what to say when it's bad

Emery Davis wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net:

I would try a music or art metaphor. Not everyone likes neo contemporary,post modern deconstructed etc but somebody out there pays for it. In this one you might say "My it is very concentrated!" I am oak averse and that is one thing that I will point out, "You know we all have out tasstes and I have never been big on oak so this just isn'my cup of tea- I really like cubism you know?"

Heh, nice one. Knowing myself, I'd probably come out with "this reminds me of the sound Pete Townsend gets when the guitar burns, just after he's stomped it." :) Or maybe: "evokes the sound of a four year old violin student."

-E

I'm usually pretty blunt. I usually comment on how hard it is to make really good wine at home and that I wouldn't let an amateur remover\ my appendix.

I believe you are talking about a cousin who actually makes wine as a business, not your "home made" stuff.

With the home made stuff I usually say: "Interesting, it has a spritely acidity but it is a little rough on the edges, maybe try picking the grapes after Bastille day next time".

With friends asking your opinion on an allegedly great wine that they picked just for you by asking "an expert" but turns out to be worse than the home made one of the previous paragraph, you say: "Mmm, I can tell this was done by a top oenologist, very interesting, now if only he had used grapes".

I usually hem, haw, say something "wow, I'm really getting a lot of vanilla (or herbs, or whatever)" , say things like "just like in music, there are a lot of styles, no one likes all of them equally, that doesn't mean they're better or worse." Still, some people get offended because I don't like their Marquis-Phillips.

I usually hem, haw, say something "wow, I'm really getting a lot of vanilla (or herbs, or whatever)" , say things like "just like in music, there are a lot of styles, no one likes all of them equally, that doesn't mean they're better or worse." Still, some people get offended because I don't like their Marquis-Phillips.

My response is " rustic", " individual" and if really awful " what is the encepage?"

JT

I usually simply tell them that the wine is not to my taste. They then get to salvage themselves by thinking I obviously have lousy taste!!

Chuck

I think it is. Though put as tactfully as one can. So in the case of the Bordeaux as you described it, I may well saysomething like "This isn't really my kind of wine, I'm afraid. I can see your cousin has thought very hard about what he's doing, .(and then steer the conversation into how long he's been winemaking and so on). But as you rightly say the majority of French are completely blinded by the dread words "Apellation Bordeaux Controlée" and think that's a guarantee of a wonderful wine.

Sigh. I don't know how many bottles of Chateau Plonk I've been offered in the last 20 years.

-- All the best Fatty from Forges

What do you say when it really is a home made wine, i.e., made from a supermarket kit! A friend always took some of his kit wine to dinner parties, with great pride, of course, but his wife always made a beeline for the real stuff. Graham

Is that really true? It would surprise me if it were. I think most French probably have a pretty realistic view of generic Bordeaux. But many punters outside of France may be more naive.

To the original question... I would usually say the wine is not to my taste. The fact that a wine exists commercially is almost proof that it is a question of taste, and there are very few circumstances where I proclaim a wine to be BAD - they are usually wines that are faulty or bordering on being faulty. Home-made wines are another issue. Mercifuly I don't know anyone who indulges in that hobby ATM.

Either "cépage" (grape variety) or "encépagement" (grape mix). Please decide.

M.

I'd take a sip and ask the hostess if her cousin crushed the grapes with his feet and then I'd suggest she should tell him to take off his sticky smelly socks because the wine is only fit to be drank by Canadians.

Who could, perhaps, teach you English grammar!!

It is definitely true. Not only do us 3 expats in France confirm it, I've had the conversation with endless producers and cavistes.

Actually many people expect the French to be wine-savvy, but I don't think the percentage of knowledgeable people is any higher here than in most European countries.

With the exception of professionals I (an American) am almost invariably the most wine conscious of the party, I think I can say without too much egotism. (I don't include of course the experts on this group, where I don't rate myself nearly as highly! ;)) My French friends once made a big deal about "an American knows about wine, right" but now take it as a given more or less. Not that they don't have their own opinions!

You're kinder than most here. I align I guess more with John's encepage, I don't have the heart to say I really don't like it.

But I think your faith in the market is misplaced. Many wines exist only thanks to European or French subsidies, or to eventually be turned into alcohol. All things being equal these businesses wouldn't survive. Anyway I take your point that the wine in question was not "faulty" per se, just nasty.

I'm not sure how I feel about it personally, but I've noticed the vintners taking to the street and attacking the gendarmes again recently. Just some good old boys getting ready for summer vacation no doubt.

-E

Personally, this home winemaker would be thrilled to have knowledgeable tasters point out any defects or other quality issues. I ferment high-quality Sonoma and Sierra foothill grapes exclusively, never kits. I'm continually working to increase quality; I hope I don't inflict defective wines on my guests or hosts, but if I do I want to know about it so I can learn and improve future batches. And the more precise the criticism, the better.

Ernie in Berkeley To respond, rack off the LEES

Well, you live in France and I do not. So I will not argue.

But just to clarify... I was not ascribing a high level of wine connoiseurship to the French. I just imagined that they had an unromantic view of Bordeaux. That wine was more of a commodity, and price rather than label was a pretty good indicator of what you get at the lower end of the market.

It wasn't really a faith in the market that I was expressing. Just the observation that if someone buys something it must have some perceived value to the purchaser. Of course, if the wine is distilled that argument does not apply - but neither is it relevant. But when I was thinking of wines-not-to-my-taste but which I would hesitate to call bad, I was actually thinking mainly of the cheap, thin, often slightly sweet wines that flood our supermarkets from the likes of Gallo and Blossom Hill.

The two BAD examples I can think of right now were cheap Portuguese and Spanish wines - some sort of rotten grape or dirty winemaking I think. I'm not really sure why they were so bad. I have had plenty of cheap wines from those countries that have been perfectly acceptable.

For sure.

Yes, people expect them to be food-savvy too, and it turns out that they are no better on average than any other OECD nation, USA included. This explains why there are about 1000 McDonald's restaurants in France, and the fact that they are, so I hear, the most profitable in the world.

Most young people in France do not drink wine, they tend to prefer beer or those bottled mixed drinks, wine is seen as something for the over 40 crowd. On average, older people in France tend to drink a very narrow range of wines, mainly Bordeaux, in the belief that the word "château" is a guarantee of quality. Loire and Alsace wines are almost never ordered, on average people probably don't even know the Loire makes wine, or that Alsace is now part of France... :-) and so these wines are hard to find. On average restaurants have appallingly standardized wine lists, dictated by the local drinks broker usually. Contrast this situation with Belgium or Italy, where again on average one does fare a little better.

Another way of getting around the problem is to tell you hostess that the wine is far too young to be enjoyed now and that it would benefit from a couple of decades in the cellar. Imagine that you will be invited again: if the herbacious, overextracted notes have not vanished in favour of a memorable, smooth-as-silk mouthfeel (bet it won't!), well... you could still blame it on the storage conditions...

Yves

In Paris?

Apart from in the Loire, and Alsace, where it's more difficult finding anything else. I don't think you'll find many old people drinking Bordeaux in Alsace. Red wine is (of course) means Alsace PN.

Quite. It's the same in the shops too. The choice is mainly of local wines.

But I think you put too negative a spin on the situation. Restaurants and shops know and support their local producers. The good ones seek out the good local producers. Is that better of worse than having a broad national/international list? I'm not sure, but it's certainly a different approach.