I'm Going to Horrify the Wine Snobs...

Cafe Society
1

Due to an allergy to barley, I’ve had to give up beer. Not that I ever consumed great quantities, but it was nice to have the occassional one with dinner. Alas, no more…

Well, OK, there’s wine. Now, truthfully, I don’t know much about wine and I’ve always been intimidated by it. So if my taste (as revealed in the following) isn’t sophisticated enough for you - tough. We all gotta start somewhere.

Now, the last couple times I’ve been to Outback Steakhouse I’ve had wine with the dinner instead of beer. I like the way they arrange their wine list from sweet to dry, so even wine idjits like myself can make some sort of choice. I’ve had good luck ordering from the middle of their list. Good luck, in this case, being defined as “I liked the way it tasted and the way it went with the meal”. I kinda wish I remember which white I had a couple months ago, all I really remember was that it was from the middle of the list and it was neither chardonary nor zinfandel.

Last night I had Black Opal Shiraz with my steak, which also made me happy.

Now, while I was consuming said meal, I was lamenting to my husband that, outside of eating establishments where one may buy wine by the glass, one seemed compelled to buy a multi-serving bottle. And this is a problem, because I have an alcoholic drink about once every three months and I rather doubted an open bottle of wine would keep anywhere near that long. I did not want to increase the rate of my inbibing, nor did I want to waste 3/4 of a bottle of wine every time I indulged. My husband takes a drink about once a year, if that often, and has gone years between alcoholic beverages. He didn’t want to acquire a wine habit, either (in fact, he’s become a big fan of non-alcohol beers, which he describes as “all of the flavor and none of the stupid”) I opined that someone should sell single-serve bottles of wine for those of us, who like myself, enjoy a very occassional single glass of alcohol.

Well, I was at the grocery store today and lo - there were single-serve bottles of wine next to the wine coolers and fruity-tooty drinks! So I bought a four-pack of Vendage Shiraz, on the theory that even if it was flavor of sewage I wouldn’t be out many buckazoids, and that there was a very good chance it was a decent table wine for the likes of unsophisticated me.

OK! Now the first real question: - how do I store this? I don’t really want to crack it open tonight (I’m thinking it would go nicely with my next beef stirfry, which may not be until Sunday night). Even if did, though, that would leave me with three bottles until next time, which might be a month or two away. Fridge? Cool dark room temperature pantry shelf? I do not own a wine cellar, nor do I intend to build one, nor do I intend to save any of these bottles for posterity. I’m looking to store 'em for maybe 6 months tops.

Second question: Could someone either tell me (BRIEFLY!) the characteristics of a couple varieties so I may become better acquainted with this venerable and ancient beverage without requiring a college degree, or point me to a website that talks in plain English sans high-flown metaphors about this? I’m looking to obtain a decent beverage to go with pretty average dinners, I’m not interested in acquiring a new hobby at this time.

I’ve got a few terms I’m working with:

Whites
Chardonay - isn’t this pretty sweet?
Zinfandel - the “pink stuff”. Not so sweet as Chardonnay. Actually, it’s a little sweeter than I really most like, but I’m not at all famillar with whites
Reisling - the name is famillar, but I can’t recall the taste although I know I had it years ago.

Reds
Merlot - I have a feeling this one is too sweet for my taste.
Port - I haven’t a clue. Mama only used it for cooking. If I’ve ever drunk any, it was decades ago.
Shiraz - I liked this one. It’s the right mix of sweet/dry for my taste, and it doesn’t take quite so much like grape juice gone off (I’ve never been much of a fan of grape juice, although I do like wine. Go figger)

Then there’s the “cabernet sauvignon” and “pinot noirs” and stuff I really know jack about.

So… who can give me some pointers? Wine types, brands, whatever. I have no ingrained preferences for country of origin. I’d like guidance towards inexpensive but tasty.

2

I read that barley contains the same toxic substance as ricin. The reason that ricin kills people and barley doesn’t is that ricin also has a “door-opening” protein that helps the toxic stuff penetrate cells, while barley does not.

3

Merlots are not sweet. Port is a fortified wine and is sweet.

Chardonnay can be sweet or dry depending on the estate it’s from. Chardonnay tends to be one of the most full-bodied white wines and usually has a buttery mouthfeel with hints of pear. But as a white, it’s not as rich as a Merlot.

4

OK… what do you mean by “full-bodied”? (the “buttery mouthfeel with hints of pear” actually sounds quite good…)

And how do I distinguish sweet from dry Chardonnay? Or do you just have to somehow or other know?

