Great Grandma Marilynn, a diminutive woman with blond hair and blue eyes, raised six strapping children, three of whom have made a career in the wine business. As I’ve mentioned before, she drinks a single glass of Pinot Gris every day. Preferably with ice cubes.

Great Grandma is a woman of routine, excellent health, and good taste. She likes to gossip with her gray-haired girlfriends. She enjoys going out to eat. Born Irish, she’s as Italian as the family she married into: loving, loud, and full of good humor. I think of Pinot Gris that way too, a dry but friendly wine that can always be counted on.

Then there’s her grandson, to whom I happen to be married. James’s favorite wine is Sauternes.

Haven’t ever heard of it?

Sauternes is a very expensive and rare white wine made from grapes that have been allowed to raisin on the vine in a valley where a fungus called the “Noble Rot” takes hold and gives the final product a funky complexity. The best Sauternes is Chateau Yquem made on the estate of the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne.

If you’ve met him, you’ll know it makes sense that this would be James’s favorite wine. Latin was among his favorite subjects … in high school. He’s something of a walking encyclopedia. Ask him what he knows about sidewalks in Rome or the spirochete that causes Lyme disease, and you’ll be talking for several hours. James also has expensive taste. And likes nothing better than to be accused of being a wine snob.

James and I met in grad school, back in those blissful days when I knew next to nothing about wine. We invited Michael Holquist, an eminent professor of literature at Yale, to give a talk about Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin. The university had some money to take Holquist out for dinner.

“What’s your budget?” he asked, sitting comfortably at the head of a large table surrounded by nine adoring albeit totally nerdy graduate students. Professor Holquist proposed a blind taste test – comparing an Australian Syrah with a California Cabernet Sauvignon. He’d heard much about the merits of Syrah made in Australia but wasn’t convinced we’d be able to tell the difference. What we expected to be a subdued evening of heady talk about literary theory quickly became a raucous foray into the world of wine.

When I think of Syrah I think of Michael Holquist: sophisticated, intelligent, smooth and instantly likeable.

What’s my favorite wine? I’m so busy trying all of the excellent local wines coming out of southern Oregon that I’m not sure I can choose a favorite just yet.

I like both the wines and the wine culture: the novelty of glass corkage, the fun of a wine adventure, the challenge of deepening my knowledge about wine, the excitement of attending a festival.

Does that mean I’m indecisive or well-rounded? I don’t know! I leave you to judge what my eclectic taste in wine says about me…

Tell me about your favorite wine! Have you ever thought about what your preferences for wine reveal about your personality?