The Best Wine in the World

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The best wine in the world is the champagne with which you toasted your new bride; it is a crisp Chablis drunk with bracing, saline oysters in a Parisian cafe; it’s Sangiovese from a carafe on a Tuscan hillside; or a muscular Cali cab that washes down a Flintstonean rib eye in a clubby American steakhouse.
The best wine is the one that captures the mood of the moment, and the essence of itself, along with the place where it is drunk, be it a Puligny-Montrachet quaffed in the town of Puligny-Montrachet, or an amontillado sherry sipped between bites of jamon Iberico in Andalusia.
Nothing tastes better than drinking a good wine in the place where it is made, alongside the people who made it — be it in the Piemonte hills, on the slopes of the Cote d’Or (above), or beside the Mosel, in the shadow of the Bernkasteler Doctor:
Image(The Bernkasteler Doctor – the most famous vineyard in Germany)
The best wine in the world is whatever fits your mood that moment. A wine you might disdain one day might perfectly match your mood on another. People love to sneer at over-oaked California chardonnays, but many is the meal I begin with such a glass, especially in the cooler months. (And shhhh….don’t tell anyone, but big, flabby whites also go well with salty, robust cheeses.)
Nowhere does the law of diminishing returns apply more sharply than when you evaluate the price-to-value paradigm of wine. Absurdly-priced trophy wines do not reflect tastes/flavors/sensations that are orders of magnitude greater than similar products. A $500 bottle of wine is not 5Xs better than a $100 bottle. The cost reflects hype and scarcity, not quality. Screaming Eagle, DRC Burgundy, and Chateau Haut-Brion can be transporting in intensity and complexity, but even experts, in blind tastings, have trouble distinguishing them from other good bottles costing a fraction of their hefty tariffs.
At best, wine is a discovery, a journey, a marathon if you will, that lasts a lifetime. You never “master” wine (even Masters of Wine admit this), all you do is form an appreciation for it — an ever-evolving admiration that changes every year, every vintage.
The best you can do when learning about wine is to broaden, then narrow your focus. Broaden your horizons by trying new things, then narrow your gaze to wines that appeal to you and then learn more about them. The best wines then become the ones you love which continue to intrigue you. Think of it like a composer (or band or artist) whose work you love — the more you experience them, the deeper your knowledge and esteem.
But you don’t have to do any of this to enjoy “the best wine in the world,” because the best wine in the world (like “the best song in the world”) is the one you are really really enjoying at that moment.
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Image(Champagne: In victory you deserve it; in defeat you need it. – Napoleon)
A word or two about the price of wines — something that has risen exponentially in the past 20 years, relative to the actual value of what is being drunk:
I once asked a local wine merchant (who has been in the game a long time) what percentage of his high-end wine customers choose their wines by labels rather than taste.
“100%,” he blurted out, before I was even done with the question.
“They don’t care what it tastes like, they just want the name,” he sheepishly smiled — the grin of a wolf who instinctively knows his prey.
One percenters with more money than brains might be one thing, but the rest of us are looking for price-to-value ratios which fit our budgets, and unfortunately, despite what you might’ve heard, there is a very real difference between average, good and very good wines.
There is a level of exquisiteness that certain wines aspire to and achieve, and those “benchmarks” are perhaps only 1% of all wine made. These days, such bottles typically run in the hundreds of dollars.
I would argue (generally) that a quantum leap in quality starts at around $75/btl. (Ten years ago I would’ve said $40-$50.) Once you get into this range, there is a difference in “quality” (aroma, length, intensity, intricacy, layers of flavors, mouthfeel, etc.) that is fairly obvious even to a novice. Once you get above $75-100 retail (or what I would call “very expensive but not trophy wines”) those indicia become smaller and finer in inverse proportion to the price, to the point where there are no obvious, objective levels of excellence — besides each bottle’s idiosyncrasies, and personal taste.
Put another way: the difference between plonk and a high-end single vineyard wine from a prestige maker is probably easy to spot for even a novice (or maybe not), and head-of-a-pin distinctions can be drawn by aficionados, but once you get into certain rarefied air, those differences are so subtle as to be almost impossible to detect, except by a trained taster, and as such, they become almost meaningless for mere mortals.
At those levels, the only thing that tells you that one wine is “better” than another is the price you paid for it, even though, at those levels, price is ceasing to tell you much of anything.
In other words, it all counts for almost nothing, and the people playing the fine wine game from lofty tax brackets are in it for ego rather than actual taste.
Drink what you like, with someone you love, because in the end, that is all wine is for: making good times even better.
A votre santé mes amis!!!

