I was sitting in the neon blue wine bar Chez Suave enjoying a glass of Mumms champagne and going over my notes for my tasting on Thursday night.

I was waiting to meet with Chef Kenny’s fiancée, the glamorous Kandi Cain, who was going to help with the wine tasting. She showed up with a friend, a striking auburn-haired beauty by the name of Barri Ample, who is a rock singer and a fashion model.

Both of the ladies were new to the wine world, but both were very enthusiastic about the juice. I told them we were going to taste blind, and Barri asked what that meant.

“We’re going to open the bottles of wine and then put them into brown paper sacks,” I explained as I poured her a glass of champagne. “We’re going to taste seven wines, and we’re going to number them one through seven.”

Barri smiled and asked, “Why are you doing that?”

“It’s very simple,” I said. “We want to rely on our senses instead of on labels. In our society, we are told what to buy, and we make a lot of assumptions about wine based upon cost, how beautiful the artwork on the label is or the reputation of the winery.

“Tasting blind eliminates all that,” I continued. “We have to judge the wine on its merits. And, to be honest, many wines have been living on their reputation for years while the quality of their wines has gone down, primarily because of over-production. Just because you make 5,000 cases of great chardonnay doesn’t mean you can make 20,000 cases and have the same quality.”

Kandi poured herself some more bubbly and asked, “Isn’t that the way most wine publications taste wine?”

“Yeah, that’s true,” I replied. “They evaluate wine on a 100-point scale, and they influence a lot of wine sales. They use blind tastings to be objective, but there is still a lot of BS.

“I think using a 100-point system is a poor way to judge wine,” I added. “I’ve tasted a lot of wine that was highly rated by important wine critics and have wondered what they were smoking.”

Both girls chuckled. “Wine is very subjective,” I went on. “Everyone knows what they like. So a 91-point wine may be an 80-point wine to you. It’s important to trust your mouth. That’s what blind taste tests are all about.”

Barri handed me a fork and we dug into a cheese and fruit platter. “But judging wine is more of an art than a science,” I said between bites. “You break down and evaluate wine: the color, the bouquet, the balance and the front palate to the finish. By the final analysis, it is your relationship to the wine that is important.”

Kandi inquired, “Do the wine tasters in a blind tasting have any idea if they’re tasting, for example, a pinot noir or a chianti?”

“Not in the tastings I conduct,” I said. “I start with a European model like a famous pinot noir, Pommard from Burgundy, and go over what the differences are between this wine and other red wines, like merlot, for example. Then the blind tasting begins, where I take a wine-world approach and have other pinots from all sorts of different areas, like New Zealand, Oregon, Sonoma Valley and so forth. The biggest difference in wine is terrior – that sense of place. The soil gives birth to the wine and gives it personality.”

Barri poured me another glass of Mumms and asked, “If a wine is made with the same grape varietal, like pinot noir, shouldn’t it all taste the same?”

I smiled and said: “You would think so, and to a certain extent, there are similarities. However, there are differences in winemaking, clone selection and barrel aging – but most of those differences are from terrior.”

Please join the Gay & Lesbian Times and Rocket magazine for an evening with me, Frank the wine guy, on Monday, March 20, from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. at Crush wine bar. I’ll be on hand to teach you about the fine wines you’re drinking as we enjoy heavy hors d’oeuvres provided by Crush – all to benefit the Youth Housing Project, a 23-unit transitional housing facility designed to stabilize lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning and HIV-positive youth. Admission is a minimum donation of $30. See you all there.