On Compound Drinking
I was always led to believe that beer and wine didn't mix well. ‘Beer before wine and you'll be fine; wine before beer will cost you dear’ would be recited over breakfast as we nursed hangovers in our student flats. The connecting word between the two was always or, before, versus; rarely and, with, together.
I fell head over heels obsessively in love with wine when I started working as general manager of a restaurant and wine bar some years ago. Frustratingly, wine is taken more seriously in fine dining than beer. It’s common in restaurants, I’ve found, that whilst wine lists are carefully curated and pairing possibilities mulled over, beer and cider always seem to be an afterthought. An attitude, I’m ashamed to say, I adopted myself.
The more occupationally invested I became with wine the less I tasted for joy and the more I tasted to prove myself. Whilst my whiteness got me a seat at the table, as a woman in her mid twenties I was rarely taken seriously when I sat down. At trade fairs, sales meetings and organised tastings, I was continuously spoken over, had requests ignored and was asked for opinions only to be laughed at and told I was wrong.
So I studied harder and instead of searching for what was actually there, what I could feel and breathe and taste in the glass, I recited textbook answers. I waxed lyrical about minerality even though I'm still not entirely sure if a mineral has a smell. I reeled off words associated with the grapes and regions I was drinking, describing foods that I had never tasted but were there, glaring at me, on the aroma wheel.
As days where I wanted to shy away from the intimidation of wine professionals increased exponentially, I ended up studying for my WSET level three in a craft beer bar. Questions were asked and knowledge was shared with warmth and an excited curiosity between myself and my friends working behind the bar. I went to tastings with my best friend, who was training to be a cicerone. She picked beers for me that we would drink before dinner, as we watched TV or at the end of very long days, sprawled on her baby pink sofa, swapping customer interactions. Whilst tasting wine came with pressures of a looming examination, with beer it was different. With no systematic approach, or a printed list of suitable aromas, I tasted openly, free of a need to point score or impress.
Beers tasted of sharp, acidic tomato ketchup and hot dogs quietly smoking on a barbecue. Of leftover peach melba pie eaten for breakfast and the prickly spice of ginger as it wafts through the kitchen. I found I could talk about them with honesty, feeling less like an imposter with a borrowed vocabulary and more like someone who could confidently access their senses.
Over time, comparisons and contrasts were made between wine and beer and I began to feel more certain about how my mouth responded to tasting, where tannins grazed my gums and the ways acid streaked down the sides of my mouth. It seeped into my wine tasting. I stopped grasping at gooseberry and asparagus when drinking Sauvignon Blancs and spoke without thought: ‘the inside of a greenhouse filled with tomato plants’, ‘the woods near your house an hour after it rains’, ‘eating dinner outside on the first al fresco day of the year’. I wouldn’t have passed my WSET with any of those, but they were accessible to me, I was honest in my interactions and that was far more important.
I’m a stronger wine taster because of beer. I understand my responses to taste better by drinking more and drinking different. I can discuss wine free of unnecessary jargon and with a greater accessibility through my conversations with beer professionals. I even have a greater understanding of wine production thanks to my visits to cider farms, but that’s a story for another blog post. When Helen told me about her idea for Burum it made perfect sense to me. It’s what we’ve been doing together these last few years, on post shift bar stools and lazy afternoons on aesthetically pleasing sofas. We have far more to learn from and with one another than we do separately. I’m excited to keep doing just that.