Image(Walla Walla, Washington)

Image(Guy Savoy)

Image(Ferraro’s)

Image(Guy Savoy)

 

Image(Roma)

 

Wine Tasting/Wine Snobbery

Image result for handmaid's tale wine

“The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.” – Aristotle

The famous 20th Century British wine writer Harry Waugh was once asked, “Have you ever mistaken a Burgundy for a Bordeaux?” “Not since lunch,” was his answer.

POMPOSITY AND PLEBES

Until it was withdrawn from the market as the worst idea since New Coke, the actual label description on the bottle of “The Handmaid’s Tale” wine read: “Completely stripped of her rights and freedom, Offred must rely on the one weapon she has left to stay in control — her feminine wiles. This French Pinot Noir is similarly seductive, its dark berry fruit and cassis aromatics so beguiling it seems almost forbidden to taste. But it’s useless to resist the wine’s smooth and appealingly earthy profile, so you may as well give in.”

And you wonder why people find wine pretentious?

It is pretentious, and at its upper levels, insufferable.

The only thing more pretentious than a person who knows a lot about wine is someone who knows a little.

Just as a little learning can be a dangerous thing, so can a modicum of wine knowledge/vocabulary turn an otherwise likeable person into the world’s biggest buffoon.

Many know this, which is why pricking oenophile pomposity is practically an indoor sport for some writers. It’s the food writing equivalent of shooting fish-faced drunks in a French oak barrel.

The easiest way to pander to the plebes is by knocking wines and wine snobbery.

“Most people prefer cheap wines to expensive ones!” the article blares. “Expensive wine is for suckers!” is always the subtext.

That’s true — in the sense that most people prefer a cheap, fast-food hamburger to a custom-made one, and any Taco Bell outsells my favorite hole-in-the-wall by 100-1 on any given day.

But the more you learn about wine (and tacos, for that matter), the more you come to appreciate the taste of an authentic, small-batch one.

A better example might be music. Everyone knows what they like, and a lot of people like really really shitty music. If all they’re doing is mindlessly enjoying some stupid pop tune, leave them to their ignorance. But once you know something about good music, your tastes expand beyond bubble gum, the enjoyment of what’s being listened to deepens.

Still, there’s no doubt that wine has brought a lot of this opprobrium on itself with its history of pretension, and all the currency it gives to arcane language, one-upmanship, and hi-falutin’ “experts” reciting laundry lists of scents and flavors.

The good news is: things have improved immeasurably over the past two decades. As new sommeliers, wine sellers and writers have entered the field, they’ve brought with them unbridled youthful enthusiasm, unencumbered by the elitist language of the past. Wine sellers (both in and out of restaurants) are eager to have you try new things, not rest on the laurels of the tried-and-true. This makes wine drinking much more fun and accessible to the average consumer.

Wine lists up and down The Strip have also become more diverse, and more consumer-friendly. Over-priced bottles of Cali cabs are still everywhere, but there seems to be a downward trend in pricing, with many new lists at places like Vetri and Cipriani sporting a sizeable number of bottles under a hundy. Not to mention places like Mordeo, EDO, Esther’s Kitchen, Partage and Lamaii — all of which are off-Strip with serious-yet-affordable wine programs. This type of competition wasn’t around a decade ago, and all of us are drinking better for it.

