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SURGICAL TRAINEES:HAVING A WINEEd Fitzgerald
Whilst many readers will be used to traineeshaving a whine, I
would wager far fewer will beused to trainees having a good wine.
Having readProfessor Aldersons excellent recent article onhis
Secret Life [1] , I felt the need (after a glass of
wine) to add a few further comments.
There is certainly a lot of pretentious tosh spokenabout wine,
and a straight-talking Geordieapproach is as good a way as any of
cutting
through that! However, wine is very subjective,and the need for
wine talk to describe it isimportant. There are as many different
opinionson a bottle of wine as there are people drinkingit, a
situation not a million miles away from someclinical encounters I
have experienced. Themumbo-jumbo of wine tasting talk (think Jilly
Gooldens infamous sweaty saddles comments)is not always helpful.
Nonetheless, I would argue
that wine tasting has evolved its own technicallanguage through
the need to give physicaldescriptions to subjective sensations or
appearances, in the same way that our ownmedical language
originally evolved for similar purposes [2] . These days, we take
for granted the
whimsical Greek tradition of likening anatomicalstructures to
musical instruments, plants andanimals - perhaps Jilly Gooldens
elaborate wine
tasting descriptors may have fared better in anearlier era?
Wine tasting itself isnt a magic art, although itsometimes
appears so. Its as much about
experience as confidence; experience in having tasted enough
wines to make judgements, andconfidence to accept and interpret
what your senses are telling you. Translating a physicalsensation
like smell or taste into words is difficult,but it does get easier
with practice.
Tasting is completely subjective. We eachinhabit a unique
sensory universe, formed by memories and experiences. There are no
rules,
just opinions. However, some are more informedthan others.Tim
Atkin, wine writer
Wine tasting is a contact sport, and the more youmake that
contact the sharper you are and themore knowledgeable you become.
Reading bookscan only get you so far. Like having a good mentor in
surgical training, to really explore wine you
need a good coach to guide you. Finding a good wine merchant, or
knowledgeable friend, is every bit as important in life as having a
good GP(probably more so in fact, and certainly better for
your health). But to really understand a wine youhave to go and
visit where it comes from nohardship, given that these happen to be
some of
the most beautiful corners of the world. Explore the land, meet
the makers, and eat the regions
cuisine. Only then, can you really get under the(grape) skin of
what makes a great wine. This is asmuch about people, history and
culture as it isabout ripeness, tannins and vine canopy
management.
I am pleased to have sipped some of theoutstanding wines
recommended in Professor
Aldersons article, including Moss Wood, GrantBurge, and Vasse
Felixs finest but only when
the boss is paying (hence rarely!) A great deal of my personal
pleasure over the years has comefrom exploring far-flung or
unfashionable wineregions in order to find the undiscovered,
great
value heroes of the wine world. This has only been partly
successful, in that some of the wines Ifell in love with 10 years
ago have now beendiscovered and I can no longer afford topurchase
them! But, for fellow junior doctors onour meagre salary, it is
worth spending a little
time digging around off-the-beaten track:
Compromises are for relationships, not wine.Sir Robert Scott
Caywood
Getting good value from wine is not just aboutlooking for
under-valued wine regions or grapes.Currency fluctuation plays a
part, with South
Africa and South America currently offering better value than
Australia and North America. Alsoimportant are the actual
cash-values of what
youre prepared to pay. Cheap wine is a falseeconomy, yet in the
UK the average price pointfor a bottle of wine is only 4.85. Duty
and VATalready account for half of this, and when theretailer,
shipper and fixed-costs (bottle, label,cork, etc) are taken into
account, very little is left
J o u r n a l o f t h e A s s o c i a t i o n o f S u r g e o n
s o f G r e a t B r i t a i n a n d I r e l a n d .
