In this entry to our 2024 wine writing competition, budding wine writer and music enthusiast Niall Rush writes about hosting a dinner party that changed his perspective on wine. See our competition guide for more great wine writing.
Niall Rush writes Niall Rush is an London-based recent wine convert in the process of fleeing a career in technical writing to the warm, impoverishing embrace of the wine industry, joining the team at Uncorked. At the very beginning of his wine career, he is struggling to work out what to write here, other than to feebly offer that he has done some WSET qualifications (but not the big scary expensive one yet) and has also started occasionally blogging. Aside from wine, he is a semi-semi-semi-professional musician and cat sop.
Teenage Lobotomy
As a teenager, I was an incorrigible music snob. It was of vital importance not only that I was a precocious expert, but that I was the right kind of expert, that my tastes and perspectives were simultaneously individual and completely validated by the indie critical establishment. Of course, this resulted in me frequently being an unbearable git: convinced, for instance, that my very pop-oriented boyfriend’s bitter dislike of My Bloody Valentine’s beautiful skronk was evidence of a moral failing, perhaps even of a weak mind.
Thankfully for all involved, not least that boyfriend-now-husband, I eventually grew up. It dawned on me that no one ever enjoys anything under duress, especially not the crusading duress of a jumped-up uni student. The problem was, alas, with me, not with the people complaining when I put “Sister Ray” on the pre-drinks playlist. Being so unyielding is isolating. We should embrace (or at least, in some indigestible cases, grudgingly tolerate) life’s rich tapestry of tastes and perspectives. By last year, I felt comparatively serene and unbothered — or at least, I did, until a lunch with friends reminded me that my inner teenager will never truly die.
It was an early instalment of a regular monthly Sunday roast with friends, hosted at ours. My burgeoning obsession with wine and delirious disregard for sensible budgeting earned me an automatic and permanent appointment as wine czar. I viewed it as a rare opportunity to safely play amateur sommelier for a pretty straightforward brief. With a hefty joint of sirloin on the menu, I decided to go for some potent French reds, focusing on some better value satellite appellations of the big hitters: a Nicole Tapon Saint-Georges Saint Émilion with a bit of age on it, and a slightly more youthful D’Ourea Gigondas. With a Catherine & Pierre Breton Vouvray Brut as an apéritif and a J.J. Prum for the dessert, we were set.
The process, however, felt slightly nerve-wracking. Why did the simple act of choosing some wine for lunch with friends fill me with anxiety? I would have told anyone that I just wanted everyone to have a good time drinking good wine, and I didn’t want to get it wrong.
Of course, deep down, the puritanical evangelist in me wanted to somehow infect my unsuspecting companions with my enthusiasm, to manufacture a complete celebratory validation of my new passions, to feel less alone as a newly minted wine nerd in a sea of mostly indulgent but frequently uncomprehending friends, to shape the world to perfectly suit me, to feel in control. Deep down, all this, in a matter of a few Sunday dinners.
The problems started early. A spontaneous offer of Bloody Marys from my husband, gratefully and enthusiastically taken up by our guests, T-minus five minutes to planned Vouvray opening. My careful schedule disrupted, a growing risk of Vouvray-on-sirloin contact. I failed to hide my mild irritation. Thankfully, no roast has ever hit the table exactly on time, and with the inevitable delays in final assembly we were just about in the clear.
As the beef made its way to the table, I checked the Bordeaux in the decanter. I was sure it would be a hit: wonderfully rich and concentrated, with growing depth and complexity from the bottle age. Once I’d poured for everyone, my passing comment that one might find some truffle and tobacco in this one was met with quiet bemusement. No bother; that hardly sounds appealing to the uninitiated. I consoled myself that it certainly worked wonders with the roast, regardless of what you might ‘get’ in it.
Onto the Gigondas. It hit the nose with an unmistakable savoury whack of Southern Rhône herbs, and I was quietly smug that I’d achieved my personal goal of delivering the quintessential qualities of big-ticket French reds without actually having to pay for them. Wasn’t I clever? Wasn’t I furnishing my surely appreciative friends with not just excellent wine, but valuable knowledge?!
I blurted something out as I poured about how wines from the region can often magically contain a mix of the native wild herbs in their aromas, and if you smell this wine, you may get notes of thyme, sage, rosemary…
With comic timing, a dear friend sniffed it, frowned, and said “I just sort of get… wine.”
My inner teenage nerd was in revolt. What do you mean, you don’t GET garrigue?! If you don’t mentally rattle through a WSET-approved rolodex of aromatic profiles, if you don’t compartmentalise, appraise and justify every detail with every sip, how are you supposed to enjoy it?!
Taking a step back, it was clear that everyone else was just having a nice time drinking nice wine. In fact, they were certainly having a better time than me. It didn’t matter that I’d kept my introductions short: by allowing my anxieties to take me out of the moment, I was absolutely being a wine bore.
Thankfully, this tug of war happened entirely in my head, and by the time I brought out the J.J. Prum, I had made a conscious decision to try and let go. I wasn’t going to be offended if anyone didn’t fancy my mystical kerosene potion with their cheesecake. I wasn’t going to be incensed if no one paid sufficient attention to pass comment on it. I was going to ignore the irritable teenager. I was going to grow up, again.
In the end, the same garrigue-denying friend declared it reminded her of white blossom flowers, and I relaxed into the reality that I was just having a great lunch with close friends, fuelled by good wine. One of life’s greatest pleasures. Nerdy cataloguing aside, this is surely what wine is for: illuminating these rare moments of connection to people, places, times in our lives, colouring in the lines. What’s there to be anxious about?
The photo is captioned 'Scenes from a different kitten-oriented wine-fuelled get-together'.