I am not a wine guy. I’m not even a wannabe wine guy. However, I like to think of myself as someone who has taste. Not good taste, necessarily. But taste. Something I was born with and have developed and put some stock into. The wine pursuit that has seemingly gripped me over the last year or so, I believe has come from three places. Firstly, I will finish a glass of wine. Whereas a glass of beer will often be left half full at the table and a cocktail untouched entirely. Secondly, I love food. The tradition of wine and food is long standing. I like the idea of wine pairings, although in practice I can’t count on one hand how many times I have actually implemented a pairing strategy at dinner. I think, if I continue to form and/or find some wine opinions, I will try to eventually incorporate the idea into my home cooking. And thirdly, I watched a video last year sometime by a YouTube channel called Horses. The video is titled “Why You Should Be More Pretentious”. It talks about making yourself ok with be interested in finer things. Now that I am writing this I definitely think the video will need a rewatch, and I encourage you to watch it as well as checking out that channel in general.

Anyway, of the alcohol beverages available, wine happens to be my favorite. This presents a problem for me. Because of the pretention and traditions in the field of wine, there are some real wine nerds out there. I have tried my best to research or learn about wine, only to be overwhelmed by all the terms and ideology and types. There is tasting and swirling and aeration and dry vs sweet and red and how red has legs but white doesn’t and to chill or not to chill and then somewhere along the lines I realized it didn’t matter. I don’t even know what kind of wine I like. I used to say Cabernet Sauvignon, but I don’t even really know how to pronounce that. Lately, I’ve even preferred white wines to red for whatever reason. My strategy thus far has been to just dispense with trying to memorize terms and distinctions and names, and just try a bunch. I’ve been to a few wineries now and have enjoyed myself getting a flight and sitting down somewhere pretty to try them.

I don’t do anything fancy. I like when a winery has a pre-fabbed flight list and I’ll order that. Otherwise, I pick randomly based on what sounds good. I then nod and oooh and aaah as the sommelier (or just bartender?) pours the few half glasses and gives descriptions of each bottle. As I take the flight away I immediately forget all that was said to me. I sit, take a glass. Do a swirl. Give a sniff. And sip. Then it’ll either be a ‘alright!’ or a ‘yuck.’. Whatever is my favorite of the flight I will buy a bottle and go home. I’ve got maybe 10 wineries under my belt. And yesterday I earned number 11, Noisy Water in Old Town Albuquerque New Mexico. And something very interesting happened. A first for me.

The atmosphere in that winery kicked ass. More than one person behind the bar so no waiting for your next glass. The live musician was awesome. There weren’t too many post middle aged women in there. There was a shitty gift shop and some art to look at. All on par or better than any where else I’ve been. The interesting thing was that a single wine I tasted impressed me. As a guy who doesn’t know a damn thing about wine, I feel so confidant in saying; that was bad wine. None of them, whether red or white, or dry or sweet, had any body to them at all. There was never a lingering taste after the sip. I could tell there was alcohol, but beyond that the flavors were not distinct at all. The only thing positive I can say about the wine is that it would be good for cooking, except a bottle would be around $30.  I’ve had wines I didn’t like before, plenty of them. But I always assumed it just wasn’t to my taste. In this case, it was just bad wine.  Our friend that doesn’t drink was happy enough with his diet coke, and liked smelling the wines. To him ‘they all smell like wine’. I have grown a nose for wine smells and can tell a few things about a wine by its scents. But here I agreed with him, there was almost nothing in the smell and taste to tell one wine from another. They were all simultaneously bland and off putting.

So what’s the point? Is this a review? Sure. Noisy Water sucks.