THE ADVOCATE 375
VOL. 79 PART 3 MAY 2021
THE WINE
COLUMN
By Michael Welsh, Q.C.*
Originally published in The New Yorker, March 27, 1937
WINE TASTING
Wine is made in the main from grapes. Yet when wine is described by wine
hacks like me, we never say it tastes like grapes. Descriptions of just about
every other fruit, certain vegetables and flowers, even wet rocks, tar, cat
pee, horse sweat and cow dung are used, but almost never grapes. For the
novice wine drinker, this can be confusing, even leading to questions of
whether those other things are actually mixed into wine, which thankfully
they are not.
A number of years ago, in my former firm, a partner came into my office
waving my latest wine article. He read to me my description of Bordeauxstyle
wine in which I had said I had detected a whiff of pencil shavings on
the nose. “Pencil shavings?” he asked. “In the wine? And this is a good
* Michael Welsh, Q.C., carries on a litigation and ADR practice in the South Okanagan and is a bencher. He shares his initials
with American actor Mark Wahlberg, and the two are often mistaken for one another. The views expressed here are
those of the author and not those of the Law Society (or Mark Wahlberg).