It’s only been a couple of days since my last post, my dear oenophiles, but I’m too excited to just sit around doing nothing. It’s summer and the most wonderful time of the year is almost here. I don’t mean Christmas – tsk-tsk, Christmas is for kids and shopaholics! I mean grape harvest season and the parties that go with it. To me, nothing says oenophile like drinking wine at the very vineyard its grapes have been picked from.

But before you book your tickets to a vineyard harvest party, let me share with you an eye-opener. Remember the James Bond reference I made in my last post? To some, the question whether they like their wine pure or blended might sound just as alien. Well, not to dis the popular Ian Fleming character or Martini but the question about wine is truly significant.

Pure, also called varietal, wines are made primarily from one sort of grapes. Honestly, I thought they were 100% of the same grape sort but it turns out different countries have different regulations. For example, in the US, the varietal wine must be 75% of the same grape sort. In Europe, that percentage should be at least 80% and in Argentina – 85%.

Blended wines are a mix of two or more sorts of grapes. But don’t imagine winemakers dumping whatever wine leftovers they have into a single barrel and selling it as a blend. Blended wine is the result of a complicated process of mixing and testing. It’s some kind of synergy. For example, I like the freshness of Merlot, the tannins of Cabernet Sauvignon, and the fruitiness of Cabernet Franc. How could I settle for a pure wine when I can have all three in a blended wine?

There’s something else I like to add to the wine mix to make it even better. Blackjack! I have my own private parties with a bottle of blended wine and a game of blackjack with side bets. As long as I play at the best blackjack sites, as recommended by the experts at blackjacksites.info, I can’t go wrong. After all, what harm could do combining my two greatest passions?

So, how do you like your wine – pure or blended? Me, I’ll never forget my first tasting of a blended wine. It was at a grape harvest party at a small, local vineyard. The ticket for the event bought me a tour of the vineyard, a beautiful glass and, most importantly, the chance to try all the wines as much and as often as I liked. There was an impressive buffet with cheeses of the world but these had merely a supporting role that night. I tried all the wines but one of them just stood out. It was love at first sip… oh, who am I kidding! It was love at first gulp! I’ll never forget how the crimson liquid awakened my senses. It was an enchanting blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Cabernet Franc.

In the world of alcohol, there are more types of spirits than I can possibly count, and each one has, like, a billion ways that it can be prepared, mixed and matched with others. The sheer fact that there’s a noticeable difference in taste between a shaken and stirred martini should be enough to blow the mind of anyone who’s even remotely familiar with alcohol! Well, either that, or James Bond is just full of crap. I don’t actually know, I was always more of a wine sort of person than a martini one, but I’m getting off-point! Speaking of wine, just that has literally millions of possible variations! I mean, sure, you can group them into several dozen categories based on the sort of grape used in preparation, but really, when you take into account factors such as the soil of the region, the weather conditions at the time and the time of bottling. Based on these variables, two bottles of the same type of wine (say, pinot noir… no not that Pinot Noir!) bottled in different locations 20 years apart may taste entirely different, or the difference might be negligible. It’s up in the air.

The point I’m trying to make is that there’s actually a very good reason why there’s just so many different types of wine, and alcohol in general. And no, it’s not just because everyone wants to do their own thing… I mean, yes, that’s part of the reason, but if no one was interested in their thing, then nobody would buy it and the winery (or the manufacturer in general) would go out of business, because that’s the way capitalism works. And that’s precisely it – there’s a market for it no matter what it is. Even if it’s the cheapest boxed merlot that you find in your local supermarket or a $13,000 bottle of Domaine de la Romanee-Conti Romanee-Conti Grand Cru, there will be someone who’s going to buy it, drink it, and hopefully, enjoy it.

And guess what! There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that!

At the end of the day, not everybody is able to afford extremely expensive wines – at the end of the day, remember that for everyone buy a select few, alcohol is a hobby and not a lifestyle, and as such we should buy what we can afford in accordance with our disposable income. Sometimes that means more expensive stuff, other times it means boxed supermarket wine – but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that as long as you enjoy the taste! And what’s more, some people actually prefer the taste of cheap wine, while others, even critics who get paid to do this, can’t tell the difference! Remember the experiment we told you about earlier where wine tasters were asked to distinguish between a cheap and expensive wine, and then between a white and a red wine, and none of them figured out that they were given the exact same drink every time? Yeah, that actually happened! If people who get paid to do this for a living can’t tell the difference, then maybe the whole social stigma around certain types of wine is kind of bullshit.