Things have also improved because we baby-boomers (who practically made the California wine industry) are getting too old to waste our time showing off about wine. Or maybe it’s because the interwebs have made buyers keenly aware of the real costs of the product. Nowadays, the new class of consumers (Gen-Xers and Millennials) can immediately scan a bottle (or a list) into a website that instantaneously gives you tasting notes, ratings, and the average retail price.

More informed customers make it harder to pawn off crappy $15 sauv blanc on an unsuspecting rube for $60. Yet another reason why sommeliers now take pride in great, unsung bottles at reasonable prices.

(Mexican wine: dusty and dark, needs food)

THE ABSURDITY OF SPECIFICITY

Yes, learning about wine is hard, but everything worthwhile is difficult when you first try it.

The thing about wine is how much fun the learning curve can be….as opposed to things like golf, needlepoint, or mountain climbing.

But once you climb even a small wine hill, you’ll find that the journey was worth it….even if bottles costing hundreds of dollars rarely are.

So it is with wine. You can drink cheap hooch to get drunk, or you can learn to appreciate the way good wine is made and all the factors that go into it.

The problem is: the people who know these things like to lord it over you like some imperious professor pooh poohing your term paper.

I find the whole “I’m getting peach pits, Meyer lemon zest, wet tobacco, gun-flint, hedgerow fruits and forest floor on the nose” nonsense to be a particular affliction affecting (mainly) insecure American sommeliers and head-up-their-ass wine writers. (This disease can be cured, but it takes years of deprogramming to get them out of their snooty little brains.)

“Hedgerow fruits”? Really?

And while we’re at it, how many people do you know who are familiar with 18th Century musketry?

Europeans, by and large, have a much healthier attitude towards wine. To begin with, they dispense with all the “peach pits, lemon zest, sour green apples” folderol, and use more emotional terms when describing a wine. To a Frenchman (or Englishman or Italian), wines may be feminine or masculine. Big and bold or soft and pleasant.

Aromatics might be “earthy” or “spicy” but no laundry list is necessary beyond that. Wine to them is an expression of fruit, and they generally avoid “blackcurrants, blackberries, ripe cherries, spearmint and cocoa powder” conversations…except when they’re talking to Americans.

I hear less lengthy recitals these days, and many more to-the-point descriptors like “grape-y,” “earthy,” “juicy,’ or “dense,” The whole point of those extravagant “smells like” recitations were always more for the professional tasters anyway, not for amateur enthusiasts. A wine tastes like itself, no matter what else it may resemble. Who gives a shit if you detect “hints of new mown hay,” “baking spices” (?), or “dessicated underbrush”?

Using a bunch of hyper-specific identifiers to describe a wine is like trying to describe a finished dish by listing the recipe ingredients.

All those descriptions are just metaphors. You might sense a whiff of strawberries, I might say “red fruits.” No one on earth really knows the difference between “dusty strawberries,” “wild strawberries,” and just plain “strawberries,” but that doesn’t keep those terms from being applied all the time….mainly to impress the listener (and the speaker with themselves).

So forget all that malarkey, and while you’re at it,  throw your tasting wheel in the trash.

Image result for wine tasting wheel

TASTING NOTATIONS

What I like to do is suggest to novice wine drinkers is that they develop their own vocabulary. Look for things you like in wine (like the fresh fruitiness of Gamay Beaujolais, for example), and use that as a benchmark to evaluate other reds. You’ll soon find that Cabernet Sauvignon has a muscularity that Gamay can’t match, and that those two wines hit the palate in a whole different (and darker) way than Pinot Noir does.

Once you learn a little about wine, drinking it becomes a lot more fun. Even if all you know is the difference between an oaked v. un-oaked Chardonnay, once you can make the distinction, your enjoyment is enhanced in the same way it is if an art historian explains Degas v. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec to you.

