…because I have a wonderful recipe from Martha Stewart, wherein she covers her Thanksgiving turkey with cheesecloth and keeps it saturated “with butter and a full-bodied sweetish white wine”.
So another vote for “a wine I’d cook (and make the house smell wonderful) with.”
Well, well, ignorance fought! It looks like just over 8% of that selection are screw tops, though I bet none of them are exported to Canada. I really have never seen a California wine with a screw top, while they’re plentiful in Australian wines and among some Canadian wineries.
My two cents. Yes, people can taste flavors like tobacco, vanilla, lychee, raspberry, etc. My wine buddys can often identify really specific things like which clone of pinot noir was used, not just that it was pinot noir. American wines are generally over priced, bit they can hold their own against France, Spain, and Italy.
I buy a lot of Spanish wine because it is a good value. Next time you make steak at home, go to a wine store and ask them to recommend a good Cabernet or a Bordeaux (usually a blend of Cabernet and something else)to have with it. Let them know you will be drinking it soon, not putting away.
To me, a great wine is one that makes you want to take a bite of food, and the bite of food makes you want to have a sip of the wine.
I always understood the admonition to center around the idea of “Don’t use cooking wine, dumbass!”, because cooking wine is typically very low quality wine and intentionally salted all to hell so winos and bums don’t drink it.
But there’s absolutely no reason to take the saying and make a leap to thinking that you can’t cook with Two Buck Chuck because ***you ***prefer to drink higher dollar wine. Or that you have to cook with Pinot Noir because you won’t drink Malbec.
That’s absurd, because in most cooking applications, you’re just looking for a grapey flavor, acidity and sometimes alcohol.
Variety doesn’t matter either, other than the broadest red/white/rose category. Chicken piccata with red wine would be wrong, but it doesn’t matter if you use Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Pinot Gris or even old white vermouth that’s not good for cocktails any more.
Basically the admonition should be “Don’t cook with wine that you couldn’t drink.” not “wouldn’t drink”.
I love this. We’re having an informal home wine tasting to choose wines for my daughter’s wedding. Everyone’s bringing their two favorite (affordable!) reds and a white, and we’ll do a blind taste test.
Your bon mot makes me want to provide more than just crackers in between tastes.
Oddly, for me a truly great wine makes me want to wrestle the sommelier to the ground and shove my tongue down their throat. I resist the urge. My last Opus One was so good it made me flip a table!