Heather Slade | The Background on Wine

In my mid-twenties, I had a group of friends that got together every Friday
night for wine tasting.  Sounds like a fairly mundane thing to do, particularly
week after week. However, what made this group different was every tasting was
blind. 

The guy who organized these get-togethers would typically choose ten wines, and
put them in paper bags. Some weeks we’d know the theme of the tasting—he might
ask everyone to bring a bottle of syrah, for example. Other weeks it was a
complete mystery. He’d give us tasting sheets, some would make notes, some
didn’t care, and at the end of the evening, we’d see what we tasted, and talk
about the wines. This was my introduction to wine tasting.

Over the course of the years I became a certified executive sommelier, which is
the second tier, similar in experience to an executive chef. My husband and I
also owned a wine bar.

As any writer who has attended any workshop, or even read a book on writing, has heard, write what you know. Thus, my newest series, Butler Ranch, is set on the central coast of California, one of my favorite wine regions—and was hugely inspired by those early tasting experiences.

The settings in this series are based on wineries I’ve visited, styles and types
of wine I’m fond of or want to learn about, and the characters are all involved
in the industry in some way—winemaking, lovemaking and mischief-making.  

The epitome of hedonism—tasting wine is all about the senses—starting with
sight. There is so much one can learn by tilting your glass almost to the point
of spilling over, and examining the transitions of color, which is indicative of
age, as well a complexity. 

Smell is the first thing most people do upon being handed a glass of wine.
You’ll see people swirl the glass, and then take a sniff.  The aromas can be as
telling as the sight, not in terms of age, but varietally and regionally—type of
grape or grapes, and terrior, or the area in which in the grapes were grown.

Finally taste and touch. A sip of wine fills the mouth with not only a variety
of flavors, but a variety of mouthfeels. Dry is both taste and touch. A bone dry
wine will taste entirely devoid of sugar or sweetness. A red wine may also feel
dry, due to the intensity of tannins. Tannins are found in the stems and seeds
of grapes. Biting into a Cabernet Sauvignon seed is a great way to learn about
tannins and their mouthfeel.

There isn’t much to hear with wine, besides the conversation and laughter that
come along with a day of wine tasting.

And then there’s the food. Historically wine was made because water was not safe to drink. Same thing with beer. You’ll hear someway say, “what wine should I pair with this food?” The approach is actually the opposite. The types of grapes that could be grown in a particular climate, or soil-type, would dictate the style of wine—there wasn’t much variation year to year. Thus, food followed wine, to complement and so neither overwhelmed the other.

People whose lives are filled with the sensuality, the attention to detail, the
seductiveness of winemaking, the heat and the romance of it—would be powerless
against it spilling over into other areas of their lives. Imagine those
characters, particularly the men.

This is what I write, and why. Mix in cowboys and really, would life get any better?

THE PROMISE is a completely different contemporary western romance.