Wine has the ability to create and tell the stories of people and places. It is tied to the history of the world and included many times in what some people call the greatest story ever told (the Bible.)  Wine is a story of the land and climate, the history of the place in which the grapes are grown, the tale of the people and culture who produce it, a lesson in the science of making it, and a memory to those who taste it.

You can debate what makes a wine “good” all day long, but I believe that good wine comes from memorable experiences. Yes, there are wines that are technically better than others. There are wines that are so good that they invoke a price tag of many hundreds if not thousands of dollars. But most of us normal people are not drinking those wines regularly, if ever.

Good wine creates good memories. Good is subjective and all it takes is a good experience to which it is tied for us to fall in love with the wine.

Think about a wine someone tasted on their honeymoon that was produced from 100-year old vines untouched by Phylloxera, grown in an ancient region of Spain, made by the first female winemaker in a family that has owned the winery for 150 years in an area that started producing wine when the Phoenicians arrived thousands of years ago. So many stories in the context of that one bottle of wine.

I had a really fun night in college with a box of Franzia that ended with my roommates writing “Hi Mom” in sharpie on the forehead of my other roommate who was passed out. It was also the night before her parents arrived for Parents Day. So, if you put a box of Franzia in front of me, I would probably commit a mortal sin to most oenophiles and drink it in order to awaken that  memory more vividly.  With one sip I  could feel as carefree as I did as a college student back in 1998 when I did not know a thing about wine. That is what makes Franzia good wine in this case. The memory of when I drank it straight from the spout on the box is a great one.

Wine has the ability to become a bookmark to our lives, saving the place of a moment in time in our memories.  Those memories can make the wine taste even better when we drink it again. Those moments come rushing back to you and you don’t care about the acidity level or the presence of gritty tannins.  The memory is all that needed to make that wine a good wine to the person drinking it.

The more often we can recall that memory by telling someone about it, the more often we get to relive that joy. As humans, we connect with each other through storytelling.  When wine lovers get together, they want to talk and share with each other. They want to tell their stories. The stories are often not so much about the body and structure of the wine, but a personal story in which that wine played a part.   Merging storytelling and wine tasting just comes naturally.  

When you purposely combine tasting wine with storytelling you get an experience called Storytasting.

Storytasting is an experience during which the wine tasting is driven by the stories behind the wine rather than the tasting notes.  Additional storytelling amongst the participants is also encouraged. Storytasting can inspire, uplift, and educate, but mostly it can connect us in a way that only shared experiences can.  

If you are interested in using wine as a jumping off point to a night of connecting with friends, family, or colleagues, visit www.sandysomm.com.

Cheers to creating more wine memories! Salut!