Various, RAMBLING, wine questions from a newbie

There are some fine wines avauilable at around $10, but the stuff that really starts getting exciting is around $20-40.

No. Various components of wine have aromas that closely resemble those.

It does. The 'same' grape variety can be grown all around the world and this will produce quite different wines; even in grapes in the same locality, great differences can be noted.

'Cab'? Are you trying to be hip?

Is there a question here?

Not unexpected, but I'd still like to learn more...

Well, that would be out my price range for the average evening, and then, yes, maybe it's just too much for me then, to really enjoy wine, because $20 a bottle, for something really "exciting" is too much...

So, a Shyrah from California, that can be so very smooth and fruity (if I get the term right) can be SO different from the Australian Shiraz that I had that had a REALLY pronounced "bite" to it (and not from tanin), is mostly because of growing conditions and climate, and not from something that was added?

that has that...hard to find...

Yes.

Trying to explore a large number of wine types from all around the world is absolutely hopeless. As for myself, I drink wine only from Italy, which has an extremely large variety of grape types and growing conditions. That's bad enough! I suggest you try out a few wines from a given grape and region (California OR France OR Italy) and explore various price points. What you are doing now will not give you the kind of knowledge that you seek.

Try exploring only Chianti or Barolo or only Burgundy or only Bordeaux or only California Merlots.

I drink cheap wines for everyday drinking ($10-15) and spend $30-50 for special occasions. I do not drink wine every day, though.

I can suggest > > You, sir, are the victim of wine snobbery.

Don't be intinmidated by all the wine talk about 'nose', and all the rest. Simply pour the wine into a glass, swirl it once or twice, and drink it slowly. Don't make a big deal out of sniffing it. That is simply unnnecessary and pretentious. The wine's aromas will be evident in normal drinking.

Where do you live?

Nothing is 'added' to wine to give it the aromas you are speaking of.

Please stop, Dave.

Ah, we can not detect sarcasm.

And, thus, ends my brief time in alt.food.wine...

The jargon really isn't necessary to the enjoyment of wine. About the only help that it will provide is trying to describe what you like to a retailer, or wine-steward - or when describing a wine that you like, or did not like, in a forum/NG like this. Not that there is anything wrong with it, one just doesn't need to get too hung up on it. The more you learn about wine in general, the more that you will begin to look for descriptors to get more of what you like. You will find the jargon creeping in, in time.

The easiest way to begin "detecting" the elements in a wine is to relax your brain, inhale the wine, or taste it, swallow, then exhale out of your nose. Just think about what you are smelling/tasting. Does it remind you of something? Aunt Jane's apple pie? Blueberries you bought along the roadside in Maine? That tropical fruit smoothie that you had at Mango Mama's on the North Shore of Kaua'i? Unless one has led a very sheltered life, there are aromas and tastes that are embedded in your memory. Let them come out. Try and recognize what it is that you are smelling/tasting. With practice, your smell memory can really expand. Don't ever be afraid of telling someone what YOU perceive in the wine. Remember, your sensory experiences will be different than theirs. If you think it is tart cherry, and they say raspberry, no big deal. It tasted like tart cherry to YOU.

With the limited, though possible exception of oak chips having come in contact with the wine during fermentation, or aging, nothing is added. The elements exist in the wine naturally, though through the winemaker's art and skill some may be intensified, while some diminished.

As to aging, some wine is aged in wooden barrels, usually oak, some in stainless steel, and some in glass, usually the bottle that you took it home in.

Yes, the grape can exhibit totally different characteristics, depending on where it is grown, and how it is handled during it growth, harvest, vinification, aging, and even transport. Though beyond your stated price range, the differences between the Diamond Creek Cabs from Gravelly Meadow, Red Rock Terrace, and Volcanic Hill (all within a contiguous 22 acre parcel of land in Napa Valley, near Calistoga) are easily found. Same grapes, same lat/ lon, same year, same winemaker, all within 22 acres - three different wines. Many, many examples of similar exist. Hillside v valley floor, North facing v West facing, higher up a hillside v lower, but still on the same hillside - all of these factors can and usually do come into play. Now a winemaker may choose to diminish an aspect, or accentuate another, thus clouding the differences a bit, but they are there.

