Grape Wine Journey

I always love wine, and if you ask me how long I’ve been enjoying the fermented grape juice? Well, I had enjoyed it for more than 20 years!

Amongst my friends and the people that I work with, I am quite well known to be a wine lover.  So I do get quite a number of invitations to wine-tasting dinner or events. 

About 3 years ago, a very good friend of mine asked me to join a Vertical Wine Tasting at his friend’s place.  My husband and I, along with 10 people, attended the event.  There was a Bordeaux wine, and we tasted probably 5 vintages.  Most of the time, people will find it quite hard to stop me talking, but on that night….. I was unusually quiet.  They were all sharing their comments on the nose and palate of the wine, but I wasn’t able to smell or taste a single damn thing they described.

I felt very stupid at the dinner.  After that dinner, I decided to do something about it.  I don’t want to feel stupid again; I want to be as pretentious as these people were.  So I enrolled in the Wine Appreciation program offered by the Open University of Hong Kong.  It took me almost 2 years to finish 3 courses to obtain the Certificate in Wine Appreciation & Assessment.

When I read the description of the course, 10 weeks with 3 hours each session and tasting about 7 wines per class, I thought that must be good. I was wrong, it was a lot more difficult than I ever expected.  You have to remember all the regions, the soil, grapes varieties, characteristics etc…..  I guess if you want to wing it, you can.  But that won’t be me; I want to get the most out of it.

I was very attentive in class, and that made me a very good student. If there was no response from class, the instructor would pick on me as he knew I will always have an answer, even if it wasn’t right!    

It’s probably this behavior that one day the instructor asked if I were a senior police officer, which is also known as Madam in Hong Kong.  Ever since then, everyone in the class just called me Madam. I liked the name because it sounded very authoritative!  But my job really has nothing to do with chasing after gangsters or putting people behind bars.

When the idea of writing a blog on wine came to my mind, there is only one name I will use – MADAM!