Practice Yourself What You Preach
The next wine on our fifty state wine tasting trail was from Maine, a wine-challenged state with a small, but growing wine industry. Â Thanks to some thousand year-old advice, the tasting turned out to be one of the best state wines we have had so far.
With short growing seasons and harsh winters, Maine’s climate is not particularly well-suited to the production of most vinifera varieties.  The use of heartier hybrid strains including St. Croix, Frontenac and Marechal Foch along with native varieties like Concord and Niagara is much more prevalent in Maine winemaking.  But Maine winemakers have become highly-skilled at producing quality wines made from non-grape fruits such as cranberries, blueberries and raspberries.  Although “Mainer’s” are a characteristically understated and unflappable bunch, when it comes to fruit wines, they are unapologetic and proud.
So in retrospect, I should not have been surprised that the bottle of wine that our family member generously obtained for us was a blueberry wine. Â Which brings me to the sage advice that made our tasting so memorable.
One of the things that continues to draw me to wines is the seemingly limitless amount that can be learned about the subject.  And while much of the learning is intellectual, a significant amount can also be learned through the experience of tasting.  To that end, I try to approach each wine I taste from the perspective of what I can learn from it - “how does the variety taste?”, “what are the results of the method of winemaking used?”, “is there something unique about this vintage?” – opportunities to learn from almost any wine is virtually endless.  So my encouragement to anyone whose rationale for not trying a wine is that they know they don’t like it is typically “At least give it a try.  You might learn something new.”
More than two thousand years ago, the Roman playwright Plautus wrote a series of comedies based on earlier Greek works.  Among the plays that he wrote was one that was titled Asinaria (translated as “The One with the Asses”).  In the play, a slave named Libanus offers the advice “Practice yourself what you preach” to the protagonist’s son Argyrippus who had shared an unsolicited opinion with him.
Although the setting was different, the advice was relevant when it came to tasting the Maine blueberry wine.  Based on my own preconceived notions and biases about fruit wines, I had decided that the wine was going to be sweet and syrupy – two characteristics that I do not appreciate in wine.  My initial thoughts were that I already knew what the wine tasted like and I was not going to like it.  I put off opening the bottle for some time, but eventually decided that I should heed my own “preaching” and find out what the wine was all about.
The wine we tasted was called “Breakwater Blues” and was produced from 100% Maine-grown blueberries.  It was dark and inky in the glass as you might expect.  But when I smelled it, I got my first surprise from the wine.  It didn’t smell overly-fruity or perfumed, but smelled more like a wine made from a vinifera variety.  The next surprise came when I tasted it.  It was dry and robust, with a full and balanced body.  With the second taste I realized that it reminded me of a slightly toned-down Cabernet Franc.  I fully expected the sweetness to kick in, but it never did.  It was a very enjoyable wine that I would have no hesitation offering to guests either with a meal or by itself.
Sometimes it pays to listen to the advice that you give others.  In this case, I’m glad I did.  Even if it did take a reminder from a two thousand year-old comedy about….. well, you know.
Here’s the wine: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/16114511144948517/
