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Of Drinks and Clinks
Of Drinks and Clinks
Did the ritual of clinking glasses evolve to prove that the drink contained therein wasn't poisoned?
& The ritual of clinking glasses
evolved from efforts to prove that the drinks contained therein were not poisoned.
Why do people clink their glasses before drinking a toast?
A: It used to be common for someone to try to kill an enemy by offering him a poisoned drink. To prove to a guest that a drink was safe, it became customary for a guest to pour a small amount of his drink into the glass of the host. Both men would drink it simultaneously. When a guest trusted his host, he would then just touch or clink the host's glass with his own.
& Many explanations have been advanced to explain our custom of clinking glasses when participating in toasts. One is that early Europeans felt the sound helped to drive off evil spirits. Another holds that by clanking the glasses into one another, wine could be sloshed from glass to glass, thereby serving as a
proof the beverages had not been poisoned. Yet another claim asserts that the "clink" served as a
symbolic acknowledgment of trust among imbibers who did not feel the need to sample each others' drinks to prove them unadulterated.
Each of those explanations is false. While making a racket for the purpose of scaring off evil spirits underpins other customs that carry over to this day (e.g., the
of church bells at weddings, and the loud shouts and
at the stroke of twelve on New Year's Eve), the "clink" is a relatively new aspect of toasting and, as such, came along well after folks had relinquished the notion that demons both lurked in every corner of typical day-to-day existence and could be sped on their way by a bit of noise. As for sloshing wine from one glass to another, drinking vessels would need to be filled to the brim to effect that, and if they were, such practice would waste valuable potables (because some would be sure to land on the floor) and likely douse the toasters too. And while the poisoning of enemies has long been part of the ordinary mayhem of the world, the practice of touching of one's filled glass to those of others when participating in a toast is unrelated to suspicion of the wine's havin such killings were not so common at any nebulous point in the past that a signal to one's host indicating he was clear of suspicion of attempted murder needed to be enshrined in the canon of social gestures.
To get at the real reason for the clink of glass on glass, we have to first look at why and how we toast, and where the practice originated.
The custom of sealing with booze expressions of good wishes for the health of others dates back so far that its origins are now lost to us, yet in numerous cultures
such acts of camaraderie often involved shared drinking vessels. The clinking of individual cups or glasses as a proof of trust wouldn't have meant much when
everyone drank from the same bowl. Indeed, in those cultures where shared drinking containers was the norm, to produce one's own vessel in such company was to communicate an unmistakable message of ho it would have been regarded as akin to bringing along a food taster to sample the repast.
"Toasting," our term for the pronouncement of benedictions followed by a swallowing of alcohol, is believed to have taken its name from a practice involving a shared drinking vessel. Floated in the "loving cup" passed among celebrants in Britain was a piece of (spiced) cooked bread that the host would consume along with the last few drops of liquid after the cup had made one round of the company. In modern times toasting has become a matter of imbibing from individual drinking vessels rather than from one shared flagon, so to compensate for the sense of unity lost in doing away with the sharing of the same cup we have evolved the practice of simultaneously drinking each from our own glass when a toast is made, thereby maintaining a communal connection to the kind words being spoken.
The clinking of glasses has been added to the practice of offering toasts for a few reasons, none having anything to do with poison. Prior to such augmentation, toasts pleased only fou by adding the "clink," a pleasant sound was made part of the experience, and wine glasses have come to be prized not only for their appearance but also for the tones they produce when struck.
Yet beyond mere aural pleasure, the act of touching your glass to that of others is a way of emphasizing that you are part of the good wishes being expressed, that you are making a physical connection to the toast. The practice also serves another purpose, that of uniting the individuals taking part in the benediction into a cohesive group: as the wine glasses are brought together, so symbolically are the people holding them. On a deeper level, the wine is also being recommuned with itself & that which had been one (when it had been in its own bottle) but was separated (when it was poured into a variety of glasses) is brought back into contact with the whole of itself, if only for a moment.
Etiquette mavens say one need not clink glasses with everyone present when participating in toasts among large assemblies.
Rather than reach across vast expanses of wide tables (thereby risking losing your balance and ending up in the guacamole), simply raise your glass and make eye contact with the group.
