I'm doing wine now

[j4]

As regular readers of rhodri will have already seen, he's recently been writing on the subject of wine, which reminds me: I read in the Sainsburys magazine the other day that if you like Merlot, you should try Malbec. Now, I thought Malbec was the other one of Lambkin Simbert, whichever one of them was the Young Pretender, the one who didn't drown in a vat of lampreys ... or was that St. Nicholas of Syrah, patron saint of red wine? Anyway, I bought a bottle of Malbec. But I haven't drunk it yet.

Just thought I'd share that with you, there, as I know some of you are dedicated Merlot-drinkers.

Further to rhodri's musings, though, I think the problem with saying "I like wine" is that it's a bit like saying "I like sex". I mean, we all want to give the impression that we're a bit more discriminating than that. And maybe some of us are! Yeah! Let's be positive here! But Britishness dictates that we can't look too knowledgeable or discriminating, otherwise we'll be seen as gay, or foreign, or possibly even both. There is only an inch of respectably-ignorant grey area between the blokeish, brutish bellow of "BOOOOOOZE!" and the tantamount-to-being-on-the-guest-list-for-Elton-John's-wedding "Personally, I favour a full and fruity red" (let alone boringly-parodied rumblings from the realm of Pseud's Corner about the scent of fresh-mown grass) ... but it's the inch in which we live.

So, as Sir Elton almost certainly didn't say as he uncorked the nuptial champagne: bottoms up!

Comments

[j4.livejournal.com]

I settle for buying European wine rather than New World wine

Do you think there's more common ground between, say, French wine and German wine than between "European wine" as a whole and "New World wine" as a whole? (My experience suggests not, but I'm happy to be corrected by somebody with more knowledge.)

and knowing and appreciating what I like. (Not that I'd be able to describe it in a way anyone would understand.)

I'm sure you could describe it in ways that would convey something to other people (which is the point of describing anything, really), even if that doesn't correspond to some kind of standardised vocabulary of wine.

I have an instant Bluffers-Guide wine-bore opt-out clause which is that I like Swiss wine. To a first approximation, nobody knows anything about Swiss wine (because they don't export much); so I could say anything about it & very few people would challenge me. So I shan't bother saying anything about it except "do try some if you're in Switzerland". :-)

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

I'm still trying to work out the common ground between French wine and French wine!

Seriously, there's a world of difference between a big throaty Chateauneuf-style Rhone red and the delicacy of, say, an Alsatian Riesling. If a psycho world dictator came along and said to me "Right, all wine production will cease now, except for one country that you can nominate", then the country would have to be France.

I'd be seriously tempted to consider choosing France even if the choice was France, or the whole of the rest of the world.

As for Swiss wine ... Chassellas? (i.e. the grape in Fondant?) Or the interesting Swiss Pinot Noirs?

[j4.livejournal.com]

As for Swiss wine ... Chassellas? (i.e. the grape in Fondant?) Or the interesting Swiss Pinot Noirs?

I knew somebody would call my bluff. :-D

The bit where I really don't know much about wines is which names are grape-varieties and which names are wines-made-of-lots-of-grapes. If that makes sense. I feel like I need to know some kind of theory of wine before I can make sense of the data I get from trying wine.

I don't know very much about Swiss wine. But I do like Fendant, and a good Dôle (which I think is at least partly Pinot Noir...) is great. OTOH, I don't think I've ever had a bad Swiss wine. Which is just as well, because there don't seem to be many cheap Swiss wines (Switzerland doesn't really do "cheap" very well on the whole IME).

Annoyingly, every time I try to bring wine back from Switzerland it just doesn't taste as nice at home. However I suspect this is largely because I'm not drinking it outside, in the sun, halfway up a mountain. :-)

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Ah, sorry about the bluff. But I do go through a reasonable amount of Swiss wine each year, in a casual, touristy way.

Yes, Dôle - I couldn't remember its name off the top of my head (nor the correct spelling of Fendant, or Chasselas, come to that).

A quick check indicates that Dôle is primarily Pinot Noir (i.e. the primary red Burgundy wine grape), about 80% to 90%, with the rest being Gamay (the primary Beaujolais grape).

[stephdairy.livejournal.com]

I'm generalising madly, of course, and I've a lot more experience of French/Italian/Spanish wines than I do of other European wines. However, I do tend to find that while many New World wines are very nice and very drinkable, they're often not very interesting. Which is where we get into how I think about wine.

Flavour, when I'm paying attention to it, is very spatial for me. It's a bit like a frequency graph of a sound, only not quite that simple. Wines can be flat, they can have side peaks, they often have one or two dominant central tones, and all these characteristics vary from my first sniff to the aftertaste. The wines I enjoy the most seem to be the ones with the most going on on this spectrum; many New World wines concentrate much more on one central tone and are practically invisible elsewhere. (Fortunately my normal sense of taste can sometimes say more useful things like "appley" or "bitter".)

With so many non-European wines about, and discerning friends who know the good stuff when they taste it, I'm quite likely to encounter a variety of them anyway, so I'm not missing out by my choice.

Also, it's good to be a little bit snobbish from time to time.

(S)

[j4.livejournal.com]

Interesting points about spatial perception of flavour. I think I know what you mean -- on the other hand, I've had Australian wines which seem to have that complexity flavour (and not particularly expensive/obscure ones) so maybe we are thinking of something different.

Also, it's good to be a little bit snobbish from time to time.

Why?