Don't know the Sausal Zin. I have seen, but not had the Goat-Rotie, AWA the Nederberg. SA is producing some good wines, but we don't get the full portfolio in AZ/US. I agree about the co-op, KWV. If you can find it, I'd like to recommend the Glen Carlou Grand Classique (Bordeaux blend) from Paarl. It was, when available in PHX, AZ US$12.97/btl. and worth more than 3x that price. Costco (retailer) has not carried it at any store local to me, so I do not know about its US importation, distribution. Glad I still have some left. Never tried it with much age, but now have a few leftovers with about an extra year in cellar.

Don't know this one, but Shiraz/Syrah can definitely exhibit some pepper, usually black pepper. One experiment would be to gather an Aussie Shiraz, a US Syrah, and a FR Rhône Syrah (a bit tough in the price range, but look and ask around). Try each one in a three-way taste-off. All will be vastly different. Same grape, different place.

The Norton is a nice Malbec. Almost any Mendoza region Malbec will be nice.

Again, taste the Philips next to a Kim Crawford, Marlbourough, NZ SB and see the difference. This all goes back to your earlier question about "place."

If you enjoy wine, then you are not wasting your money. We always decide on a "house wine," and pick a red and a white - well, maybe a few reds and a few whites, but you get the point. These are "value wines" for us. We buy them by the case and they are meant for friendly sipping after work, before dinner ( sometimes during dinner, but we usually get fairly specific with the "food wines."), basically whenever we feel like a glass of wine and only want pleasure and comfort, not something to contemplate and get "deep" over. Years ago, we set the budget at US$4.50/btl for a basic white, and did 2 cases, totally mixed, Chards, SB's, Pinot Gris/Grigio, Sémillon, and a few others. We didn't care about the "value," as each was under $4.50 at the time. We decided on a Chardonnay. For about ten years we did about the same thing. The cost/btl went up for inflation and, honestly, based on our changing tastes. Our "house white" is ~US$20.95/btl. The "house reds" range from ~US$ 8.00 - $30. We don't do the taste-off anymore (in Colorado, USA, it was a bit seasonal, as whites were more often consumed in late Spring, through early Autumn and in AZ, one can readily drink whites year around.), but compare notes and just go for what we like.

If you can work with a retailer, who really cares about what he/she sells, and listens to their clients, try a few "mixed" cases. Give them a budget, some likes and some dislikes, and trust them to pick some wines to try. Some you will like, some you will wonder what's the deal. Don't worry. Try to find the good from each, as you did pay money for them. Get the most that you can, even if it's a US$4.00 bottle of wine. Make note of the wines that you do like. Note where they came from, which varietal they are made from, which winery made them, etc. You will probably find a pattern developing. As you explore, you will probably find a way to expand your wine budget - car payments missed .... Dr's bill going unpaid... mortgage delinquent... nah, it's not THAT bad.

Most of all, ENJOY

One thing you might wish to do, Jeff, is let the subscribers know where you live. As this is an international NG, there are folk from almost every time zone reading the posts. It doesn't help for someone in Hong Kong to recommend a wine that is not imported to your country. I see that you used "$" and I do not know where Comcast offers services, but you could be in US, OZ, CA, or maybe one of the US protectorate island. It's also helpful to know what region one is in, as wines that are available all over Southern CA (California this time) might not be sold in Southern FL.

Hunt

So then spread it out. Don't drink as much in an evening, pour the rest into a smaller bottle (like a split or a few beer bottles) so that there is very little air, then recork them for the next day. It's much better to have a glass from a $20 bottle ($5) than an entire $10 bottle ($10 plus the asprin :)

Yep.