5

I am far, far from being an expert. Here’s some of what I do know (or think I know):

I never store red wine in the fridge. A shelf at room temperature is fine. I have a small wine rack – 6 bottles – on a shelf next to my dining room table. I rarely keep a bottle of wine for 6 months, but sometimes a good one sits there for 2 or 3 months before we get around to drinking, and they’ve all been fine.

As for drinking it with beef stirfry: I don’t eat beef, but in my experience Asian dishes are better paired with white than red. Something about the spice in the food, I think. When I drink syrah/shiraz, it’s often with a creamy or cheese-filled pasta. YMMV.

I started learning about wine by having tastings with friends (hey, everyone, bring over a bottle of [whichever wine I feel like learning about] and we’ll compare! Sip, rinse, repeat). Then my wife bought me a book by Oz Clarke, who makes it easy for beginners to learn different wines and pair them with food.

A few more thoughts:

[ul]
[li]Zinfandel comes in red, too. Good stuff.[/li][li]I have not yet had a bad Spanish red.[/li][li]If it tastes good, it is good.[/li][/ul]

6

Broomstick,
Screw the snobs. (The guy and I made over 200 bottles of our own wine last year and we still hate wine snobs.) Wine is for drinking! And life is too short to drink bad wine. (Bad wine = wine you don’t like.)
Step 1 - Drink what you like. Write down the types of wine that you like - I list them in my little date book when I’m out. You may want to note the awful ones also.
Step 2 - Experiment when you have a chance - buy inexpensive bottles to share or just to taste. If you get a bad bottle, use as marinade or uncerimoniously dump. Good wine can be had for 5 bucks a bottle.

To some of your questions -
Rieslings are white and light. They can be lightly sweet. Usually inexpensive and very tasty. This is what I use in fondue - maybe you have had it served with fondue before. Refreshing, cool and lively are words I’d use to describe…

Store your little bottles in a dark coolish spot. These can be upright 'cos I bet they don’t have corks (wine w/corks should be stored on their sides.)

Ports are fortified - they have extra hooch added. They’re the single-malt scotch of the wine world. Age and quality really matter - and they can be a little pricey. I’d recommend a Warre’s ruby port. Yummy. Might be too sharp-tasting for many beginners. Excellent with cheese and crackers. Be cautious of getting loaded!

The difference between sweet and dry - sweet wines have some sugar left that wasn’t fermented. (This can be natural or added.) You should be able to taste the difference, but there can be variations in how people view them based on their own palates and preferences. Experience will make a difference - I know what really dry wine is (Oh God, I think this wine just sucked all moisture from my whole face.)

The Black Opal Shiraz is a favorite of mine as well - the sort of spicy wine that is perfect with hearty meals. Black Opal makes a Merlot/Cabarnet blend that is also good.

Merlot is not normally sweet . You may like this as you seem to like the Shiraz.

Cabarnet is the basic red wine - it can vary widely and can be either wonderful or scary.

Any other pressing questions?

7

I might try a white with the stir-fry, but since it’s MY beef stir-fry and thus I know the meat and the spices used (minimal), and I now know the taste of shiraz, I think they’ll go together. Call it an experiment.

Yes, I agree - I’m just trying to minimize the bad ones I encounter!

[quote]
Store your little bottles in a dark coolish spot. These can be upright 'cos I bet they don’t have corks

[quote]

You are correct, sir.

Oh, dear - I do like single-malts. Well, some of them. Some of them taste like a barn fire.

It may be simply the folks I’ve spent time with over the years, but there seems much more tolerance among scotch drinkers for “I don’t like that variety/taste/flavor note” than among wine drinkers.

[quote]
The Black Opal Shiraz is a favorite of mine as well - the sort of spicy wine that is perfect with hearty meals.

[quote]

Which is probably why it went so well with the steak and potatoes I had last night.

I’ll keep that in mind.

For drinks I generally prefer a happy medium between “sweet as bubblegum” and “commercial dessicant chemical”. I find most drinks aimed at women as too sweet for my taste, would actually prefer something leaning slightly towards bitter or sour, even.

Not at the moment - if I think of any I’ll speak up.

Thanks, guys.

8

White zinfandel is pink- zinfandel is a red.

You really want to drive the wine snobs crazy? Pick up a bottle of Two Buck Chuck! Charles Shaw Winery, sold at Trader Joe’s for $1.99 per bottle, several varieties. Folks say they aren’t half bad…

9

I second what Snowcarpet said. Drink what you like. The only bad wine is one that you don’t like. Period (well, ok, mostly, period ;).) Taste is subjective, there just ain’t no gettin’ around that.
I think bag-in-the box wines would be absolutely perfect for you. There are some pretty good ones on the market now. The wine will stay fresh for a month or slightly longer after you tap it.

