Comments on: A name that will live in infamy

By: David Moles

David Moles — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 23:52:32 +0000

(3) Actually bloody taste the thing and make your mind up whether you like it or not is all very well if you have a limited selection and don’t travel much — personally, as a Northern California resident transplanted to the Pacific Northwest, I’m fond of some reds from Dry Creek Valley, the Rogue River, and the Columbia Gorge. But once you get outside what you’ve had the opportunity to taste personally and have to (gasp!) go into a wine shop and buy a strange bottle, you’re screwed. I’m sure when I was in grad school in England a few years ago I had an unparalleled opportunity to finally develop some familiarity with French and Italian wines. Since it would also have been an unparalleled opportunity to go broke even faster than I already was, I passed it up — and mostly drank Australian, since at least I knew a few of the winemakers and could get a vague idea from the labels of what the stuff might taste like. I’m not saying I’m in favor of what M. Gaymard is proposing — he should probably be shot on the basis of the oak chips alone — but that’s what the French winemakers are up against. What should they be doing?

By: phersu

phersu — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 22:59:35 +0000

Actually, the real problem with Gaymard is not this so-called “Crime Against Oenology”. He is also known as a Pro-Life Conservative and may be a future leader of the UMP (the main right-wing party)…

By: David Salmanson

David Salmanson — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 16:31:25 +0000

For whatever reasons, oak chips impart a completely different flavor than oak barrels. The former makes a wine taste like wood, the latter gives some wines a flavor akin to that of (God help me) a Good Humor Toasted Almond ice cream bar. A good resource on cheap eminantly drinkable French Wine is http://www.moorebrothers.com. I have enjoyed many awesome under $10 bottles of French, Italian, and German wine courtesy of these guys. Re: varietal labelling. I’m for it. If I’m drinking Australian Red, I want Shiraz as the base. The mass-produced Australian Red Shirazes and blends are all pretty solid. But Australian merlot? blech. We do lose something when we fetishize the grape. Blends can rock your world and give the winemaker back some control that weather can mess up.

By: MQ

MQ — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 00:28:55 +0000

Oak chips are already legal in vin de pays, have been for a while. They are just illegal in the AOC wines. And vin de pays are often labelled by varietal as well. What am I missing here?

By: dsquared

dsquared — Mon, 02 Aug 2004 23:28:02 +0000

Tracy raises a decent issue here; there is of course an element of pure snobbery in my post, but what the hey. The only practical solution that I’ve found is that I only ever eat in the same two or three restaurants, so I more or less know their wine lists off by heart.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Mon, 02 Aug 2004 18:49:51 +0000

I never drink French swill. Even the name is off-putting. But I don’t mind French wine.

By: Phomesy

Phomesy — Mon, 02 Aug 2004 12:27:28 +0000

Do people outside France really still drink that nation’s swill?

By: Tracy

Tracy — Mon, 02 Aug 2004 09:21:52 +0000

As one of those horribly uninformed vulgar people, who grew up in NZ, I prefer a grape varietal system to the incredibly confusing French one. Of your 3 ways of ordering wine, I have other things to do with my time than become a grape tasting expert, I don’t eat at the sort of restaurant that hires well-informed wine waiters, and I don’t have enough money to buy bottles of wine randomly in the hope that some of them turn out to be the sort I like. An attitude that a NZ sauvigon blanc is probably going to be a pretty good drink has stood me in pretty good stead, though I learnt my lesson about grape varities varying after getting overly excited on tasting my first couple of pinot gris and then having several let-downs. And then I recognise several varities and years that tend to be very good (anything by Nautiulis, Kim Crawford 2002 Unoaked Chardonnay [which totally put me off oaked ones], etc, etc.) What sort of basic rule can you apply to French wines to start making sense of them, and being reasonably confident of getting a wine you like, without having to memorise the whole system?

By: informant

informant — Mon, 02 Aug 2004 08:15:26 +0000

Cigarettes used to be marketed avidly on the qualities of their taste. After three good sips wine is not about taste, it’s about what it does to your brain. The conceit is Puritan residue. Good wine does good things to the brain, bad does bad, and great wine does great things to the mind and the soul, and the heart. The next day’s a good qualifier as well. Great wines don’t poison. dsquared- A valiant defense of something which, like language, we allow the diminuition of at our peril. There is a spirit now among us that would have our moral stance founded in the laboratories, our needs itemized by the minimal standards set when they’re not met. Great wine is not a matter of preference, it is great wine, it will be great wine if there is not one human being left who can recognize it; and like great poetry its cultivation and preservation are not consumer choices. Their defense is the responsibility of those vouchsafed the knowledge and the palate to discern them.

By: doghouse riley

doghouse riley — Mon, 02 Aug 2004 06:54:36 +0000

the USA, however, has no excuse for this; the Californians were well on their way to developing a sensible AOC structure when they decided to jump on the bandwagon Sorry if I’ve misunderstood you, but varietal labeling in California dates to the 1930s and 40s and the work of wine writer Frank Schoonmaker. The best California wines were always varietally labeled, and after the famous—or infamous—Paris tasting of 1975, variety became an aesthetic. I remember shopping for 1978 Beaulieu Georges de la Tour and being told it was “100% Cabernet!” The AVA system has nothing to do with teroir and everything to do with creating exclusive marketing niches. Add that to an archaic system wherein every state controls alcoholic beverage sales within its borders, and a national character which for some reason empowers three or four publications to grant every wine in the world a numerical score on a 100-point scale, and somehow, within a decade, every damn wine in the world began to taste the same. And California, which used to make some good $6 wines, now makes a bunch of overwrought $6 wines, aimed at people who think wine is supposed to taste like oak or blackcurrants or pepper, and they all cost $40.

By: ChrisPer

ChrisPer — Mon, 02 Aug 2004 06:42:29 +0000

I don’t care if you call Australians philistines. If fewer foreigners condescend to drink our wines, the good stuff is easier to buy. And my pick of Monty Python wines is the Melbourne Old and Yellow – a good fighting wine. As for French wines… no doubt there are ordinary, good and great ones but why would I care how they are labelled? I can’t afford them.

By: HP

HP — Mon, 02 Aug 2004 03:26:02 +0000

You know, when the subject is oak barrels versus oak chips, I’m reminded how lucky I am that my home for the last eight years is just across the river from the Bourbon region…of Kentucky.

By: cleek

cleek — Sun, 01 Aug 2004 22:43:53 +0000

i admit ignorance of the subtleties of France’s wine laws, but, i was just in the store buying some wine and noticed shelves and shelves of George de Boeuf all produly displaying their varietals. what am i missing here?

By: Richard Bellamy

Richard Bellamy — Sun, 01 Aug 2004 20:52:57 +0000

While the locale may be more important than the grape variety, those who understand the health benefits prefer the “Cabernet Sauvignon” no matter what part of the world it comes from.

By: nick

nick — Sun, 01 Aug 2004 20:17:31 +0000

it hardly seems likely that it makes a great deal of difference if the wine aquires an oak flavor from being in an actual oak barrel or from being in a stainless steel barrel with oak chips in it. Ah, yes. The Sunny Delight argument. I'm not as much of a terroiriste as dsquared, but I do note that the wail of grief lasted days when I learned that the small scrubby field of mongrel grapes used by Sean Thackray for his astonishing 'Rhone' varietals had been dug up and replanted with Muuuuuuurloh. And good French wine is usually better than Australian at any price point over around £15/bottle, but it's maddeningly inconsistent until you get to silly price points.