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over the wine itself. The following figures are alittle out of
date now (VAT is 20%, duty now1.81/bottle, and youd be lucky to
find any bottle
worth drinking at 3.99), but they do show howspending a little
extra on a bottle gives a returnon the wine inside
out-of-proportion to your extra spend [3] :
Wine is a food, a medicine and a poison - its just a question of
dose.Paracelus, 16th century Swiss physician
Wine and the medical profession make goodbedfellows for several
reasons. Undoubtedly,
there are some historical medicinal links, nowbeing
evidence-based by current research into
the anti-oxidant Resveratrol (3, 4, 5- trihydroxystilbene) [4]
and other polyphenolsfound in grape juice and grape skins. This
alonecant explain the fascination and passion thatmany doctors hold
for wine. Personally, I enjoy reflecting on a number of
similarities between
the art and science of wine and medicine. Both topics involve an
element of uncertainty. Someconsumers will be uncomfortable and
even
baffled by the many variations in wine: what it will taste like,
how it will develop with time, howit accompanies food, and whether
two bottles of
the same wine will even taste and age in thesame way. Despite
many years of playing this
game, I still find myself scratching my headsometimes as to how
the same wine can taste sodifferent seemingly just because its not
a sunny day outside!
For doctors, who spend a career trying torationalise
uncertainties, these unpredictablefacets are perhaps less troubling
and, indeed, add
to the fascination. Without doubt, there is also anendless
academic pleasure in learning about wine
too, and like constantly progressing medicalknowledge, every new
vintage will add to the
wealth of wines, wine makers and wine regions waiting to be
discovered. The medical nerd is well catered for in the wine-world,
with point-scores to memorise and vintage charts to
recite.Similarly, those of a more romantic or philosophical
disposition can wonder at how thescience of terroir - the geology,
geography andclimate of a vineyard - translate into the art of
making and enjoying a wine every bit as individual
as its unique vineyard site. Good wines - and not the industrial
scale, chemistry set wines too oftenseen these days - are much more
than a liquidcommodity. Every one of these has a story to tell,but
many branded wines have now lost contact
with the place that the grapes were grown and the people that
made them.
I was convinced forty years ago - and theconviction remains to
this day - that in winetasting and wine-talk there is an
enormousamount of humbugThomas George Shaw
It strikes me there is scope for more wine-related articles in
the JASGBI. The SurgeonsNew s magazine from the RCSEd runs a
regular column [5] , and I hope the JASGBI will consider
introducing something similar. Perhaps even a
wine tasting at the ASGBI Congress? As a sharedinterest, there
can be few other non-clinical
topics that bring so many colleagues together for such a
sociable activity. As one of the foundingprinciples of ASGBI was
the promotion of
friendship amongst surgeons what better lubricant to facilitate
this that than a good glassof wine?
References[1] Alderson D
The Secret Life of On the subject of wine JASGBI 2011
35:24-25.
[2] Wulff H R The language of medicine
J R Soc Med . 2004 April; 97(4): 187188.
[3] Robinson JWhy cheap wine is a false economy in the UK, and
the UShttp://www.jancisrobinson.com/articles/inside051113.html
[4] Smoliga J M, Baur J A and Hausenblas H A Resveratrol and
health A comprehensive review of human
clinical trials Mol. Nutr. Food Res 2011,
55:11291141.doi:10.1002/mnfr.201100143
[5] Surgeons Newshttp://www.surgeonsnews.com/spectrum/wine
Editors NoteEd Fitzgerald had the hepatocyte-challenging roleof
President of his University Wine Society, and isa previous winner
of the Australian Wine BureausUniversity Wine Challenge blind
tastingcompetition. He still embarrasses himself by maintaining a
small wine blog of tasting notes
[email protected]
Further contributions on the subject of wine (or other areas of
interest to Fellows) would be
gratefully received.
J o u r n a l o
f t h e
A s s o c
i a t i o n o
f S u r g e o n s o
f G r e a t B r i t a i n a n
d I r e l a n
d .
N u m
b e r
3 6
, M a r c h
2 0 1 2
T A S T I N G
N O T E S
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