Check out these interesting articles on boxed wines for more info and recommendations for brands:

Think inside the box

Calif. wineries go outside the bottle

Also, definitely check out these wine education resources at recognose, the first 3 PDFs on the page list some varietals and their general characteristics as well as characteristics found in wine from certain winemaking processes and flaws.

The mouth-feel wheel will give you an idea of what is meant by terms like ‘full-bodied.’

Most of the resources on the site are excellent and straightforward, you don’t need to be a wine whiz to understand them.

Other misc. pointers - You’ve got Zinfandel under whites. I know you meant ‘White Zinfandel’ by your description, but someone else might not. Zinfandel is a red wine, so be careful what you ask your wine shop or a wine steward for.

If you like Shiraz, you’ll like Syrah - same grape, different name. There do tend to be some stylistic differences between the ‘Aussie Shiraz’ and the ‘American Syrah’, but overall if you like one you’ll probably like the other.

Rieslings are all over the map. They can be nearly bone dry or exceedingly sweet. They’re usually floral and aromatic. (it’s one of my favorites.)

I can try to answer any more questions, or at least offer more website recommendations.

And you have my sympathies on the no beer thing. Ouch!

10

Couple of suggestions…(IANAWS)

If you like shiraz, also try a Pinot Noir (pee-no no-ar).

For a different white to try, I really like pinot grigio (pee-no gree-zhee-o). Many wineries describe the “taste” of the wine on the bottle, and grigios can be drier or slightly sweet, but often have fruity characteristics such as pear or melon.

And a *great * thing to have on hand (because you’re probably not going to find a great variety of single-serve wines) is a Vacu-Vin Wine Saver, available at amazon or probably you’re local wine shop or Bed Bath & Beyond type store (I think I found mine at Tuesday Morning years ago.) It’s basically a very simple hand pump that corks and sucks the air out of the bottle. It’ll keep that barely touched open bottle fresh for a couple of weeks or more…

Enjoy!

11

I got this far and fainted. :eek:

:confused:

“give up beer?”

:eek: :frowning: :eek: :frowning: :eek: :frowning:

12

As for storage, put ‘white’ wines in the fridge. Store ‘red’ ones outside the fridge.

13

heck, the other day, we had a steak with proscuitto and goat cheese and a glass of…rosé. Yep, Rosé. See, it was my birthday, and despite the weekend-long celebrating, when my hubby made me such a nice meal, we just both felt we needed SOMETHING to toast with. But we didn’t have any red wine and didn’t want to open the bottle of white we had (and forget the icewines!), so we opened the Henry of Pelham rosé. It wasn’t great with the steak, but went very well with the veggies we had, so overall, it was ok!

Though we kind of are wine snobs… sometimes, you just gotta be crazy! hehehe

14

Chardonnay is actually one of the driest of white wines. The typical California Chard is described as buttery & oaky. “Buttery” is general a mouthfeel thing - it tastes almost oily, thick and big. “Oaky” comes from the Oak casks it’s aged in.

White Zinfandel - ie, the “pink stuff” - is very, very sweet. Most wine snob types barely even consider it wine. If you like it, go for it - but if it’s too sweet for you, you’re not the only one who feels that way.

Riesling, IMO, is one of the most interesting of the whites. Depending on who makes it, it can be quite sweet (though not as sweet as a white zin) to very dry. I think the best of all Rieslings are somewhere in the middle. Experiment with Rieslings - they’re very complex, and it’s not hard to find decent riesling at a good price.

Merlots aren’t typically sweet at all. In fact, it’s pretty hard to find a sweet red wine in the US at all - they range from fruity to dry, but the fruity ones aren’t sweet. Merlots are usually described as soft and round, not overly complex but rarely distasteful.

Shiraz isn’t typically described as sweet, but I think I know what you mean. It’s generally spicy with some fruit to it. There’s some interesting Shiraz coming out of Australia, and it’s gaining popularity in the US. Yummy.

If you like Shiraz, a Cabernet Sauvignon is like a shiraz only less spice and more fruit. Think big & rich. Beware, though - Cab Sav is one of those grapes that has gotten very popular, and there’s plenty of icky ones out there.

Pinot Noir, along with Cab Sav, is one of the big grapes in the wine world. Pinots are not quite as big and rich as Cab Savs, but are quite complex and very much worth it to try.

An interesting note is that all the wines you’ve mentioned are actually the name of the grape used to make them. In the “new world” - ie, the US, Australia, South America, and New Zealand - wines are named by the grape used. In the “Old world” - France & Italy mostly - wines are named by the region they come from. For example, Bordeaux, an area in France, makes their wines mostly from Cab Sav and Merlot, but traditionally the only wording on the bottle is “Bordeaux” and then the town or smaller region within Bordeaux where that wine was made.