Barbara "avocados and don'ts" Mikkelson
& 26 December 2008
& & Brewster, Katherine. & "A Toast to Toasts!"
& & [Cleveland] Plain Dealer. & 29 December 1993 & (F p. E1).
& & Marquardt, Tom and Patric Darr. & "Accept Your Chance to Toast."
& & The [Annapolis] Capital. & 22 December 2004 & (p. D1).
& & Mitchell, Mary. & "Here's to You! (Clink) and You! (Clink) and You!"
& & The Seattle Times. & 9 September 2006 & (p. I6).
& & Okun, Janice. & "Here's to Ya."
& & Buffalo News. & 1 January 2003 & (p. D1).
& & Visser, Margaret. & The Rituals of Dinner.
& & New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991. & ISBN 0-140-17079-0 & (p. 215).
in 1994, and under his guidance the company has pioneered a number of revolutionary technologies, including the iPhone,
the light bulb, beer pong, and a vaccine for a disease that has not yet been discovered. He is currently seeking political asylum in the Duchy of Grand Fenwick.
FACT CHECKSerendipity is an amazing thing. I had just been thinking about how poorly the wine industry markets to women when friend/superflack
asked if I wanted to meet . A Napa winemaker who had studied in Bordeaux, Harris also runs , a wine education program for executive women. Like golf or fancy watches, wine is useful hobby for Lean-Inners in finance, law, tech and the like. While I wasn’t able to taste her small-production Chardonnays and Cabernet Sauvignon, we did talk at length about getting women more interested in wine — and getting the industry to notice.
A few highlights:
80% of wine under $18 is purchased by women. 80%! That’s a staggering number.
Even women who are comfortable dropping $900 on a pair of shoes hesitate to buy a bottle of wine with a triple-digit price tag. “I worked with a large group of really successful Silicon Valley women and only one of them had ever bought a wine over $100.”
She gives women useful tactics to deflect wine mansplaining. Introducing them to winemakers, which she does in her boot camps, provides the ultimate trump card. Nothing shuts up a wine bore holding forth on a bottle you’re drinking quite like interrupting him with “well, when I met the winemaker…”
On the disconnect between “chick wines” and her reality. “I’m not going to close a deal with a wine named ‘Sassy Bitch.’ Would you?”
My conversation with Harris gave shape to some fuzzy questions that have been taking up way too much of my brain space lately. Is the wine industry so focused on millennials that it takes for granted the customers it already has (i.e., women)? When will marketers figure out that “on the nose” style of marketing to women (pink labels, the word “mommy” thrown around indiscriminately) is really unsophisticated? How do you get more women to buy fine wine? And are we really OK with stuff like ? Or ?
I moved to Westchester two years ago. It’s been great for our kids, jury’s still out on how it’s working for the grown ups. One thing I can say for sure though is that it’s taught me a lot about wine. Not what’s in the bottle, but the context around it — how people drink wine and what they think about it, outside the very insulated community of Manhattan and what a friend calls the “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” areas of Brooklyn.
Some thoughts so far:
Wine in many suburban restaurants = disappointing. More often than not, the selection is boring, the pricing unjust, and the wine service non-existent. One local place that calls itself a wine bar — as in, the name of the place actually includes the phrase “wine bar” — doesn’t list the producers on its wine list. Make fun of people all you want for always drinking the same Malbec or Sancerre, but they’re not wrong to be risk-averse. The odds of being disappointed and feeling ripped off if they try something new are high.
Wine retail, on the other hand, is kind of awesome. I’ve found more than a few great stores, and great prices, in the most unlikely places. One of my favorites, the , sits next to a Salvation Army in a sad New Rochelle strip mall. Walk past the aisles of Alize and Mike’s Hard Lemonade and you’ll find a good selection or wines at a steal — if Wine Searcher is to be believed, it’s the cheapest place to pick up wines from Kermit Lynch’s portfolio in lower Westchester. My local store, Blue Dog Wines, is a little gem. It’s a tiny space filled with crowd pleasers, a few esoteric finds and -approved Pinots. Full disclosure: the owner is helping me out with my latest wine project, a local Facebook group page where I lead an online tasting every few weeks. It’s young yet, but lots of fun.
