Health Service did not send me for that kind of CBT.

I’ve occasionally been asked how I got into wine. This is a bit of a difficult question to answer as I started so young I am not really sure what was the initial spark.

My parents were not at all interested in wine, there was not much wine consumed in the home environment. I didn’t get my love for wine from them.

I’m told that my mother got a free copy of The World Atlas of Wine from a book club when I was about five or six. Apparently, even at that tender age I would pour over this for hours, reading about all the wine regions and different producers. Why I found this so fascinating I cannot recall.

I do recall the next step in the genesis of my love for wine very clearly. Just before my ninth birthday my mother and step-father visited Alsace. They did not taste many wines, but brought back a bottle of Riesling Cuvee Frederic Emile 1979 from Trimbach. I’d read about this wine and producer so I asked if I could try some to see what it was like. I was given a small glassful and as I sniffed and tasted it galvanised me with its lively, exciting set of flavours. I am quite sure my appreciation of it was not terribly sophisticated at the age of eight, but I remember saying to my mother as I tasted it, “Wow, wine really can be good. This one tastes of so many things*”. I love Alsace Riesling to this day.

After this deeply compelling experience I tried to get my mother to buy more wines and let me try them. At that point she was yet to develop her appreciation for wine so joined the unspeakable Sunday Times Wine Club and ordered the filth they sell without realising these were dreadful wines. None of these had such a profound effect on me as the CFE 79.

I was extremely fortunate to be close friends with a boy at school, Daniel Cadbury (are you out there, Daniel?) whose parents loved wine, and in 1985 they had a family holiday in the Bergerac/Monbazillac area of France. They went to a few tastings and some of the wines we tried were pretty good; I was chuffed to score myself a bottle of 83 Chateau de Monbazillac.

The most amazing part of the holiday was when we took a day trip to Sauternes and Barsac to try the 83s and 84s. We visited La Tour Blanche, Climens, d’Arche and (quite incredible that, as a family group, we blagged our way in here) Chateau Gillette. The differences between the producers and vintages were clear when I tasted so many in one day. Once again, I was moved by the power of quality wine.

Sadly, then it was back to the dross from the Sunday Times Wine Club (with the occasional bottle of good stuff from the Cadburys) until I looked old enough to buy my own wine (it is handy being a tall person at times). That is when things really took off. I read more, purchased widely and tasted with great pleasure. My local wine merchants, Oddbins and Bottoms Up, still had a lot of interesting wines in those days and I would frequently buy something well-reviewed to drink with my school teachers. I didn’t view my fellow students as being enlightened enough to merit having any these precious drops of nectar; I wanted to talk about wine and other teenagers just knew nothing about it. I soon became aware that the teachers didn’t know that much either, but at least they were articulate.

Sometimes the discoveries were quite serendipitous. I went to the Australian Wine Centre (just off The Strand in those days) for the  first time when I was seventeen (with my mother’s credit card) to buy some St. Hallett Old Block Shiraz; I’d read a lot about it and thought it worth trying. I went to pay for my few bottles and the frankly enormous Australian fellow behind the counter said, “You don’t want to buy those, you want some of this.” He pulled out a bottle of Tim Adams Aberfeldy Shiraz, pulled the cork and poured me a slug. I tasted it and said, “I’ll take four bottles. Does this Tim Adams chap make anything else good?” He grinned and said, “Yeah, I think I do.” The man himself was visiting England and doing a stint in the shop. We chatted about wine as we drank most of the bottle of Aberfeldy and I was so impressed by both the charming Mr Adams and his wines I knew I would be sold on them for as long as he continued to make wine. I was right, I still drink and enjoy Tim Adams wines and recommend them to anyone who wants keenly-priced, quality Australian wine. I met Mr Adams at the London Wine Trade Fair a few years back (he is still extremely tall) and related the anecdote, he remembered!

Then I went to Oxford University and started tasting more wine than I ever thought I would. I was a member of the Oxford Wine Circle, a winning captain of the blind tasting team**, turned up to the merchants’ tastings when they tried to sell wines to the colleges and had weekly tastings with a select few people in evenings which will forever be burnt in my memory as the ‘casa Schleiss tastings’. Not all the wines I tried were the very finest, but a surprisingly large number were considering we were poor students. My chum Mr T and I once went through all of our notes for the past year and were both surprised and pleased to realise we had tasted over three thousand different wines. Good going, but a shame it included a lot of dull, cheap Clarets aimed at the conservative college buyers. This epic wine experience taught me well; I know that Burgundy is best, but good Riesling, Sherry, Champagne and others can also deliver the goods. I even liked the very flashest Clarets we tried, and some of them were incredibly flash, but soon learned they were too expensive for my tastes.

