Featured User: Scott Soren

"Wine, is more than a drink, an alcoholic beverage. It is about beauty, elegance and sophistication. It’s about integrity and provenance. Chasing the best. The best is relative though, that’s the best part. No matter what you drink or with whom, your experience is yours and no one can say theirs is better. One can strive their whole life to learn all there is to know about wine and still come up short. It’s an epic journey, that anyone who’s involved, never wants to end." - Scott Soren Delectable: What sparked your passion for wine? Scott Soren: It was family driven. I could drink in my house when I was younger (teenager/twenties). My mother started drinking Pinot Noir before Pinot Noir was anything. It was never “okay let’s drink a couple bottles of wine.” It was “you can have a glass with an appropriate dinner every once in a while.” I always liked the taste, but I didn’t know much about wine until later. I’m more of a wine snob than the rest of my family, and that’s a whole different story. My mother would still like to have a Pinot really really cold in some arbitrary glass, and I’m going to tell you that it should be in a Burgundy glass, but that’s beside the point. D: What wine region are you wild about right now? SS: Paso Robles . I’m a Rhône ranger. I drink all red, but my passion for sure lies in Syrah and eclectic GSM blends . Right now, they’re making some incredible wine out there: Booker Vineyards , Alban , Herman Story Wines , Saxum , Linne Calodo . New World style Rhône making where they’re mastering their wines so that young wines are approachable and drinkable, and you don’t have to sit on them for a decade to really enjoy them. D: What is the most unusual wine you’ve ever tried? SS: Orange wine from Sicily. When you think of citrus you might think of lemon in Sauv Blancs or some kind of grapefruit flare, but orange is never an adjective that I have used to describe a wine before. D: What is your golden rule for wine? SS: My golden rule is drink wine in the right wine glass. This goes back to when I met this guy and wanted to open a bottle of Pinot for him. He told me, “Okay, you need a Pinot glass.” I looked at him cross-eyed and had no idea what he was talking about. He said, “different wines do well in specific glasses.” I called BS. He looked back at me and told me not to waste a bottle of wine if we weren’t going to drink it in a Burgundy glass. At this time, I had what I would consider a red wine glass, very basic. He says no and offers to buy me four Burgundy glasses and says that we’re going to open a bottle and pour the wine into different glasses. He said if I could honestly tell him there was no difference, then I could keep the glasses, but if there’s a difference, I had to pay for the glasses and a bottle of wine. He’s a friend of mine, so I was ready to tell him. Lo and behold, I was shocked. I will tell you that the nuances of either Pinot or Syrah do much better in a wider berth glass where a lot more air can get to it to allow the fragrance to come out. It was a completely different experience and that is how I’ve become this little bit of a wine snob. My mom used to drink wine out of fancy, cute glasses. Well, that glass doesn’t allow the wine to open properly, and you’re missing most of the wine. I’ve done this experiment with many people and put money down on it. You don’t need to have that good of a palate to understand the difference. Everybody that I’ve run the game with for 10 years now knows it’s the truth. D: Say you’re not allowed to have wine, what is your second option? SS: Bourbon. I’m a Manhattan and Old Fashioned guy. I had a bad experience with Tequila many years ago, so I don’t drink that. That goes back into my teenage years, and I never got over it. Vodka just doesn’t do it for me anymore. Not that it’s terrible, but if I’m going to drink something else, it’s going to be bourbon. D: Choose a movie, book, quote, or song and pair it with a wine SS: This is going to be cheesy, but Red Red Wine by UB40 because the only reason that there’s white wine is to allow time for the red to breathe. I’ve drank my fair share of white and I don’t find too much value in it. I’m a red wine guy, and that’s why I chose that. D: If you were a wine, what wine would you be? SS: Hermitage by Chave . It’s the most incredible wine that I’ve ever had. I’ve had more expensive wines, but the four times that I’ve been lucky enough to open a bottle of that wine, it is dynamic and almost drinks like a high-end Burgundy. It has tremendous viscosity and mouth feel. It has earth tones to it, and it’s my favorite wine.