“Drink local” means something else entirely. When it comes to wine selection, people really are beholden to the skill and tastes of the wine stores and restaurants in their immediate vicinity. (Yes, people order wine online, but shipping can be an expensive deterrent,
is no help when you need to run out and buy some Prosecco for your neighbor’s dinner party starting in 45 minutes.) The universe of wine is vast and thrilling, but you’d never know it if your local wine store stocks the same boring bottles year after year.
The wine industry is insanely out of touch with how most people actually choose and consume wine. Do a better job telling people what the thing tastes like and give them a good story to hang their hat on. Stop with the overly precious food matching. No one is drinking your $15 Pinot Noir with game. They’re drinking it to accompany a burger or leftovers or an episode of Scandal. Get over it.
I will never stop being amazed by the smart questions I get from people who think they don’t know “enough” about wine. Sometimes the “average wine drinker” (whatever that means) is a lot smarter and more adventurous than they’re given credit for.
For at least the third year in a row, I told myself THIS would be my year of Southern Hemisphere wines. I would shift away from my Euro/California preferences and discover all kinds of new delights from Australia, New Zealand, Chile. Carmenere and Central Otago, here I come!
Well, we’re more than halfway through the year and so far it’s been a mixed bag. A quick look at my Delectable profile shows that only 10% of my wines hail from down South. But. One of my favorite meals of the year so far was at the , an homage to all things New Zealand with a menu and wine list that punch way above their prices. One of my few southern Westchester wine refuges is , an Australian joint in Mamaroneck. And a few months ago I met Ross Toombs, a fellow Pelhamite who imports wine from his native South Africa. He started his import business, , 3 years ago, and works with a number of up-and-coming South African producers. He was kind enough to answer a few questions about his work and what’s new with South African wines (which, really — did I mention this already? — I need to drink more of.)
Being in the wine industry is obviously a fantasy career for many people. What do you love most about what you do?
I love being responsible for ensuring that the passion of the all the people making the wines (not just the winemaker) are transferred to everyone we interact with.
I also love seeing the look of surprise and joy on the face of someone trying one of our wines for the first time. That is a gift that we keep getting and it makes it all worthwhile.
What is the biggest misconception about your job?
The biggest misconception is that it is quick and easy to bring another wine into the portfolio. The work to get a new wine to market is immense — but rewarding in itself.
Another misconception is that the startup importer/distributor can’t take on the big guys head on and win. It is possible to act big without being big.
Why should people drink more South African wine?
The South African wine industry — and the country itself — is so unique in so many ways. These characteristics are captured in the wines themselves which are, like the country and the people, complex, beautiful and bold without being overbearing.
South African winemakers have found an amazing balance between New and Old World wine styles (most often in the same glass).
Aside from your own, what wines are you most excited about drinking now?
I am most excited about drinking other South African wine producers that are hoping to be in the US market. There are some truly outstanding wines which American consumers would be lucky to have on their tables. For the wine adventurer South African wines provide an oasis of untapped gems.
What’s the most remarkable wine experience you’ve ever had?
Starting an import and distribution business has been that remarkable experience.
For me it has been about meeting the amazing people in the industry as much as the wines themselves.
With the wines I never anticipated the incredible experience that comes from drinking a glass of wine that captures the passion of the people you’ve met who made the wine. I wish everyone could meet the people that toiled in the vineyards, the cellars and the offices to get the wine all the way to your table. When you know these people and how much effort and skill goes into the process,
every glass becomes a celebration of the collective achievement in getting a wine into the market.
Wouldn’t you know it, the very week I wrote a post about how great it is to engage with winemakers through social media, I had the chance to spend some time with a vintner in person…and the evening reminded me that there’s nothing quite like getting to know winemakers face-to-face. The occasion was a dinner at
devoted to the wines of Gigondas. I lucked into sitting right next to Louis Barruol, the winemaker of .
Barruol is a native of Gigondas, an appellation of the southern Rh?ne, and Saint-Cosme has been in his family since 1570. Credit his ancestry, his work ethic and the quality of his holdings — Barruol has somehow managed to thread the needle between mass appeal (his 2010 Gigondas was #2 on Wine Spectator’s Top 100 Wines of 2012) and insider credibility. (At decent prices no less.)