So, my bottom line is, don’t ever let anyone tell you that you shouldn’t enjoy something just because they don’t enjoy it. Like what you like! If it’s cheap, boxed wine, go for it! If it’s merlot, or another type of wine that’s considered unpopular, drink as much as you like, within reason! Hell, go drink friggin’ ethanol if that’s how you roll, I don’t care! Okay, my editor insists that I tell you NOT to drink ethanol, but my point still stands! Like what you like! Drink what you drink! You go be you, man/woman!

Have you ever been to a wine tasting before? Like, an actual event where you can taste a whole bunch of wines and then spit them out (because nothing says first world consumerism like drinking a $500 liquid only to spit it out) in order to determine their taste? I’ve been to a few of these events. I mean, of course I have, I love wine! I’d drink wine whenever there’s a glass in front of me (geez, I sound like an alcoholic), but honestly? I have NO idea what’s the difference between a red wine from Spain bottled in 1995 and a red wine from Italy bottled in 1996. I don’t! They taste the same to me! I also can’t really tell the difference between a cheap, store-bought wine and an expensive one that I paid hundreds of in some fancy restaurant. Sure, whenever I get together with my friends and order something nice and expensive we all go “Hmm, oh, yes, indeed, it’s quite dry with just a hint of aroma” or whatever random words we can think of throwing in there, but honestly, I’m rather certain that store-bought wine and expensive wine taste exactly the same, and the “sophisticated” taste that we feel in the restaurant is merely due to the atmosphere, a sort of placebo effect – we expect it to be good, so our taste buds tell our brain that it is.

Sure, you can say “Well, you know, dude, that’s, like, your opinion, man” (that’s how you normally speak, right?), but what if I told you that science has my back on this? Enter Mr. Frederic Brochet, who conducted a study that famously humiliated wine experts everywhere. He got a bunch of renowned wine experts together for what they thought was a study on wines. For the first test, the participants were given a bottle of red wine and a bottle of white wine, asked to taste both and then tell the difference between them. Sounds simple and straightforward enough, right? Except for the fact that they were both the exact same white wine, except in one bottle it was dyed red, and absolutely none of the so-called experts even noticed. Whoops. For the next test, Brochet asked them to taste a store-bought wine and an incredibly expensive bottle and describe the differences. You know where this is going – they were both the exact same wine. Wow.

So, what does that tell us? Well, two things, mostly – first of all, experts have NO idea what wine actually tastes like and mostly judge it based on labels and preconceived notions rather than on, you know, their taste. Second of all, it tells us that there’s no “right” and “wrong” wine. Just like everything else in life, it’s all up to your personal preference. Sure, there are subtle differences in the taste (even if a lot of people can’t really detect them) but overall there’s nothing that makes the expensive wine objectively taste better than the cheap one. So drink what you like and don’t be ashamed of it!

It’s important to remember that while this blog’s primary topic of discussion is and always will be wine, from time to time there are other important matters happening in Quebec which are most definitely worth looking into, writing about and thinking about. One of these subjects that is very near and dear to my heart is autism, as my best friend (whom I’ve known since we were six) has Asperger’s Syndrome (a form of autism), and as a result I’ve been placed in a position where I was allowed to learn a lot about this condition both from first-hand experience and by speaking to people within the autism community, which is rather prominent in Quebec. How prominent, you ask? Well, over 11,000 children have been diagnosed with autism, and at this rate within five years that number is going to double. Sadly, autism is a condition that can not be cured (and even if it could, many autistic people, my friend included, would reject the cure), so it has to be accommodated. And Quebec is finally willing to step up its game.

As the Montreal Gazette reports, over 68% of families with autistic children experience financial problems due to the numerous therapies and trainings that the children require in order to be able to look after themselves. Many (though not most) autistic children have difficulty with basic skills such as feeding and getting dressed. They require very specific training by professionals, and that training is very expensive, often leading to a financially unstable home, which in turn leads to a high divorce percentage among parents of autistic children. There are numerous ways in which such families can be aided, which is why on Friday a forum of over 100 participants took place where it could be decided precisely what could be done to aid families of autistic children.

Sadly, the results of that forum were not precisely the ones that they were expecting – while the families were hoping for confirmation that more money was on the way, the only information they got was that the government was working on an action plan to determine what could realistically be done. While that’s better than nothing, parents were disappointed, explaining that a plan which may take months to form and go way into 2017 or 2018 to implement is just not cutting it. They need the money as soon as possible, because until the government increases the funding families have to rely on their own limited income (many parents are unable to work in order to care for their children) and on various charities. The government can truly make a change here. Let’s hoping that this change will happen sooner rather than later.