Wines That Tip the Hedonimeter to “Eleven”

This week, the wine road took me to

Texas

, whose wineries have been making great strides.  But sadly, a

Texas

winery tour is not to be found on my schedule.  I was asked to lead a session at the “Marketing with a Kick” conference of the SMPS.

And that means I spent time on an airplane, without a cell phone or access to email.  Over three delicious hours to catch up on my reading!  Among my stack of catch-up reading was an old issue of The Economist (

12-23-06

–

1-5-07

: Happiness, How to Measure It - subscription site).  The title article describes some economists being described as “rogues” by their peers for expanding on the old idea of “Utility” -  that 100 year-old term economists use to describe why people pay more for a luxury product than economists’ models predict they should.

Known as hedonomists, these rogues have come up with a high-tech, modern way to measure pleasure and pain.  This new technique involves, pretty much, asking people how happy they feel.  As I said, a new technique.  Very high tech.

Actually, high tech does play a role.  It comes in rather handy for verifying the accuracy of the low-tech approach – from measuring brainwave activity in the pleasure/pain center of the brain to measuring pupil dilation and eye muscle activity when a subject smiles.  Click here for a very cool site that tests your ability to measure true vs. fake smiles.

Apparently, we’re pretty well aware of our level of happiness at any given moment, if we just stop to think about it.  But, (and of key interest to wine aficionados!) we tend to have fallible memories when it comes to recalling or predicting the happiness (or displeasure) that will be generated by a given event.

Ahhh, so that explains it, that wine I brought home from

Provence

.  It was an inexpensive red that we’d had with a memorable dinner – one of my last in

France

.  That wine rocked my world!  My hedonimeter would have measured an 11.

I brought home two treasured bottles and saved them for months, waiting (as usual) for just that right moment, that right person to share them with.  Not finding such a moment, I opened one of them to accompany a weeknight dinner alone.  Ugh.  It was marginal.  At that particular time, my hedonimeter would have registered a 5.5

Did the wine not travel well?  Or did it simply taste twice as good amidst the charms of

France

and my vacation state of mind?  I think the latter more likely, and always advise wine lovers to plan vacations around the wine producing regions of the world – they will create some of your greatest wine memories.

Touring Sideways Country

I invite you to create some great memories with us!  For those interested in visiting the source of the wines we feature at SidewaysWineClub.com, you may want to download this map of the

Sideways Wine Route

. 

And for those interested in tasting a broader array of wines (with less driving too!), I recommend spending a long weekend in Solvang, tasting the areas wines at Tastes of the Valleys wine bar, which features a flight of wines from the Sideways Wine Clubs.  And Solvang also offers 13 other tasting rooms and wine bars to help guarantee some perfect wine memories.

Cheers!

Dave Chambers, Wine Merchant

SidewaysWineClub.com.