On 11/10/11 3:08 AM November 10, 2011, Charles Haynes wrote:
On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 7:27 PM, Venkat Mangudi<s...@venkatmangudi.com> wrote:
My previous mail does not imply Charles is a wine snob. :) sorry, Charles.
Just that wines have matured in India.
Charles *is* a wine snob. Which is to say that, perhaps unfortunately,
I've "educated" my palate.
My palate was educated for me by growing up in a wine-making region and
having a father who made wine himself as a member of Les Freres de la
Fermentation Immaculate. (When he died, one of the Freres brought a
bottle from the first year of wine-making, a vintage that was nearly
undrinkable. Later efforts were more pleasing.) My mother owns hundreds
of wine glasses. When her North Beach apartment is filled to the gills
with party-goers, she never has to wash a wine glass during the party,
even if the guests switch from white to red and back again.
Anyway, I rarely drink alcohol. I do not like being drunk nor do I like
the sluggish feeling I have the next morning if I have consumed even one
alcoholic drink. I will accept a glass now and then, to be sociable, and
once in a great while I will order a glass in a restaurant.
If I am going to drink wine, however, I want to drink wine that I will
thoroughly enjoy. It has to be my style of wine (hence not one of the
perfumey ones, like Gewurztraminer), it has to be full of flavours I
enjoy and not have a hint of the flavours I dislike. Before accepting a
glass, I ask to taste a little tiny bit and then decide whether it is
worth drinking.
In my mother's circles, I am considered more than a bit eccentric. My
tastes do not necessarily track with the cost of wine. There are some
wines that people tell me are quite excellent, but they are not my
style, and hence I don't drink them. Extremely cheap wines, however
(less than $10 US a bottle, typically) generally don't do it for me.
They might be innocuous enough to drink if you're looking to get tipsy,
but they don't have enough complexity to make it worth my while.
I have never tasted an extremely expensive bottle of wine, certainly not
if we're talking into the thousands of dollars a bottle. I have tasted
wines that run hundreds of dollars a bottle, and very few of them tasted
enough better than the $30-50 a bottle wines that I would consider
paying for them.
But I am not a wine drinker. I prefer tea, and even the most expensive
teas (such as the old tree oolongs) are far cheaper per serving than
moderately priced wines.
This is one reason I prefer double-blind horizontal tastings, where I
can discover that I actually like a cheap wine almost as much as the
astronomically priced wines and stock up on the cheap stuff! For
example, I have a rather expensive taste for nice Champagne. Krug '90
for example. :)
Nice champagne is truly an experience. If I can't find Perrier-Jouet
Grand Brut (my favourite over many decades now, quite reliably delicious
from year to year), the California Chandon (particularly the Reserve
Brut) is a methode champenoise wine that approaches the experience of
some of the finer French champagnes.
Many of the blanc de noirs are also excellent, and often sell for less
than more traditional champagnes or methode champenoise wines.
(My feeling for champagne is somewhat different from my feeling for
other wines. I truly enjoy a fine champagne, and am quite willing to pay
the price for it the next day. Once or twice a year, anyway.)
--
Heather Madrone (heat...@madrone.com)
http://www.sunsplinter.blogspot.com
Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its
best is power correcting everything that stands against love.
- Martin Luther King
