Wine "quality".... Such an elusive concept!

Wine Critics, magazines, competitions, you name it, earn their living by making us beleive that wine is so complicated that we absolutely need their advice and scores otherwise we could not possibly enjoy it.

What a pity. Because in the end, wine is really about pleasure. And EVERYONE knows what give them pleasure.

And so, the analogy that wine quality is like going on a "hot" date...

Why? Because...

First, you need complexity, excitment, interest, enjoyment. Wine, just like a date, must keep your attention, must stimulate you, even better, it must enthrall. Otherwise, it is boring. Never to be repeated.

Second, you need harmony. Perhaps ladies will understand this better than gentlemen... If you go for dinner with a guy (because it is mostly guys who suffer from such) and he talks and talks, and talks about himself the whoooole evening without letting you placing one word...certainly that is not harmony! In wine parlance, we would rather call this "uni-dimensional"... But if you can talk a little bit about yourself, then he talks then you both share increasingly more secretive parts of yourselves, in equal proportion...wow, that is giving you a good feeling... Perhaps you even start imagining what he would look like in his wedding suit?? Nothing sticking out, and everything working together. That is the key. Harmony, balance, compatibility...

Third, when you have all that excitment, all that complexity. When it all works together, so much so that it builds up to a crescendo of some sort...you want it to last forever! In any case, surely until the next morning at least... You want length, you want to lose sense of time, you want it until ever after...

And so, wine is like a hot date: interesting, harmonious, and long...