The Wine Master, in the head seat, nodded as well. “He does.”
Lan Jue cast his gaze towards the front. “The three of you, let’s begin. First one.” To him, the opportunity to sample fine wine was something he definitely didn’t want to delay if at all possible.
The face of the old man seated in the first position immediately grew solemn. “Please ask.”
Lan Jue said, “This is the Old Gothic Winery. Do you know where the wine from here comes from?”
The old man clearly had prepared early on. He immediately responded, “The Old Gothic Winery was one of the very first businesses opened on Skyfire Avenue when it was first developed. It engages in the sale of fine wine from various former nations of the previous era. These wines are preserved through spatial technology and can essentially be preserved in the state they were originally in year 2020. Actually, the most valuable thing about them is that once a bottle is drank, a bottle will be gone forever. Thus, the price is extremely high, but the ability to enjoy and sample these ancient wines is the mark of a true noble.”
Lan Jue neither assented nor disputed. He continued, “What is your favorite type of red wine?”
The old man spoke with seemingly great fluency. “Chateau Lafite. An ancient French wine from 1855, from one of the five first class Chatueaus in the Medoc, the Left Bank of the Bordeaux region.”
Lan Jue asked, “If the seven of us were to share a bottle of Lafite today, and you were the host, what would you do? Please explain in detail.”
The old man said, “I would carefully open it, then pour out a tiny bit, look at its color, smell its aroma, then taste it. After verifying that it hadn’t gone bad yet, I would them divide it amongst everyone, so that we can all enjoy this bottle of fine wine.”
“You can leave now.” Lan Jue leaned back against the back of the chair and said calmly.
“I passed?” A look of surprised delight was on the old man’s face.
Lan Jue shook his head. “No. You’ve been eliminated.”
The old man said with surprise, “Why? I didn’t say anything wrong?”
Lan Jue frowned as he spoke. “You’ve just prepared in advance. You don’t actually like wine, nor do you know how to drink. If a bottle of ancient Lafite wine were to be drunk in the manner you described, that would be an absolute waste.”
“Lafite, no matter what year it is from, is stored in a horizontal state. Before drinking it, the very first thing to do is to put it upright and keep it in the wine cellar for three days, allowing it to settle. When opening it, you do indeed have to first test the time, but it isn’t just to test for whether the wine has gone bad or not. The more important thing is to determine the status of the wine through tasting it, and determine how long it needs to be decanted for. One of the most important things for connoisseurs of wine is the question of how long the wine needs to be decanted. A normal bottle of Lafite would need to be poured into the decanter to be decanted for at least two hours. Otherwise, it wouldn’t taste much better than vinegar. It needs time to release its aroma. If you don’t even know that, you clearly don’t know how to drink wine. In fact, you’ve never even drank any fine wine. Thus, stop wasting my time.”
Unwilling to accept this, the old man said, “But the books all say…”
Lan Jue quirked his lips. “The people who wrote about Lafite in your books had never tasted it before. They just were writing based on what they had heard. To immediately uncork a bottle of Lafite and drink it is a form of disrespect to it. To drink it like that, you might as well dump it into a humidifier instead.”