There is a protocol

We all know how to clink glasses, don't we?

Well, having taken part in many dinner parties, I am here to tell you most people don't have a clue. Making a toast is an old and venerated ritual, full of convention and ceremony. If you're not aware of those conventions you may end up offending someone, or worse, revealing yourself to be the boor you thought you'd left behind.

What has this got to do with wine, you ask? Well toasting protocol has been practised with wine for as long as humans have enjoyed wine. In fact it's fair to say that wine culture, and the celebration that occurs around wine, are probably the impetus for humans' instinct to raise their glasses to "honour" something or someone with a toast.

And that's what a toast is: a secular way to recognize or honour someone or something. Come to think of it, what is Communion other than honouring your god with a toast?

I'm not saying you have to do it religiously. I am saying that if you recognize the rituals and conventions, you elevate the experience, so rather than smashing your glasses together in some sort of vinous mosh-pit, you're actually tapping into an age-old ritual that elevates the evening into something more civilized. (The mosh pit comes later).

I'll give you a story about how observing the rituals of toasting can elevate experience. I took an elderly friend of mine to lunch at his old club. He has been suffering from dementia and we brought him out of the nursing home for one last lunch at his old haunt with his old pals. I hinted to his oldest friend, a man who had been best man at his wedding, that a toast to Bob would be in order. His friend stood up and made a brief but heart-felt tribute to his old chum. We all toasted Bob, then, to our horror, Bob struggled to his feet. Somehow, out of the fog of his dementia, Bob had remembered the convention of toasting, that is every good toast requires a response. Bob hadn't completed a sentence in six months, but in his fractured speech he made a warm response to all his old friends who had been so much help during his illness. There wasn't a dry eye among that group of old lions. Bob, in his dementia, had honoured his old friends with a burst of eloquence that touched all their hearts, and it had been his memory of the conventions of toasting that carried through the dullness of his dementia. So if you're going to do it, do it right.

So, just a few rules. Make sure everyone is at the table and has a glass with some wine, or another liquid, in it. There’s nothing that drags a toast flat than making it while someone, particularly your host, isn’t at the table, or several people have to scramble to get something in their glass. Clearing your voice and asking people to “charge their glasses” while you summon the toast is a good way to make sure everyone is involved.

Second, one toast at a time. Sometimes someone will raise a glass to the chef. That means that particular toast is to the chef alone. For everyone else to pile in (remember the mosh pot) with their own additions just demeans the original toast. If you have a salute you’d like to share, then wait for the current toast to conclude, then look for another opportunity. Toasting isn’t something that happens just at the beginning of the meal, but should be the punctuation that dictates the pace of the meal. With toasting, the more the merrier.

Third, you actually have to drink. In the convention of toasting, not drinking is kind of like telling a lie with your fingers crossed behind your back. It signals that you don't really agree with the toast. So if a toast seems to be emerging, make sure you have something in your glass, hopefully wine, but water will do if a bottle of wine is not close. And after you’ve clinked glasses with everyone else at the table, make sure you take a sip. And in Europe, eye contact is all. Make sure you make eye contact with everyone you toast with.

Finally, and most important, hold your glass by the stem and let the bulb ring with the impact against the other glasses, not the dull thud that occurs when you hold the glass by the bulb. For it is the chiming of wine glasses rung together that is the true music of a festive dinner party.

Cheers!

Keith

Keith Watt is owner and winemaker at Morning Bay Vineyard on Pender Island, BC