It was a good lunch, even with all the wining

Every once in a while I like to undertake an activity that requires very little thought but does involve a pleasure of sorts, such as chewing and swallowing. I thought that Jerry Snyder’s Wine Club would be just the thing, but I was wrong. Thinking, experience, instinct and an established, vineyard-oriented vocabulary are required when one drinks with wine experts. That’s tough on a guy who knows as much about wine as he does about quantum physics, which is nothing at all.

While it is true that I like wine and, in fact, have a sort of wine cellar in a corner of the house, the wines I collect are mostly based on price. I figure that what costs the most must be the best. Since I am reluctant to spend a lot of money on something I don’t know anything about, my collection is therefore limited. I sometimes buy because I like the look of the label or the bottle, but that also is not the hallmark of a connoisseur.

The wine club whose meeting I attended has gathered each month for the last 20 years at a restaurant in Redondo Beach called Chez Melange. One would not expect to find a fine restaurant in a place where pizza-eating surfers abound, but there it was. About a dozen of the club members sat at a large table on one side of the restaurant and plunked down the bottles of wine they had brought for tasting. Well, “plunked” might not be the right word, since wine experts rarely plunk.

Snyder, who once co-owned two wine shops and is now a wine consultant, invited me to the luncheon on the mistaken belief that because I drink martinis I must know something about wine. That’s like assuming that a bear, because he eats berries, must be something of a botanist. I can’t tell a Gewurztraminer from a Rudesheimer, but a wine expert can. He can also tell you the region in which the grapes were grown, the side of the hill they were grown on, the name of the vintner and whether his wife is playing around with the grape tram driver.

When someone hands me a glass of wine, I am inclined to toss it down and look around for another. My essential belief is that God gave us wine to drink, not sniff, and his word ought to be obeyed. Those gathered at Chez Melange, some of whom have wine collections numbering in the thousands of bottles and who never drink wine out of a paper bag, are considerably more refined and thoughtful in their approach to, say, a 1983 Gevrey-Chambertin “Les Cazetiers.”

They swirl a bit into a glass, sniff the bouquet, hold the glass up to the light to study its color and then, only then, do they sip. Sipping is something that is difficult for me to accept. Gulping is more my style.

“It still has it, but it’s fading,” Snyder said after tasting the wine.

“It’ll open up,” Harry Wurmbrand assured him.

“Give it time,” Carolee Kruger said.

I was tempted to ask what was fading and what would open up, but they had already poured the remainder of the wine in their glasses into a silver bucket, cleaned their glasses with a bit of water and moved on to a 1956 Hospices de Beaune which, thank God, still had it, whatever “it” was.

Snyder is an even-tempered man who, quite obviously, suffers fools in a spirit of equanimity and tried not to notice when, instead of just pouring a bit of wine into a glass, I half-filled it and poured nothing into the silver bucket, because there was nothing left to pour. While there is the arrogance of knowledge about connoisseurs, they aren’t cruel. Sniffing, swirling and tasting have softened whatever judgmental attitudes they may once have possessed toward amateur sniffers. Beer drinkers may brawl and martini drinkers may orate, but wine-sippers just kind of grin benevolently and allow themselves to be amused by a wine’s presumptions.

There were so many bottles of wine on the table that a casual observer might have felt that some kind of bacchanalian orgy was in progress. The restaurant’s owner, Michael Franks, kept explaining to the curious what was going on, reassuring them that their women and children were safe. I tasted every wine available but learned quickly that if I continued to gulp instead of sip they’d have to wheel me out on a gurney. I’m not certain about this, but I don’t think wine experts actually get drunk. When you do a lot of sniffing, there’s little time left to drink.

After a while I tried adding to the tone, if not the substance, of the conversation by saying things like “very nice” and “hmmm” in a thoughtful manner, but instead of sounding erudite it came across like Winnie the Pooh tasting honey. At least I didn’t smack my lips, which would probably have sent Snyder screaming into the street.

By the time the luncheon ended, I was feeling pretty good about wine. In fact, I have a bottle of a 2001 red in front of me with a funny French name and an attractive label, and I’d be delighted if you’d join me in a sniff and a swirl. Up glasses. Gulp.

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.