April 23 2008
There are a couple of alleged unspoken truths to being a wine enthusiast. These “truths” are like unwritten baseball rules; for example, don’t watch your homer leave the ball park before running to first base and, my favorite in dubiousness, a pitcher can throw some “chin music” high and tight, but not AT a guys head. You know, these are things that occur as rules amongst men.
The first rule in the wine world is the notion that a wine enthusiast presumably drinks mostly red wine. The second is that this wine is presumably on the expensive side.
I find that lately I have been enjoying “talking reds and drinking whites,” and cheap whites at that, completely flying in the face of prevailing wisdom.
Surely, nobody that purports to be a major wine fan would actually drink more whites than reds and they certainly would not be drinking $10 whites from Australia.
Australian vino? You mean an industrial white? Perish the thought, right?
I am a wine polygamist. In fact, I am a wine polygamist with mistresses. Over the winter, I think I drunk whites to reds 2-1 and from all over the place, forsaking my biases. As I have mentioned before, I drink many whites mostly because it is easier to find one under $15 that does not disappoint.
In fact, I can go to Cost Plus World Market, buy a half dozen bottles of whites seemingly at random, each under $15, and have five out of the six bottles turn out to be enjoyable quaffs.
Under the same set of circumstances, it would be about two out six reds.
I am a gambler, but sometimes I do not feel like throwing money away. If I had a nickel for every wine bottle that languished in the fridge under a vacu-vin until my guilt for dumping subsided sufficiently, well, I could probably buy a couple of $15 dollar bottles.
With this in mind, it does not bother me in the least to say that a large production Australian Viognier from Yalumba, Australia’s oldest family-owned winery, is a very nice wine and tremendous value at around US $10 – 11. That truth need not remain unspoken.
Posted in, Good Grape Wine Reviews. Permalink | Comments (3) |
A friend who took me to the Wine Discount Warehouse in Chicago turned me on to Yulumba a few years ago. Amazingly enough, they put out a really nice little muscat (and one other sweeter dessert wine that escapes me). Great for the money.
I go through the Red and White phases as well. What I’m frustrated with is the ever rising prices of Pinot Noir. You’re lucky to find any bottle under $20 and 90 percent of the time they’re bunk! And good luck finding a DRC for under $100! I think the who’s who in the wine industry should scrape up some cash and make a movie about how great Merlot is. If Merlot prices sky rocket, that’s ok by me…
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“I am a wine polygamist. In fact, I am a wine polygamist with mistresses.”
Quote of the Year so far, with bonus points for topicality!