And it's "syrah" from California, the same grape as "shiraz" from Austraila.

Over the course of the next (however long it takes), try a variety of common wine types. For me, I would pick California wines because I go there often and they are very good. Also they are named for their grape, rather than the region, so this gives me a way to tell them apart. You could do the same with, say, France, or Italy. They name their wines for the region (and each regional name, or "appelation" has rules about how the wine should be made). This will limit the namespace while affording you a wide winespace.

Visit this site (or others like it):

One bottle can easily last for four meals, especially if you rebottle them into small bottles to keep the air out, and/or get a Vac-U-Vin wine stopper system (about $10, and $5 for two more stoppers).

After opening, store the wine in the refrigerator. For red wines, you can warm them up (from the fridge) by pouring out a glass into an ordinary glass glass and popping it in the microwave for five to ten seconds - just enough to take the chill out. Don't cook it!

This way you can enjoy a $20 bottle of wine over the course of a week or three, and even compare different wines with different foods.

You can't learn about wine without drinking it, and you can't learn about good wine by drinking poor wine (which doesn't mean cheap wine - there are good inexpensive wines, and bad costly ones)

Keep notes. It might even help to get a list of wine terms (flavors, armoas, etc) to cue you and see if you can detect them in the wine. But mostly don't sweat it. Enjoy it. (One of my tests is to see how much of the bottle is left after a meal :)

Jose

Don't let one tool chase you away from a normally very friendly, knowledgeable group of people. Hang around, talk about what you drank last night and ignore UC because he's mostly full of crap.

Andy

JR:

Try> >> >>

That's not necessarily true. I refuse to use wine jargon, even though I am familiar with it. I never 'talk shop' in a wine shop, never refer to Cabernet Sauvignon as 'cab', or talk about 'nose', etc. I use ordinary English. My conversations with wine-shop people (many of whom are very knowledgeable) consist of simply comparisons (is it more like Chianti Classico or Chianti Rufina?) or general questions about the vintage year of the bottle in question, or the background, if known, of the particular producer.

Some can and some can't. And an aroma that one person detects may not be detected by the next person. The name that one person gives an aroma may even be different from what the next person calls it.

My advice is not to worry about it. If you find a wine writer who gives a name to a certain aroma that you also detect and think is an appropriate name, then fine; you can rely on that writer's use of the word. But someone else may use the same word in a completely different way. We all have different palates and different noses, and react differently to tastes, smells, etc.

Not at all. If you enjoy the wines that you can buy at price point X (whatever X may be), that's just fine, and nobody else's opinion matters. I personally think there are lots of decent (but not great) wines for under $10, and that's what I drink most of the time. Although I'd like to have better wines, my pocketbook doesn't permit me to buy them every day.

Ok course.

Remember that whatever stuff like this you read on the bottle itself, rather than by an independent wine writer, is nothing but advertising. Do you always trust advertising?

No, they are not. In fact adding such things to wines is generally illegal.

Lots of factors: climate, environment, soil, the age of the vines, the weather that year, the winemaking techniques, the skill of the winemaker, the particular vintage, age of the wine, etc.

Finding wines you like can be difficult, and unless you stick with the same things you already know you like, you're going to waste money now and then (maybe sometimes even if you do stick with what you know you like; there are some bad bottles). One good technique for finding new wines to try is going to organized wine tasting, where you can try several wines of the same type and compare them to each other.

One definition of a gentleman is someone who knows how to play the bagpipes, but does not.

A gentleman notices the wine's aroma, but does not talk about it. A wink, nod, or glass lifted to the host is all that is required. Anyone who would sit at the table, swirl the glass in an grand sweeping gesture, shove his nose deep into the glass, and exclaim: "WOW! Check out that nose! It really smells like floor polish, roses, fluoride toothpaste, and hair bleach!" would be drawing attention to his complete lack of culture and refinement.

