Sarah Perry

When I first learned about wine tasting, I was appalled to hear that some people spat out the wine. They take a sip, swirl it around in their mouths, and spit it in a perfect ruby-red arc, right into a bowl.

What a waste.

When my friend Mike lent me a book on wine for my trip, I was determined to figure out why people spit out such goodness. Mike’s brother spits, he swallows. Apparently, some people want to keep a “clear head” when they taste.

I flipped through the pages of Discovering Wine, written by Joanna Simon, and wondered how I could spit as gracefully as she did in her pictures. Joanna recommends practicing in the bathroom when you’re brushing your teeth so you won’t be “embarrassed by your spitting image” – after all, she writes, “spitting is the done thing.”

I gathered the foamy toothpaste in my mouth and lined up my mouth with the sink. Head held high, I puckered my lips and thrust my tongue forward. My black T-shirt had a beautiful arrangement of white foam right across my breast.

When I arrived in the tasting rooms, I warned the staff of my handicap. “I’m a terrible spitter,” I told them.

Pamela Palmer at Fiasco just laughed. Brooke at Reininger said she doesn’t spit, either.

When I tasted B Cellars’ 2006 To Kalon Cabernet, there was no way that wine was going into a bowl.

As my friend Jeff Prince puts it, “Spitting out a perfectly good wine seems wasteful. Besides, I never liked seeing a woman spit.”