It often happens I get asked that when it comes to wines, what is my favourite colour. Does my heart skip for whites or do I glow a shade more rouge for red? Or am I the lesser-of-the-lot, ros? type? Strange that in the context of wines this question is acceptable to throw around, but if someone even as much as dared forth a similar query with your choice of partner or house help, I am sure they would be publicly pelted to death with stones the size of Gibraltar. Not trying to fan any allegedly underlying racist tendencies that you may think you are sensing here. Instead, I am merely asking all of you to extend the same liberal freedom of choice to wines as we do as everything else around us. Segregation on any basis that deprives us of the pleasure of another option cannot be considered a wholly good thing. In fact, the bigger problem is I don?t even know for sure whether I like whites or reds more!
Let me tell you about why this has come to be my plight, as in, why the colour of wine can cause me such fright. The first time I had a wine I recall, it was in pleasant company, with handsome people and a glass nice and tall. It mattered little then what was really inside the chalice. All I will say is that I drank in the company of good friends and we drank to good health and joy without any malice.
But rhyming reason aside, there is never and neither ever should be a favourite when it comes to wines. Sure complicated theories expounding this abound but the shorter simpler explanation would be this:
Marriage is the institution of polygamy. Alcohol is more forgiving and flexible.
The myth of mixing whites and reds leading to bad hangovers is just that, a myth.
As your tastes change over time you will find yourself move from whites to reds and then back to whites again before you jump the red wagon all over again.
There will never be a ?best? wine. They all have the potential to be great given the right climate, company and cuisine.
The diversity of variety in the world of wines will make it impossible to find only one style that you like.
This then is the learning curve. The Tao of wine, if you may allow me my momentary digression from modesty. Wine is a state of learning, a constancy of being. The very essence of wine is in its evolution or more aptly, the evolution of our approach to wines. The more we taste the more we learn not just about wine but about our own selves?our perceptive abilities and our thresholds for what we consider acceptable or worthy of admonish.
White and red are then only an outer hue of the greater embodiment that is the fascination we know as wine. The whole idea behind wine is to play with the choices aplenty to keep us occupied like a child in a toy and candy shop.
So here is my list of options. At sit-down dinners I indulge in anything, any colour, any style but it must be good. It surely cannot be a simple wine that most wine clubs serve at their dinners. But I don?t entirely scoff them; I would readily drink them at a night club. Rooftop terraces want me to go fruity on the wines while fireplaces and barbecues inspire more oaky stuff. At cocktails, I stick to whites, because I do not wish to be the one smiling with stained blackened teeth in the picture albums later, which today, thanks to technology, would soon be plastered all over social networking sites.
So, still want to know what wine colour is my favourite?
The writer is a sommelier