Liquid Love Letter: Barrel Samples

Full disclosure: I am not a romantic.

Runaway emotions. Dramatic gestures of “affection.” Over-sentimentalizing.

I get it. I understand the adrenaline rush of those things. But they’re just not for me.

So when I hear this frequently-asked question - “What is THE WINE that changed your life?” - that’s typically asked in a starry-eyed kind of way with an enthusiastic exclamation point at the end, my natural response should involve an eye roll.

Except… it doesn’t.

My natural response when describing the wine that changed my life is, in fact, fairly romantic. Giddy, even. I get almost as starry-eyed as the person asking the question. I start to smile and say things like “Oh!” Or even “Aww…!”

Weird.

What is it about THE WINE that changed my life, that evokes such an uncharacteristic response from me?

It was a barrel sample. Meaning, I entered the cellar with the winemaker (in this case, Pierre-Yves Colin in Burgundy, on a very very cold January day in 2010) who drew a few small samples of unfinished Chardonnay from various oak barrels around the cellar. We stood (shivering), tasted, and talked.

Those barrel samples were THE WINES, and that was THE EXPERIENCE, that changed my life.

I thought I knew Chardonnay, but then I tasted Pierre-Yves Colin’s Chardonnay and I thought, “Oh.”

Those barrel samples changed my life because that experience in the cellar was for me the mystery of wine, the life force of it. Growers do their thing, and winemakers do their thing, but at a certain point they close the cellar door and leave the wines to do their thing. As they must. I love tasting “incomplete” wines from the barrel *because* they are incomplete. They are works in progress, and maybe you could see where they’re from and where they’re going but all you have right now is exactly what’s in your glass. Just that, and only that. They are still figuring out who they are, and how they will show up in the world, but that isn’t your concern just then.

I also love barrel samples because they represent opportunity, and potential. We can give them grace about what they are not yet, and also the benefit of the doubt about what they are going to be. Sure, experienced tasters will discern certain nuances that foretell the wine’s eventual development. (If there isn’t enough fruit when a wine is young, for example, there will never be enough fruit even though that’s usually a desirable trait.) But in general we are forgiving toward wines at this stage, and we can also be hopeful and imaginative about its future.

And who wouldn’t want more of that in our lives?