Most of the time, most of us drink young, simple wines. What you taste is what you get–they may be flavorful and refreshing, but they don’t repay extended analysis. Even so, it can be amusing to taste them blind, to try to reach back through the wine to its components: grape variety, vintage quality, winemaking techniques.

Sometimes we splurge, drinking a bottle from a topflight producer in a great vintage. Then, good tasting technique is essential to full appreciation. If the setting or the company is distracting, or we can’t be bothered to concentrate on the data our senses are providing, then we’ve wasted our money and insulted the winemaker and the wine. Recently a Wine Spectator editor dined with a wealthy collector who opened 17 bottles for eight guests, serving them almost completely at random, pairing, for example, 1985 Krug Champagne and 1929 Château Mouton-Rothschild as apéritifs. Appreciation is impossible when conspicuous consumption is filling the glass. But when you put senses and imagination to work, tasting a great wine can be more than a great pleasure; its memory can illuminate all the other wines we drink, majestic and modest, from then on.
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