A couple of months ago, my parents flew out to SF and took me wine tasting in Sonoma County. After a sip of Sangiovese at the second winery we visited, I was stirred by a weird thought, something I’d felt deep in my mind for a long time, but never surfaced. I spoke it to my Mom: “you know, great wine is like great pitching. When you taste something complex and delicious, it’s like watching a Max Scherzer get a called third strike on a nasty breaking pitch to end a tough inning.”
Since my Mom is my Mom, she said, “Hm. What do you mean?” and listened without rolling her eyes or giving me the skeptical squints. But you’re probably thinking, “That’s crazy. Throwing cork and rubber wrapped in leather and sipping overpriced fermented grape juice are completely different categories of things.”
In many ways, they are. But if you truly love wine and love baseball (and maybe if you don’t, though I don’t know what it would feel like to not love those things), watching dominant pitching and drinking great new wine feels exactly the same emotionally. Both begin with anticipation that is both eager and cautious; both deliver sensory experiences that are dumbfoundingly ornate and precise; both end with a mix of excitement at your triumph and awe at the physical mastery you’ve just witnessed.
When great wine has gone down my throat and I’m feeling the sandpapery tannins scrape my tongue, while echoes of the juicy acidity reverberate from the back of my cheeks to the roof of my mouth, somewhere, deep in my brain, there’s a packed baseball stadium erupting into a “HRAHHHHH!” as a pitcher pumps his fist and stalks back to his dugout wearing a mean look. Please allow me to show you, from beginning to end, how that sip of Sonoma Sangiovese was exactly like an unhittable slider thrown for a called strike on a full count.
The Wind Up
The Sangiovese was the third wine in the tasting’s lineup. A rosé and a pinot grigio were the warm-ups. But this winery was best known for its red Italian varietals; the Sangiovese was to be the heavy hitter, the wine that I’d come for, that I’d remember this detour by. I leaned my elbow against the counter and peered intently at the glugs of bloody intoxicant sloshed by the winetress into my glass, like a boy sizing up a Christmas present he can’t quite open because it’s not his turn.
Now imagine, if you will, a warm summer’s evening at Nationals Park in Washington, DC. It’s a nearly-sold out crowd on a Friday evening, and the home team is leading by two runs with two outs in the top of the 7th, but our opponents are threatening; they’ve already scored once this inning, and there are runners on second and third. But then the batter fouls off a pitch to make it 3-2.
The ace steps up to the rubber, and the blended rush and hiss of the crowd gathers and swells to a dull roar. It holds there while he shakes his head once, twice, now three times, before nodding to signal agreement with the catcher on a pitch. Our hurler steps back, steps forward, and brings a leg up high as he can, pulling all his bodily energy into a deep, contorted fold. Anticipation rises in my chest and hangs there, like a breaking wave suspended over a beach by an invisible force. My pitcher has the batter right where he wants him; the outcome isn’t assured, but I’m hungry to see what happens next. Deep in some subconscious canyon’s deepest recess, all of this is happening as I raise the glass of Sangiovese to my lips.
The Delivery
When I take a sip, the Sangiovese lashes my tongue with sweet acidity, cutting a jagged and juicy path from the front to the back. Deep hints of delicious fruit begin reverberations around the front of my mouth that will escalate as the experience unfolds. Back at the stadium in my imagination, the pitcher unleashes the ball, and it bolts forward on a slightly bent path, heading more or less directly towards the batter. For the first fifty feet, it looks like it might drill him.
But great pitches and great wines come in (at least) two acts. When the ball is about ten feet in front of the catcher, its path transforms, sliding way down and to the right. Instead of hitting the batter’s shoulder, it passes him by at a height somewhere between his belt and his knees over the inside part of the plate. To eyes used to seeing things that make physical sense, it seems to obey laws from a different universe. The batter, confused, stands motionless, unsure of what’s happened.
The Sangiovese’s second act likewise confounds physical logic. From its sharp, front-of-mouth beginning, as I swallow its taste blooms like a firework throughout my oral cavity. There are richer, more evolved versions of the tastes I felt on my tongue when the sip began, like the taste of jam compared to fresh fruit. There are textural sensations that remind me of chewing something rough, like crusty bread or dry turkey breast. The reverberations of flavor have now crescendoed into a multi-part choir of mouth-feel. Both pitch and wine began in one place and ended up someplace totally different.
A lot of wines are simple, with round flavors hitting the front and back of your palate all at once, and when you swallow, the experience is over. Sometimes that taste is technically pleasurable, in the way that a 92 mile per hour fastball with no movement piped in over the heart of the plate is technically a strike. Other wines are complex, but taste as good as old coffee with crumbled tree bark. This reminds me of nasty split-finger fastballs that bounce two feet in front of home plate; they’re missing the entire point. Those pitches aren’t getting anybody out, and those wines are for bringing to parties where you don’t know any of the guests. Great wine and great pitching must astonish the senses with elegant precision.
The Aftermath
When I realized the Sangiovese embodied this magic formula, I inadvertently visualized the aftermath of that slider hitting the catcher’s mitt. There’s an instant of disbelief: Did that pitch really catch the inside corner? Is this taste in my mouth real? Then, the umpire punches the air and emits a bloodcurdling shout, and it’s confirmed: the inning is over, the lead is safe, and that wine tasted like nothing I’d ever tasted before.
The batter stands there helplessly for a few seconds before ruefully tossing his bat and helmet and pulling off his gloves, talking to himself as he stares off into space. The pitcher pumps his first and yells as he storms off the mount and strides toward the dugout. And at the winery counter, I bask in the triumph of tasting something truly unique and unexpected, while hearing the tense roar of the crowd crash into a torrent of elation.
So there you have it. The twin experiences of power, precision, and pure triumph that are great pitching and great wine. I hope you have a great summer enjoying both.