So through a series of odd events we ended up judging wine at a county fair, which is why I'm sort of drunk and it's only 2:30 pm. You do have to spit out the wine you're tasting, or you would be legless by about a quarter of the way through, but still- 51 wines later, and anyone is going to be a little tipsy just from what you absorb during the tasting process. We started out the quietest judging table and ended up the loudest, which is pretty amusing. We also took the longest, but hey- 51 wines, for crying out loud.
Some of them were nice. Some of them were workmanlike. Some of them were harsh. Some of them were nondescript. And a couple tasted as though they had been distilled in an armpit. I now understand why wine professionals use overblown, flowery language to describe wine- it's really hard to quantify a complex taste without using words that are also related to taste. And some of them really do taste like those odd series of wine expert adjectives. Some of them we had to make up new descriptions for, which I'm pretty sure have never been used before in the history of wine. One memorable one tasted like licking a basement wall. Another smelled like rotting newspaper. One of them smelled like a gas-powered weedeater that had just been used on a big bank of weeds. These were dark times.
It wasn't all terrible, though; far from it. There were many perfectly drinkable ones, and the three wines that came down in contention for Best In Show were absolutely transcendent. The first was a lovely delicate Catawba that was refreshing and balanced and wonderful, the second was something called "Three Berry Chocolate" that was sweet without being cloying in any way and was better than any dessert I can ever remember eating, but the winner was an ice wine that was just so close to prefect in every way I would have paid whatever they wanted for a bottle and counted it cheap at twice the price. We (and the photographer and the paperwork steward, who joined in on tasting the last three) were just speechless at how good it was. Any one of those three were worth having to judge all the wines that tasted like they had been strained through an engine block.
We didn't spit the final contenders out, which may have something to do with my general lack of sobriety at the moment (although really, I'm not as bad as I thought I would be considering we worked clear through lunch, so the last half was done more or less on an empty stomach) They were just too good- it would have been a crime. And, speaking of, we were driven home by our friend the photographer, who had come along more or less for this purpose. Now we're drinking water and trying to salvage something of the rest of the day. It was definitely an experience, though.