Same here. A $20 bottle twice a month is better than crap every day.

Salut/Hi Jeff,

le/on Tue, 28 Mar 2006 19:25:22 -0500, tu disais/you said:-

The first thing to say is that you should pay no attention to the guy posting under the name of Uranium committee. His views are "idiosyncratic" and at odds with the experience of almost everyone else here.

So read what the others have to say and dialogue with them.

When you meet a wine with that caracteristic, you will know. But it's also true that sometimes, we use words that are the closest approximation we have to the smell or the taste we get on a wine. Buttery is one such. If you've ever had a "buttery" chardonnay, you'll say AHA!!! I SEE what they mean, even if it doesn't really taste or smell like butter.

Sometimes people writing descriptors on wines are a little more concerned to please the winemaker, than to describe the wine. But I've certainly had wines which had a distinctly peppery taste, others with a real blackberry taste and yet others with a smell that could only be described as "reminding me of tobacco".

No, these flavours are NOT added. The same variety of grape certainly does vary widely, in flavour as to why... all sort of reasons. The grapevine is grown on different subsoils, with different amounts of exposure to the air and sun, some places will reduce the yield, Then there is winery technique. Crushing or not, what fermentation temperature and so on, there are myriad variables all of which can affect the flavour.

I don't blame you. But many here will give you good advice, though it might help if you say what part of the world you live in. We've got people in France, Austria, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the UK and Canada - just off the top of my head. oh... and a few from the USA as well.

Hello snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com,

The need to point out another's lack of refinement is, well, ...

Hello snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com,

Which of the following words are "ordinary English"?

- Cabernet

- Sauvignon

- Chianti

- Classico

- Rufina

You sure you don't use wine jargon?

You know perfectly well what I mean by 'jargon': 'legs', 'nose', 'earthy', 'jammy', etc. Of course, there's 'interesting', a polite term used to describe an unpleasant wine that someone else has purchased.

The names of grapes or wines or places are not 'jargon'.

Well, I'm not one to judge immediately...but, given a few times, that's a different story. Maybe Mr. Committee is having a bad evening.

Well, I was at a wine tasting once and had a chardonnay (can't remember what it was, but it was from California and unoaked), and it did have a buttery taste. I think that one I might be able to figure out. :-) I do recall it being much smoother than the standard chardonnay that I'm used to.

I find this very interesting. I figured that tastes could differ subtly based on conditions...I had no idea they could vary so much.

New Jersey. US.

Nothing wrong with $10 wines -- Sometimes it can be more difficult to find one that you really enjoy but they're out there.

Australian Shiraz can be all over the board - Some of the mass produced Rosemount/Lindemans is ok but I think that it's more intersting to find some of the lesser knowns. I'll throw out a few names (but have no idea on availablity).

Piller Box Red Shotfire Ridge (might be slightly over your price point).

Here are few NZ Sauvignon Blancs that should be in your price range:

Monkey Bay Oyster Bay Nobilo

And find a good local retailer that will listen to what you want and give accurate suggestions -- with no shucking and jiving.

Mike P

I would say that in general the the taste differences from the same grape are subtle. And that is how it should be - if you want the taste of tobacco, chew tobacco!. But these flavours people talk about do exist.

Most cheaper wines are simply bland, or have primary fruit aromas, e.g. Cab Sauv may well smell/taste of blackcurrant. Pay more are you will get a wider spectrum of more distinct flavours from the same grape, but I would not expect any one flavour to be clearly dominant.

BTW, note that *some* flavours *can* be added by winemakers, e.g. oak chips *can* be used to give an oaky flavour, in warmer climates tartaric acid is often used to give the wine a sharper taste, and a few wines can be legally sweetened with sugar (Champagne, Sherry) or grape juice (German wines). There may be one or two other examples, but I think that is about it when it comes to flavour changing additives.

I had this once and really liked it. There was a LOT of sediment in it, so next time I'll decant it probably.