Keep certain things in mind:

  1. Wine tasting is the opposite of drinking wine.
  2. Drinking wine is about overall aromatic impact; tasting wine is about breaking down its components.
  3. Wine has a greater variety of styles than any other agricultural product.
  4. All you’re looking to do is decode a few essential elements of the wine.
  5. There is no right or wrong, there is only the tastes and aromas you are experiencing. The fact that you can’t immediately put a label on those sensations is of no consequence.
  6. Tasting wine is about sharpening your senses, and about finding words that convey the heightened information you are receiving
  7. It is perfectly possible to enjoy all wine – from the cheapest swill to the rarest bottles – without knowing or caring how to describe the sensations you experience.
  8. There are no right answers, and no matter how good you get, you will get things wrong. All. The. Time. (See Harry Waugh quote above.)
(The Wine Snob: hard at work at Bottega del Vino in Verona, Italy)

HOW I TASTE

Rather than tell you how to taste, I’ll tell you what I do. I’m no wine expert, even though I write about it, and have been reading, studying and drinking wine seriously for forty years. The experts are the wine makers and the professional tasters. To equate my talents with a sport: If wine tasting/appreciation were golf, I’d carry a low handicap, but there’s no way I could compete at the Masters.

First, look at the color – Bright? Dull? Sparkly? Dark red? Deeply colored, like blackberry juice? Squid ink? Or lighter, like raspberries? Some white wines are as yellow as the sun; others can resemble a crystal clear mountain stream. German Rieslings almost appear grey in the glass sometimes, Chablis gives hints of green.  Color isn’t something you can taste, but the range of hues of red, white and pink wines are so vivid, and so beautiful, you should never ignore them.

Then, swirl and stick that schnoz of yours deep into the glass – exception: sparkling wines – never swirl a bubbler.

(Remember: when you’re tasting wine, what you’re really doing is smelling it. Mouthfeel, bitterness, sweetness, grip on the side of your mouth (tannins) all play a role, but the nuances of grapes come through much more in their bouquet than in how they lie on your tongue. The previous sentence can be true, or completely false. Some wines taste like they smell, and some do not. Others emit wonderful aromas and go flat in the mouth. Like I said, there are no hard and fast rules, just individual sensations.)

Finally, take a small sip and hold it in your mouth and breath through your nose whilst sucking in a little air through your pursed lips.

Think to yourself: Is it strong? Weak? Intense? Flabby? Does it linger in the mouth? Pucker your tongue (that tannin thing again)? Does the flavor remain all the way to the back of your tongue? Or does it disappear quickly? A great Chardonnay (e.g., cru Burgundies) have a finish that lasts until next Tuesday. Great Rieslings literally sparkle on your tongue from their face-slapping acidity.

Don’t search for highly particular descriptive similes! Just think about what is pleasant or not so about it. Does it remind you a fruit pie? Of licking a wet rock? Do you like its sweetness? Is it too tart? (You may not like it at all. Wine is, in essence, spoiled, soured grape juice — preserved through fermentation — and not everyone’s cup of tea.)

Is there something unappealing about it? This may or may not be a flaw. I love German and Alsatian Rieslings, but they can give off strong whiffs of petrol or kerosene. Cabernet Franc can smell like green bell pepper? Some folks like New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs and their cat pee aromas: I find them ridiculous. Some Central Coast Pinot Noirs give off a slightly smokey nose. I love them; my wife (the long-suffering Food Gal®), does not.

Now comes the fun part, the most important part: Does your first sip make you want to keep drinking it? The priciest wine in the world isn’t worth it if you don’t want to have another glass. Some white wines have fruit so elusive you’d think the winemaker infused his water with iron ore. (These are some of the most expensive ones, BTW.) Huge Cali cabs can wear your palate out after a few sips. It’s all very personal. Go with your gut….or actually, your mouth.