As an icebreaker, I showed him a picture on my phone of his 2007 white C?te-du-Rh?ne, which I had drunk only a few weeks ago. “But no, it’s too old!” He exclaimed.
“Well, my friends and I really enjoyed it,” I said. (Thus marking the first time I’ve ever felt bad telling a winemaker I liked his wine.)
Fortunately, as the evening wore on — and the 12 different Gigondas cuvées began to flow — we overcame this rocky patch. Barruol comes from the plain-spoken but passionate school of winemaking, which always makes for entertaining company. A few highlights from our conversation:
On Gigondas’ second-fiddle status to Ch?teauneuf-du-Pape: “We want to be loved for what we are. Not because we are cheaper than Ch?teauneuf-du-Pape.“ He extolled the benefits of Gigondas’ higher altitude vineyards, which help to mitigate the hot Southern summers.
What Gigondas lacks in heft or depth, it makes up for in freshness. “Not acidity,” insisted Barruol. “Freshness.” He attributes this characteristic to the limestone soils prevalent in the region.
As the night wore on, our conversation turned to the northern Rh?ne. While Barruol is from Gigondas, it’s clear that Syrah has a special place in his heart. Saint-Cosme produces wines from Saint-Joseph, Condrieu, Crozes-Hermitage and C?te R?tie. The latter appellation is clearly his favorite. When a tablemate asked him why, Barruol started talking about the terroir, his love of schist soils, the elevation…and then paused. He leaned in conspiratorially. “Really, because it’s a very sexy wine.”
Barruol also joked that he and his friends want to publish a book of all the “conneries” (bullshit) he’s overheard in cellars during his career. In the meantime, you’ll have to settle for the lovely Gigondas: Its Wines, Its Lands, Its People, which you can . (Note: I received a copy of the book for free.) The tome includes contributions from Barruol and Kermit Lynch, as well as Jonathan Livingstone-Learmonth and Andrew Jefford — two British wine writers whose works deserve a lot more play in the U.S. market.
So much of the “social media has forever changed the wine landscape!” cheerleading (and hand-wringing) has focused on the critic and the consumer. A multitude of voices and tastes have replaced what used to be a much more top-down schematic. Which I’m all for, of course. But an equally welcome — and relatively unheralded — consequence of social media is access to actual winemakers. Whether it’s following producers on Twitter, seeing what they’re drinking thanks to Delectable, or hearing them hold forth on podcasts like I’ll Drink to That, there are unprecedented opportunities to learn about winemaking straight from the source. Along with pulling corks and cracking books, talking to winemakers is a great way to deepen your wine knowledge. A few things I’ve learned:
1. Winemakers drink a lot of Riesling.
2. As a group, they are probably the least full-of-shit people in the wine industry. I could make some dumb assumptions about working the land, knowing the value of hard work, etc., etc. accounting for this, but the truth is, I don’t know why. In any case, they’re mostly a likeable bunch.
3. “Winemaking” as one studies it in, say, a WSET class, bears very little resemblance to actual winemaking. The academic version of winemaking is an abstraction that doesn’t take into account a number of very important things, like what a winemaker does to make decent wine in a crappy vintage in order to remain solvent.
4. Winemaking is really hard work. This isn’t breaking news, but there’s something about seeing Tweeted pics of sorting tables and bottling lines early on a Sunday morning that really brings this lesson home.
But what I love most about following interesting winemakers on social is what they don’t say: their conversation is devoid of buzzwords and euphemisms–no “passion for the land” or “hand-crafted vintages” here. The phony wine mystique foisted on consumers by mediocre copywriters and flacks is stripped away. What remains is the real intrigue, a glimpse into the everyday magic of making wine for a living.
VinExpo, one of the world’s largest wine trade shows, welcomed nearly 50,000 visitors last month — including yours truly. See below for a list, in no particular order, of what I learned from my whirlwind trip.
Warm climate wine producers have the coolest booths.
While the Piedmontese and the Burgundians took a low-key approach to their stands, not so the Corsicans:
the Lebanese:
or the Brazilians:
Gamay is full of surprises.
