Learn About Yourself and About Wine

Does personality influence your choice of wines? Discover the right wine for you and your character!

By Nina Bernheim
Apr 06, 2020

Have you ever found yourself in front of a crowded shelf of lovely, inviting wine bottles and not known how to select something new to drink?
With so many incredible offerings, it can be a challenge seeking out new wines to become new personal favorites in your rotation, and shopping for wines in either your local markets or online wine retailers can be incredibly overwhelming. That's never stopped me from trying out something new, but more often than not, the experience can be well, underwhelming, especially if you’ve got high expectations and eagerly anticipate a new wine choice. 

Do you find yourself wondering how you can personalize your selections without actually opening up bottles and liberally enacting on-site tasting experiences?
There are certainly so many factors that affect your taste preferences, from internal to external components, that could push you into thinking that palates are developed only by external stimulants like labels, cost, other people's wine-focused comments, even music.  However, limiting these assumptions to these factors doesn't take into account another fundamental concept: we can also investigate our personalities and find secrets of wine discovery based on who we are, and what our behaviors indicate about us.

Does this sound absolutely radical or even impossible to fathom, this notion that our personalities can affect our tastes and sensorial experiences?  That a personality trait can help us identify a wine to match with our dinners, or in the days of enforced social distancing, our lunches as well? An innovative approach, to be sure, but one championed in the Di Che Vino Sei book, by expert sommelier Filippo Bartolotta.  In this unusual approach, a more in-depth exploration of our characteristics and personality traits can help to unearth and unlock new wine experiences.  In a wine marketplace offering so many different types, varietals, labels, and wine-making philosophies, this can offer an invaluable do-it-yourself approach to exploring the wonderful world of wines, and how to adapt and adopt them into your daily life.  Don't forget - doctors all recommend a glass of wine a day as an effective way to improve your blood pressure and lower risk of heart failure.

In Bartolotta's intriguing approach, general personalities are divided into different dominant structures, and relative to these structures, they can guide you into a specific wine direction.  Knowing what your dominant characteristics are, and following suggestions on how to properly absorb tastes and aromas during your discovery of wines, this personality-based approach could help you open new doors and sensorial experiences you might have overlooked in the past.  

Think Orange wines are too esoteric for you?  Have you snubbed rosè wines in the past, considering them boorish or unrefined?  The personality-to-wine proposition could lay your preconceptions aside, and in keeping an open mind and open palate, your personality can help you navigate this exciting world, acting as your guide and your Virgil as you encounter new labels, new production methods, new wine regions and most importantly, new favorite wines!

So let's dive into exploring some classic personality traits, and how they can help you discover the multitude of wine regions.  During this process, we’ll take a look at bigger name labels you might have already heard of, as well as smaller producers specializing in unique production methods (just think of all the amazing natural wines flourishing now during the epoch of more organically-focused wines) in order to give you a well-balanced, well-rounded look into what Italy offers wine lovers of all backgrounds - from the novice to the expert, and from the entire personality gamut.  If you haven't considered how your personality might indicate a wine path for you, here's your chance to explore - I'm pretty sure you'll find some new labels to love and reconnect with some oldies but goodies!


 



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