Compare, compare, compare. Grab a glass of Central Coast chard, then make your next one a Chablis. Tasting them side by side will teach you a lot, even if you know nothing about how the wines are made.

Think about what you’re drinking. Is it in balance? Do fruit, bitterness, acid all knit together into a seamless whole? Or does one of these predominate?

The point is: Don’t try to dissect it; just try to identify what you like (or don’t like) about it.

TWO ESSENTIAL WINE WORDS

Use either of these the next time you want to watch the room empty after you take a sip of wine:

Organoleptic – aka “mouthfeel” – as in, “The organoleptics of this 1976 Fritz Blitzkreigmeinkampf Guttenjingleheimerschmitdtz Trockenbeerenauselese do not match those of the Layer Cake chard I polished off last night.”

Sapidity: defined in the dictionary as deliciousness, but used by (mostly Italian, some Spanish) winemakers to denote certain saline-mineral notes in a wine, such as, “Only a sap wouldn’t notice that the sapidity of this wine resembles licking an oyster shell dipped in potato chips.”

Finally, try to ignore the  super-annoying voice of the narrator and you’ll find some useful information in this video:

 

Wine Tasting

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“Red wine with the fish, that should’ve told me something.” – James Bond in “From Russia With Love.”

The easiest way to pander to the plebes is by knocking wines and wine snobbery.

It’s the food writing equivalent of shooting monkey-suited, fish-faced drunks in a French oak barrel.

“See, most people prefer cheap wines to expensive ones! Expensive wine is for suckers!” — is how reverse-wine snobs put it.

That’s true — in the sense that most people prefer a cheap, fast-food hamburger to a custom-made one, and any Taco Bell outsells my favorite taco truck by 100-1 on any given day.

But the more you learn about wine (and tacos, for that matter), the more you come to appreciate the taste of an authentic, small-batch one.

Still, there’s no doubt that wine has brought a lot of this opprobrium on itself with its history of pretension, and all the currency it gives to arcane language, one-upmanship, and hi-falutin’ “experts” reciting laundry lists of scents and flavors.

For what it’s worth — I find the whole “I’m getting peach pits, Meyer lemon zest, wet tobacco, gun-flint, hedgerow fruits and forest forest floor on the nose” nonsense to be a particular affliction affecting mainly insecure American sommeliers and head-up-their-ass wine writers.

Reciting a list of descriptors to describe a wine is like trying to figure out what a recipe tastes like from a list of ingredients.

This disease can be cured, but it takes years of deprogramming to get them out of their snooty little heads. “Hedgerow fruits”? Really?

And while we’re at it, how many somms do you know who are familiar with 18th Century musketry?

One of my favorite descriptions (of those white Burgundies I’m so fond of) is they “taste like you just licked a wet rock.” Now that’s something even a six year old can understand.

Let’s face it, wine people talking about wine is boring with a capital “B.” And sommeliers can be insufferable when taken in anything but small sips. (This does not apply to the people who actually make wine — who can be some of the most charming people on earth.)

Yes, learning about wine is hard, but everything worthwhile is difficult when you first try it.

The thing about wine is how much fun the learning curve can be….as opposed to things like golf, needlepoint, or mountain climbing. But once you climb even a small wine hill, you’ll find that the journey was worth it….even if bottles costing hundreds of dollars rarely are.

To keep the mountaineering metaphor going for a minute, there’s a big difference between climbing Mount Everest and being helicoptered to the top. People who only drink “the best stuff” miss the beauty of the journey entirely. I drink a lot of “the best stuff” (as you see below), but those fifty buck bottles light my fire just as much as the five hundred dollar ones do.

If you want to become good at tasting wine, there’s only one way to do it: grab a corkscrew and start using it. And then think about what you’re drinking and why you like it (or don’t), and leave the friggin’ hedgerow fruit metaphors to the wineholes.

Image may contain: drink and indoor(My usual on a Friday night)