As far as what little mini-wines are going to be good, well, I gotta tell you - I’ve never met one I liked. But that’s the wine snob in me. My advise is to just keep trying them, and make a note of the ones you like, since really that’s all that matters.

Something tells me, though, that given the length of the OP and your general interest, you might find yourself graduating to the big bottles sooner than you think!

15

I had a bottle of an Argentinian Rose Malbec the other night, and it was fantastic. Light, sweet, and spicy, somewhere between a red and white but at the same time unlike either. Rose has a bad name because of White Zinfandel and other overly-sweet pink wines. Traditionally, rose is a legitimate type of wine, and I’m hoping that we’ll be seeing more of it in the US.

I’ve also had roses that tasted exactly like red wine. Very disconcerting. Good, though.

16

When my wife and I first met 15 years ago, we both liked Sutter Home White Zinfandel. Now neither of us can tolerate it. It’s very sweet. It’s not really a white wine; it’s more like a blush. Most wine zinfandels don’t even have vintages. (They are usually blends). All in all, most white zinfandels are about halfway between real vintage wines and wine coolers. :slight_smile:

Since then, we both gradually drifted to California Chardonnays. You can get some fantastic wines for very reasonable prices ($10-20/bottle). My wife and I have gotten to the point that not only do we have favorite labels, but we really notice the difference between different vintages (years the grapes were grown). We joke that we are turning into “wine snobs.”

Chardonnays range from clean and crisp to relatively heavy and “buttery” with a lot of “mouth-feel.” I tend to prefer the latter. Chardonnays are not particularly sweet.

For reds, merlots and shirazes are lighter than cabernets. The latter tend to have much more tannin. (Tannin has a somewhat bitter taste that dries out your mouth and makes you pucker up.)

Port is a fortified wine that is cloyingly sweet. It’s traditionally drunk at Navy dinner functions. Kind of an acquired taste. Goes well with cigars. :smiley:

17

Slight nitpick - Vintage refers to the year the grapes were harvested. For California Chards (and, well, most if not all Calif. wines I’d imagine) that does happen to be the same year the grapes were grown, but in Australia for example, ‘grown’ doesn’t exactly hold true, since bud break is near the end of one year, and harvest is near to mid of another. (Vintage 2006 has, for the most part, been picked in Australia, while vintage 2006 grapevines have just flowered in the US.) - Also - just read this yesterday - vintage requirements have been lowered in the US from 95% to 85% for wine with an appellation of origin designation, while wines from an AVA will remain at 95%. Good news overall I think.

Since California has a relatively consistent growing climate, I still struggle with vintage differences, especially for larger wineries that try to keep a familiar taste year to year for their loyal consumers. I imagine that with the lower vintage date requirements, vintage will be even harder for me to detect. And I agree, you can get some great CA chards for bargain prices. Many CA chards go head to head with the best Burgundy or Chablis have to offer.

18

Roses are are great, and a real wine lover will appreciate all manners of the liquid, whether white, blush, or red. Snobs who turn their noses down on roses are putting on airs, or don’t know what they’re talking about. They can be very good. Now, I personally have never had a rose that tasted like a red. I’ve had some very good ones, but they all tend to be “short,” by that I mean they have a light and quick aftertaste. They tend to be quaffing wines, and I associate them with impromptu picnics in the park. They’re the perfect wine for a hot summer day, where you want something with flavor and some complexity, but nothing overbearing on the pallate. My favorite roses have been from either pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon, or a Hungarian varietal called kekfrankos (sometimes called Blue Franc).

19

Don’t get me started on Roses. They are, without a doubt, the most misunderstood wines in the world. You can thank White Zinfandel for that nonsense. The French make some awesome Roses, as do a few folks in California. Check out Heitz Cellar Grignolo Rose for a truly phenominal “pink” wine. Head to the south of France if you want some better examples.

20

In my experience with them, until I gave up, they aren’t half bad, no. That is, half the bottles aren’t bad, half get poured down the sink, sometimes even only after a sniff. Charles Shaw exists because of the glut of grapes being produced (IIRC especially in areas that aren’t considered very good for grape-growing); they get bought up for a bargain and churned out into this stuff. Don’t fool yourself with ideas that it’s conditioned in wooden casks - hell, a lot of even higher-end wineries ferment in stainless steel tanks and only certain of their wines get the special treatment.

As long as you’re at Trader Joe’s (presumably), forget the Charles Shaw - it’s $2.99 in Chicagoland anyway - and spend under $10 a bottle on many of their wine offerings, which have yet to disappoint me.