If you are a college student in America, cheap beer (or cheap vodka) is probably your libation of choice. If you are an American college student who finds herself in Tunisia however, you’ll probably find yourself drinking cheap wine — the beer there is less than savory, and a handle of Smirnoff will run you approximately 220 dinar ($145).
Wine in Tunisia tastes surprisingly good, considering a bottle of Magon, a brand served in restaurants and hotels, which quickly became the favorite among students on my trip, was approximately six dinar ($2). Of course, we took every opportunity to indulge.
The thought of enjoying a glass of wine — and knowing quite a bit about the particular wine I’m drinking — has always appealed to me, but I can’t say that I’ve had much chance to become an informed wine drinker. Before going to Tunisia, I knew a few basics — merlot is red, pinot grigio is white and my mom won’t drink cabernet if you pay her — but I didn’t know enough to sell a bottle of wine (or even competently open one) at my job as a server at an Italian restaurant. Since many of the people on the trip had never opened a bottle of wine at all, I became the designated bottle opener. Practice, for the record, does make perfect.
I started wondering why don’t college students drink wine on the regular (with the key exception of Franzia) I figured it had to be the cost, or the fact that if you’re planning on drinking quite a bit, wine is probably not your best bet. There is another possibility though: wine is snobby.
With words like leg, nose and body suddenly taking on new meaning, swirling, smelling and sipping a glass of wine with any degree of confidence seems impossible. And furthermore, which wine will best complement the evening’s meal? A quick perusal of food and wine pairing Web sites is confusing and overwhelming, and reinforces the idea that wine is something best left to those over the age of thirty who have a significant amount of time on their hands.
Enter Gary Vaynerchuk, wine critic and video blogger. Vaynerchuk has created a cult following with his daily video blog, Wine Library TV, where he tastes and critiques various wines, accompanied by a guest who is typically a winemaker or another wine critic.
With a New York Jets spit bucket beside him, and a chalkboard proclaiming his Facebook URL behind him, Vaynerchuk will pour a sample of wine for himself and his guest of the day. Before taking a “sniffy-sniff,” as he refers to the act of smelling the wine, he swirls his glass so vigorously that it’s a legitamate concern that the wine inside will bust open the sides of the glass. After the initial taste test, Vaynerchuk alternates between describing the wine with big, demonstrative gestures and swirling what’s left in his glass again and again.
Effusive is the best way to describe Vaynerchuk; both his personal mannerisms and his approach to critiquing wine fit the bill. He is prone to tangential, stream-of-conscious-style descriptions, a far cry from the stilted, carefully chosen words of many of his contemporaries. His critics say he is uneducated about wine (He once described a glass of wine as being “massively structured and having a great back — like Jessica Biel or something.”), but I say it’s
about time. I understand the Jessica Biel reference far better than a removed description like “round with a nice bouquet and notes of oak.”
Watching Vaynerchuk is like watching a comic talk show host — he’s funny, relatable and a little off-color. He certainly has his detractors, but his style is opening up the world of wine to a whole new demographic. I don’t mind if he describes a glass of wine as smelling candy-like or if he compares it to a movie star’s back. He speaks my language, the language of college kids, and proves that we too can enjoy a glass of wine and know just what we’re drinking.
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