San Diego Downtown News, 4 June 2009 — Page 9

FLOWERS

Ted Glennon, is the Wine Director of oENOlogy, a modern wine tasting room at the Hotel Del Coronado. hoteldel. com enowinerooms. com

ing of 10 wines for $ 10 from 58pm, each week I change the wines and each week every wine in the lineup is loved by some and disliked by others. We all have varied preferences and tastes and this individualism should be championed with our guests, resist this marketing idea that everyone will find the same apple delicious, that everyone will like the same song, car, team, or wine. 5) Why trust a brand name? When guests come into ENO, my staff asks what wine they enjoy, often the response is;” Silver Oak!” or“ Cakebread!” or other well known, massive production, expensive brands. Instead of saying“ I like a Cabernet based blend from Napa Valley, supple tannins, a fruit forward, oaky style wine,” SILVER OAK is the answer, these wonderful wine drinkers are being branded to death. Do you only buy tomatoes from one farmer? Only one type of tomatoes? Do you refuse any other brand of tomatoes? TRUST YOUR PALATE!!!! I hope that this will help free you up to enjoying wine because it is delicious and past that any reading or research you do will be driven by the desire to have those delicious flavors in a glass in your hands again. Cheers and beware what anyone but you own tongue tells you. Tune in for Taste Manifesto Part 2 next month.

Over the last year I’ve shared my time between the tasting room ( ENO) and the fine-dining restaurant ( 1500 Ocean) at the resort ( Hotel del Coronado), this duality of the casual and refined has allowed me to develop an irreverent, very humorous yet professional version of the sommelier. Let me explain irreverent. When we talk about the vineyards that have been tended by families and monks over hundreds to thousands of years, and the varied climates and soils of the world and representing these cultural traditions every time we pull a cork, I practice a very healthy reverence. However regarding the pretention, arrogance, and silly rituals connected to wine in our society, I have a very healthy irreverence. I feel that many people will miss out on great wines and great experiences unless something is done about the silly marketing campaigns and over branding/ brainwashing. We need to get back to the joy of sharing wine with friends and family, drinking wine because its tastes good, not because someone you never met and may have nothing in common with gave it some arbitrary score. I Encourage people to think of wine as a food. I believe this is the most appropriate context for wine. If we think of wine within a context of food a few key things will come to light: If wine is a food… 1) Wine should be deli-

cious, everything else is secondary. You buy a bottle of wine, it has a pretty story, received a 99,000 point score, was very expensive, has a buzz about its winemaker, but when you open the bottle and taste it, if it sucks, none of that matters. As food it all comes down to is it or isn’t it delicious? When we over-intellectualize wine, we are using the wrong muscle. 2) Wine is an agricultural product, which means it is grown somewhere by someone. Wine is from the earth, just like apples, grain and tomatoes, and it matters where you grow the grapes. The quest in exploring the world by planting vines is to find the ethereal combination of grape variety and vineyard site. This is known as Terroir; the expression of the grape varieties as influenced by the local growing conditions. Soil composition, wind, rainfall, heat, cold, these environmental concerns influence the ultimate juice. Think of Cabernet in Napa Valley, brilliant decision. Pinot Noir in Burgundy? Riesling in Germany? These are some of the great classic wines of the world. Remember it took hundreds to thousands of years to perfect what was planted where and how. 3) Drinking wine is a personal experience and it always has been. Drink what you like, like what you drink and forget the rest. If you hated tomatoes would that make you any less of a person? ( Die hard tomato aficionados calm down this is an allegory.) So if you hateChardonnay or can’t stand Cabernet or Syrah, and all of your friends love it, so what? Every Tuesday ENO features a tast-

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JUNE 2009 SAN DIEGO DOWNTOWN NEWS

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SAN DIEGO’S

FOOD

ACAI BOWLS

Part 1

TCHOERK BOARD

FOOD & DRINK

A Manifesto of Taste

By Ted Glennon | Special correspondent

FRESH PRODUCE DAILY

BRING IN 10%

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