The do's and don'ts for drinking wine
By By Stan Torgerson / wine columnist
May 7, 2003
Do try different wines. Don't be creatures of habit, buying the same wine from the same producer again and again and again.
If your current favorite wine has been the merlot, try a syrah from California or a shiraz from Australia. Expect to find the wine deeper in color, richer in flavor and totally wonderful. Or experiment with a zinfandel, also a full-flavored wine with character and a marvelous taste.
Pick out a cabernet to go with that steak you're cooking on the grill tonight. The merlot is perfect for chicken or veal, but not up to a lusty steak grilled over charcoal.
Don't kid yourself that you can buy quality for $6 or $7 a bottle. It can't be done. The best you can hope for is something pleasant, but the worst is to find soda pop-like wine in your glass sweet and without character.
Recognize the fact that wine is like almost every product on the market. That is you get what you pay for. Move into the $12 to $15 per bottle class and you'll understand dramatically what we say is true. Go over $20 and the quality jumps again.
I tell you what buy a bottle of Karly's Pokerville zinfandel for about $10. Then purchase a bottle of Karly's Warrior's Fire for about $22. Both are California wines. Both are produced by the same winemaker. Both are excellent for the price. But is the Warrior's Fire at $22 twice as good as the Pokerville at $10?
You're darn right it is and you don't have to be an expert to taste the difference. What you have to be is someone willing to try something different. My Webster's dictionary defines habit as "acquired repetitive behavior pattern." Don't let that definition describe your wine buying patterns.
Do give white wine a chance. There are some marvelous chardonnays being made in California and Australia and a few in Chile. With summer approaching, they are wonderful drinking on the patio or in a picnic basket. But there are some equally wonderful sauvignon blancs available as well.
Don't tell yourself you don't like them before you try one or two. Buy a bottle of Murphy-Goode sauvignon or the marvelous Villa Maria sauvignon from New Zealand with its light complementary citrus flavor. It's a great wine for about $11. As a rule of thumb, quality sauvignons will be less expensive than quality chardonnays but offer an equal amount of drinking pleasure.
Don't assume that white zinfandel is the only wine that offers you a sweetness of flavor that is taste appealing. If that sweetness is for you, chenin blanc is every bit as good yet has much more character and nuances. There are some marvelous German wines available that offer at least as much drinking pleasure as any white zinfandel on the market and, to my taste, quite a bit more.
The words kabinett, spatlese and auslese on the bottle are indications of the sweetness of the wine. Kabinett is the least sweet, spatleser is a bit more and ausleser is a bit more. All German wines are classified by the amount of sugar in the wine. You'll find the description on the label. Well chilled, they can be as good as it gets in summertime wine enjoyment.
Do not hesitate to drink wines that are young. Once upon a time it was an accepted belief that the older wines get the better they are. That's still true of some wines, but most wines today are made for early consumption. The industry has finally accepted the fact that the mass market does not have in-home wine cellars and when most consumers buy a bottle of wine they do so anticipating it will be on their table the same night.
Do pay attention to vintages. The same producer using grapes from the same vineyard will produce totally different wine from year to year depending on the weather during the growing season.
For example, the year 2001 for California cabernet is wonderful, rated 95-100 points by the experts. But the 2000 cabernet, only one year earlier, was rated only 85-89. That's a major difference.
The same is true of California zinfandel. The 2001s are marvelous with a rating of 90-94. One year earlier those same wines were rated only 84. If I'm buying zinfandel, I want the 2001 not the 2000.
For merlot, 1999 was a great year, but 2000 was very average. The same is true of white wines. California's 1999 chardonnays were stunning. The 2000 vintage was good, but not the equal of the 1999s.
Do come to wine tastings, ours or any others, for the opportunity to compare a number of wines for a very reasonable and money-saving fee. You can only try six or seven different wines for $25 or $30 at a tasting. Buy one of each at your favorite store and compare the cost.
Our next tasting is May 29. Do plan to be there.