I know my way around a cru Beaujolais, but I was still (very pleasantly) surprised to taste the wines of Joseph Burrier. The wines are subtle and focused, and Burrier — a 6th generation winemaker — was chock-full of quotable observations. One of my favorites: “the key with Gamay is to avoid vulgarity.” There was nothing remotely vulgar about these wines. They’re the Audrey Hepburn of cru Beaujolais. Graceful, elegant and unadorned. My favorites were the 2011 Saint-Amour “C?te de Besset,” refined and delicate, and, at the other end of the spectrum the 2001 Fleurie les Colonies de Rochegrès. Here it is, on the right, next to one of its younger compatriots. (You know the tasting starts getting real when the winemaker pulls out the unlabeled bottles.)
The very name Fleurie puts these wines at a disadvantage, says Burrier, as it inevitably prompts drinkers and even writers (ahem) to call these wines floral, charming, and unserious. He uses older vintages like this one to prove that Fleurie has a serious side. The wine is indeed drinking nicely now, and falls into what I think of as “October” wines.
Marketing can’t beat Mother Nature.
The boosterism that pervades events like this was no match for the cold (literally) hard reality of the weather. It was raining cats and dogs — or perhaps just cats if this whimsical sculpture installation was any indication:
In all seriousness, the horrible weather blanketing western France cast a pall on things. It remains to be seen how much the deluge will end up affecting the vintage, but, as they say in PR, “the optics were not good.”
The children are our future.
Tasting and drinking a lot of
wine was great, but the best part of my trip was meeting the next generation of France’s wine professionals, from sommeliers to winemakers and everything in between. A young couple who had abandoned their life in Paris to start a winery in Savoie focusing on indigenous grapes. One sommelier with the extremely quixotic, and extremely worthy, pursuit of introducing French people to wines from around the world. (Not an easy task. One Parisian diner, upon seeing Vega Sicilia on his wine list, asked, “they make wine is Spain?”) A Bordeaux winemaker who took as much pride in his Bordeaux Supérieur as his Pomerol. France’s obsession with rules and bureaucracy has a way of sucking the life out of its brightest young people, so it’s beyond encouraging to see all this dynamism and creativity.
I was running late and feeling desperate. My friend’s dinner party had started 20 minutes ago, and here I was in an unremarkable wine store on an unremarkable corner of the Upper East Side scanning the shelves for a palatable wine at a palatable price. Next to the Chiantis was an under-$20 bottle of Morellino di Scansano, a name that was then unfamiliar to me. Good enough. It ended up being a happy gamble, a delicious, affable wine that everyone liked. Since then, I’ve always felt like Morellino was my trusty little friend and special secret.
Well, the cat’s out of the bag. A lot of investment has poured into Morellino di Scansano, situated in the Tuscan coastal region of the Maremma, and it earned DOCG status in 2007. The promotional machine is very much up and running, and a delegation of winemakers and local representatives were on hand for several events in New York this past week.
They were emissaries of quiet Italian elegance, where one tosses a Loro Piana sweater over one’s shoulder just so, and the winemakers speak of organic farming in perfect, British-accented English. (Although they’re not afraid to let down their guard. When I asked one winemaker what he thought of Italian food in New York, he admitted that “if I cooked pasta this way at home, I would be — how you say? — shot.”)
The wines are similarly mellow. They’re required to be at least 85% Morellino (that’s Sangiovese to you and me), but the remainder can be any number of varieties, including Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, or local faves like Ciliegiolo. You won’t find the bright assertiveness of Chianti or stately grace of Brunello di Montalcino here: Morellino is their kinder, gentler cousin. From the lineup of 8 wines offered, my favorites were the
and the . The former has the liveliness and structure that lesser Morellinos lack, while the latter makes a case for the wine’s darker, more brooding side. Both were exceedingly food friendly, and it would be tough to think of a tomato-based pasta sauce/burger/grilled pork chop they wouldn’t work well with. While the prices have climbed since my first encounter with Morellino — the wines are now in the $20-$30 range — their accommodating, up-for-anything nature has not.
My almost two-year-old twin boys have entered the chatterbox phase. They are overflowing with words to describe their environment: two shoes, mommy’s cup, big shark book. Their vocabulary and their thinking are anchored in the concrete. It will be a little while before they understand abstract concepts completely, and acquire the words to express them.
