Raising a glass to a connoisseur in training

What happens when a casual wine drinker sits in on the Chronicle’s tasting panel?

Look. I was just minding my business — sitting at my desk with earbuds in and yoga-pantclad legs crossed lazily in my chair on a Friday afternoon like the hashtag-basic millennial I am — when the Chronicle’s cabernet savant Dale Robertson invited me to taste an endless stream of wine. For work. Or science. Or the greater good. Or whatever, I don’t know, I lost focus after the first mention of “wine,” when I began nodding so vigorously my brain got jostled.

“Wine, wine, wine, Tuesday,” he said. “Wine, wine, wine, 7 p.m.”

I nodded and scrawled the invitation on a Post-It.

Dale went on his way, and I was left, clutching the Post-it like a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s wine-logged spinoff, stocked with well-aged Tuscan snozberries.

Yes, I’ve seen Willy Wonka. Yes, I realize that in addition to being candy-coated nightmare fuel, the story is also a parable about greed and gluttony. No, I didn’t consider on that Friday that the Wonka metaphor dancing in my head could be my brain’s way of foreshadowing danger.

But you should.

I am not what one would call a connoisseur of wine. I mean, yes, I own an adorable Target tank top that says “Will run for wine,” which I’ve never worn while running. And I’ve sipped my way through wine tastings from Fredericksburg to the Finger Lakes, tucking corks into my purse to later be repurposed into a Pinterest-perfect wreath for my apartment.

But I’m the kind of wine shopper most likely to be found cruising through the selection at my local Kroger, my eyes never leveling-up above the middle shelf. (A girl’s gotta pay rent.)

Still, as a woman in my early 30s, my tastes matter to the wine industry. In 2015, millennials drank roughly half of the nation’s wine, 160 million cases, with young women outbuying young men at a rate of 2-1.

Maybe that’s why Dale invited me and my unrefined palate to join a table of people who really knew what they were doing,

including several wine professionals, and a master sommelier, of which there are fewer than 300 in the entire world.

This wasn’t going to be like those lazy days swirling stemware in Sedona and Sonoma, I realized. And as I took my seat to the right of Kyle Britt, who judges RodeoHouston’s wine competition, I worried I was in over my head.

Now seems like a good time to confess that I’d never actually read our newspaper’s wine column.

I know. I’m sorry. I just went on and on about my relationship with wine, only to throw a wrench in it all by saying this: I’ve always assumed the wine column was too stuffy for me.

I should have at least read it before showing up to the tasting, if only to know what to expect. Had I taken a few minutes out of my day to learn the process, I’d know that Dale and his panel of about eight to 12 tasters meet monthly to fly through dozens — dozens! — of sock-covered wines in a blind taste test. This means that wine bottles zip down the table like a boozy bucket brigade at a rate of one a minute.

During that time, tasters take a couple of sips and write detailed notes about the wine. Rules are loose, and tasters comment on flavor, acidity, bouquet, maturity, crispness and all those other terms I only vaguely understand. They write an optimum price, which Dale takes into account in his review: If everyone said a $40 bottle should cost $15, he won’t recommend it. But if everyone says a $15 tastes like $40, it’s a good buy. Lastly, panelists score each wine between 1 and 10, with 8.5 or above reserved only for wines they’d buy.

Yes. All that happens in a minute. Then the next bottle comes through. And they do it again. And again. And again. A total of 36 times that Tuesday night.

I sip the first wine thoughtfully. Once, then twice in hopes that another taste will give me deeper insight. It’s a mystery white wine, and I like it, so I give it an 8.5, which seems right.

Pricing the wine takes the longest. The last time I spent more than $15 on a bottle of wine was a splurge during a California road trip three years ago. And even then, it was a $20 treasure that I kept on my rack for a year-and-a-half, waiting for a worthwhile special occasion.

I rack my brain. It tastes nice. Nicer than the last white I bought myself. So I scrawl $15 in the spot for price.

I don’t know what to write in the comment section, so I hem and haw for a moment before I see the second bottle of wine coming at me, and jot down “Bright and citrusy,” then gulp the rest of my glass to make room.

I’m already behind, it seems, and by bottle No. 5, I’ve created a Katy-Freeway level wine bottleneck.

When the sixth bottle comes my way, I realize that my place is set with two wine glasses, and I pour that bottle into the empty one so I can attempt to do two at once.

“7:11 p.m. on a Tuesday, and I’m double-fisting,” I write in the notebook I brought along, my handwriting loose and quick.

I eat a cracker between samples seven and eight, and steal a glance at Kyle Britt’s score sheet, like a desperate third-grader who can’t hack it on a spelling test. His sheet is full of insightful observations, and his price estimates don’t all end in fives and zeros.

I look back at my sheet, where I’d noted that a chardonnay was “perfectly fine, like many an ex-boyfriend,” and resolve to do better.

But come No. 14, my resolution is about as useful as all the ones I made on New Year’s Eve. I pull out my notebook again, scribbling my shortcomings for future reference: “At No. 14, I’m just writing ‘wow.’ Cool, I’m probably drunk.”

By No. 19, I’m showing off my cat’s Facebook profile to the wine professional to my right.

Across the table, someone is talking about a grape’s maturity, or lack thereof, and I’m reminded that I should, perhaps, be mature myself. So I hunker down again, noticing that just about everyone else is spitting the wine, as I swallow and feel my face grow more flushed.

I grab a long sip of water and eat a cracker, trying to push aside that constant human fear of mine: I don’t belong here.

I let out a deep sigh between glasses, and Britt turns to me, like he knew what I was thinking.

“You know,” he says, pointing at his sheet, which has a few drops of red wine splattered on it. “You might think it’s our opinions that matter most on this since we know so much. But really, what you think is just as important. Maybe more important.”

I give him a purple-lipped smile. He dabs at the red drops on his paper, picking up a splash of pinot noir on his fingertip, before pressing it down onto my sheet.

“And you should be messier,” he says, laughing.

I slink into the office Wednesday morning at 7, carrying a venti macchiato (with an extra shot) in one hand, and a venti glass of ice water in the other. Double-fisting again. An editor laughs when she sees me. “How’d it go?” she asks.

I give her a foggy, two-handed cheers and turn back to my desk. Dale’s most recent column is up on my screen, and I’ve got some reading to do.

Turns out, I am a wine column person. I just never knew it.