You mean I’m SUPPOSED to slurp and spit?

I mingle in polite society, I swear. So I can’t quite wrap my brain around the wine tasting do’s of slurping and spitting.

I learned relatively recently that one should slurp wine when tasting it. The first time I tried “slurping” it, I inhaled some of the wine and choked on it. Fun! So I tried to be less, er, enthusiastic in my slurping. Truth is, I think the “technique” does work. I just won’t do it around anyone whose opinion I value.

Then there’s spitting. I get the importance of it from an academic-y point of view. But really. If I like the wine, I’m swallowing it, dammit. And I usually like the wine I’m drinking. But even if I don’t, spitting is so disgusting to me that I’ll swallow the swill.  I tried spitting out the sample wines during my first “serious” wine tasting class.  Being a good student and all, you know. Using the community bucket. Now I can say, “Been there. Done that. Never gonna do it again.”

Being a wine professional sounds like a pretty good way to make a living, but apparently there are drawbacks. It’s always something, huh?