Watching this process has me thinking differently about the language we use to describe wine. The current state of the tasting note is, well, not good. Eric Asimov cites a number of howlers in his recent book, How to Love Wine. (Check out my favorite chapter, Tyranny of the Tasting Note.) To my mind, the biggest problem with notes today is this: they are chock full of nouns. They’re a hodge-podge of names of things — roasted plums, dried thyme, Maduro tobacco — that remind me of how my toddlers see the world. Just like my little guys aren’t demonstrating a capacity for abstract thought yet, or an understanding of associations and comparisons, most tasting notes are stuck firmly in the world of things. As in, “here’s something that tastes like some other stuff, let me list them out. 92 points.” If, as writers and readers, we think of wine only in these concrete terms, we miss out on subtlety and sophistication. It’s infantilizing. Concepts like balance or terroir will elude us. Consciously or not, we give more weight to wines that taste like things, and less weight to wine that taste of a place. I’m not a terroir absolutist, and I understand that tasting notes are convenient and practical shorthand, but we do ourselves a disservice if we rely on these notes, and the wines they benefit most, to the exclusion of all else.
Back when I had time to teach wine classes (pre-chatterbox toddlers) I loved to pour cru Beaujolais for my students, if only to show them the world beyond Duboeuf. Once, after
asking a group to talk about the Morgon in front of us, a student said that “nothing about the wine stuck out.” She spoke reluctantly, certain she had said something stupid. I asked her to elaborate, and gradually I understood what she meant, and why she felt so sheepish about it. There was no “flavor” that jumped out at her, no raspberry jam or flambéed cherries or whatever it was she thought an ” expert” would identify. It just tasted like wine to her, wine that she liked. in fact, it was exactly the kind of wine she preferred. But she didn’t know how to ask for it, because she didn’t have the vocabulary she needed. “Nothing sticking out” was her way to explain that it was balanced. That it tasted of fruit, but wasn’t exactly fruity. that it had just as much alcohol as she wanted. That it was refreshing, even, not something she usually thought of in red wine. (And the more she drank, the more she wanted something delicious to eat with it.) How can we provide someone like her with a wine vocabulary that’s ample, descriptive and nuanced?
We spend a lot of ink and pixels criticizing winemakers who produce simplistic, overblown wines and the people who drink these wines. But if we want more people to appreciate different kinds of wine, we need to give them different language to understand and express their experience.
If I had to draw up my list of wine buying rules, these would be at the top:
1. Avoid any Pinot Noir under $25.
2. Avoid California Pinot Noir, unless someone I like and trust has recommended it — and is paying.
3. Avoid drinking anything with the word “Project” in the name.
And yet. One of the nicest bottles I’ve had this month was the inauspiciously named “The Pinot Project,” a wine made from Pinot grapes bought in across the state of California. It’s a well-made, well-balanced wine (no syrupy stuff here, although don’t expect Burgundian complexity) that would go with more or less anything you’d want to eat alongside a bottle of red wine. For $14 no less! The price-quality ratio goes down very easy — particularly if you overlook any long-held assumptions about cheap California Pinot.
If you’re an avid reader of lady magazines and blogs, you will recognize this frequent piece of shopping advice: don’t wait until the last minute before a big event to buy your super-special outfit. Desperation shopping rarely leads to good decision-making.
The same holds true for wine. One of the biggest differences I notice between the JV and the varsity wine drinker is that the former is much more likely to buy a wine just for a specific meal or occasion, whereas the latter picks up a bottle that interests her, whether or not she knows when or how or with whom she’ll drink it. To continue the fashion analogy, the same thinking that prompts someone to buy, say, a pair of crystal-studded pair of Giuseppe Zanotti platforms
with no clear idea of where she’ll wear them is what compels someone like me to buy a bottle of late-harvest Gewurztraminer here, a half case of Lambrusco there, and why not some Poire William while I’m at it? Just like the most fashionable person you know has the perfect outfit for everything from a summer BBQ to a night out with Beyoncé, the hard-core wine lover has just the right thing to serve her finicky mother-in-law, as well as the ideal bottle for her too-cool-for-Cab sommelier friend. If you’re looking for New Year’s wine resolution guidance, I’d suggest you adopt a similar stance and do as the fashion mags dictate: if you love it and can afford it, buy it.
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