During yesterday’s tasting at Sunce, I realized what an interesting dynamic and existential morsel a tasting room is.  Why?  Well, it’s where people familiar with or curious about wine amalgamate to see what’s in the glass, what this winery has to say, and what they’ll see, learn, like, dislike in what wine’s poured.  How their palates and senses concerning wine develop at that bar, at the counter with the person or couple people pouring for them.  If they’d had Merlot before but not at this winery, you could say they’ve never had Merlot before, in that moment and context, in the pleasurable entrapment of that tasting room.

I’ve always seen the bar as not so much a filter, but a doorstep.  Or maybe a bit of a filter, for the consumer, the one who makes the business and our world (those in the business and writing/blogging about it) forward in creative deluges of varietal interpretation and exploration.  Yesterday I had three Pinots and several Bordeaux pours, among much else.  Steve behind the bar was gentle and convivial, and encouraging of my reaction to Sunce’s pours.  A moment of growth for me as a wine consumer, where I didn’t have to think too hard about what I was poured but just be receptive to the new takes on the grapes.

When I hear the word “tasting”, I think ‘trying’, with no pressure or coercion; no intimidation and no expectation.  It’s a travel to somewhere you’ve never seen.  And “Room”? I think ‘comfort’, I think ‘welcome’, I think ‘ease’.  So I have to again ask why some surround the subject of wine with unnecessary anointment, with self-indulgent hyperbole and unwanted totem talk?  It’s Life, this wine we sip, and the room is where we appreciate it, sip it and grow from, in, and with IT.  “So, then, how is a ‘morsel’, as you said?” Because, boldly, it’s a matter of taste, of preference and proclivity.  It’s personal.  So there is no right.  And aptly, no wrong.  So step to the bar with eagerness and no angst-angled chagrin.