I do not try as many wines these days and largely limit myself to wine styles and producers I enjoy. I confess to being pleased I no longer have to regularly put New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc in blind tastings to try and teach people to recognise it. That being said, my knowledge of wine is still broad and I get a lot of pleasure out of blind tasting. A few years ago I was working for an unmentionably filthy wine merchant (I lasted almost two months before the inevitable ‘going totally insane and trying to kill myself’-experience which has characterised all my 9-to-5 jobs since developing paranoid schizophrenia; this was the longest I managed to hold down a regular job since 1999) who paid for their employees to take the Wine and Spirit Education Trust Advanced Certificate exam. I skimmed the course text book, finished the exam in quarter of the time allowed and passed it with a distinction.

So that, dear reader, is the story of my early years with wine. As I said, I cannot pin down the initial spark that made me want to learn about wine, but I am slightly amused that I have  been compelled by properly fine wine from the age of eight onwards.

*I’ve had CFE 79 on many occasions since becoming more deeply educated about wine and wine tasting, and I was clearly right with my first assessment, it always has tasted of a lot of things.

**I’m told I was a very demanding blind tasting instructor. When someone (who shall remain nameless) said that a rather large Australian Shiraz was Beaujolais I laughed so much I fell off my chair. I don’t suppose that was terribly supportive or encouraging.

My old photoblog at whatinterests.davidstrange.net was all very nice, but sub-optimal in many ways. Also, the webcam software for my phone stopped working after a ROM upgrade…

Rising up to replace that site is the Elitist Review Photoblog hosted by that kind chap Mr Flickr. I can upload pictures from my phone, tag them and so on. Each blog will have a link to pictures tagged specifically with ‘drinks’, ‘food’ or ‘wine’ in the white box under the calendar to the right of the page. There is also a link to all pictures in the navigation section to the right.

A few people have said I should sign up for Twitter. I know little of it, but I seem to be aware that I have more to say than it allows, and I don’t say it that often. It wouldn’t really work.

Moreover, I like to run my own sites, it is good to keep control of what you write. In view of that, I wondered if I could keep my Twitter-happy readers content if I set up my own website based on a similar idea.

Serendipitously, I found an application for my phone which would automatically upload pictures you take to an FTP server. Daniel kindly wrote a ASP.NET application which presents the pictures, and with that a photo-blog is born!

If you want to see the latest thing to interest me head over to http://whatinterests.davidstrange.net/. Descriptive URL, eh? There is also a link on the right of this page.

The Elitist Review editorial team took a visit to the London Wine and Spirits Trade Fair last Thursday. Here we are:

In that picture we are drinking tasting Taylor’s 1985, which was quite delicious. Very soft, mature and accessible, I thought. Mentzendorff also had some Taylor’s Quinta de Vargellas 2001 which was terribly impressive, quite fiery though. The Henriques and Henriques Madeiras slipped down an absolute treat, the 15 year old Bual and Malmsey especially. Bollinger is always good, although I was not so impressed with the 2000 vintage, seemed a touch diffuse. There were some wonderful Hidalgo wines on offer including an intriguing 1986 vintage-dated Oloroso sherry which I got the last slug of and thought was just great.

Over at the Liberty Wines stand it was good to try the most recent offerings from Jaboulet. They had a new winemaker for the 2006 vintage and I though the Crozes Thalabert 2006 was particularly good; a real return to quality. Their new labels were bloody awful, though. 2008 Grosset Polish Hill Riesling was frighteningly acidic, but serious Riesling. Cepparello 2005 was there, bottled in a screwcap which pleased me. It was a touch austere, though.

On the German wine institute stand we tried some good stuff. Dr Loosen 2008s seemed hilariously acidic, but with good fruit. Indeed, this seemed very much the story of the 2008 vintage in Germany, acidic but fruity. Some Leitz 07s were drinking very well (apart from Ein Zwei Dry which was bloody awful) and an 04 from them had survived better than I would expect from Leitz. Donnhoff 07s were totally wonderful and an 05 Oberhauser Brucke Auslese warped my mind even further with its loveliness.

Daniel dropped by a wine stand he thought suited him:

Weight Watcher’s wine, what a vile idea.

On the spirits side I tried some surprisingly drinkable sparkling vodka, some terribly nice pre-mixed cocktails from New Zealand, some properly good vodka about which an interesting film is being made (good stuff that Zorokovich, I was impressed) and some absinthe:

My final piece of hilarity for the day was that a couple of people came up to me at various points and told me how much they liked Elitist Review and that they were regular readers. I was highly amused and thought it was good for the ego.

A large picture of me will do in the ego department too.

Many thanks to Jeff for the pictures.