Gastro Gnome - Eat Better Wherever

Wine whine

jryoung said:
Is there any good way to tell if a beer is good? Are the notes "citrus and piney" or "skunks scent gland on a hot day". Cheap beer can be good even if manufactured in insane quantities, but how much difference is there between Rainier, PBR and Coors.....we all have our favorites though.

With the increase in wine consumption in the US, so did the manufacturing of wine. Wines made to be the same from bottle to bottle, year to year with literally no variance because of a heavy handed chemical process. Doesn't mean the wine is bad, just always the same.

When it comes to crafted wine, you just have to identify what you like. High alcohol and sugars with low tannins? High acid, high tannin? Somewhere in between? In this area it gets really tough to try and figure it out. In the beer realm if Im drinking an IPA i generally like them if they are sub 7% on alcohol, often closer to 6.5% and modest IBUs. For wine there are clues if they describe the process in making it. Alcohol can be a good starting point on the label, but then you beed to look towards things like....Was the white wine aged in steel or oak? Was the pinot noir crushed with whole clusters? What words to they use to describe the wine, bright? smooth? juicy? rustic?

At the end of the day it's subjective as hell. If you're buying at a grocery store it's a game of roulette, but once you find what you like stick with it, but there is no tell on what is going to be good. When you know what you like it's often best to go to a decent wine store and see if a sales rep can guide you to your preferences. For cheap wine, $10-15 a bottle it's best to look towards Italy, France or Spain...even Portugal. The old world countries do inexpensive wine so much better than we do because we tend to corporatize our inexpensive productions.
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While I appreciate the level of guidance, all of that is simply too high for my low level request.

Rainer, PBR, Coors, Keystone... they're all the same, slightly different, but all tasty. Most IPA's, if they're just trying to be beers, are good to great. If they try to be something else, they're bad. If the label says anything about an ingredient not on the Reinheitsgebot, then it's going to be bad.

My BIL brought 3 bottles of 94 pnt or greater wines to Thanskgiving. All were terrible. If it gives you a bitter beer face, then it shouldn't get high ratings. It's like a good lambic- THERE'S NOT SUCH THING! A lambic, by definition, is bad beer.

So for a "decent wine store" would that be Safeway or Fred Meyer?
 
jryoung said:
Blind tastings can be super fun and educational. I was at a dinner many years ago and the host put out a bottle in-between our flights. One of the individuals in the tasting was a pompous #*^@#* of a wine maker and everything thats wrong with "wine snobbery". We taste, we discuss, my wife raves about it, he says she's wrong, he doesn't like it....too simple and plain. Others start to echo my wife, then we reveal the bottle. A 1985 Domaine Romanee Conti Grands Echezeaux.....in gun terms, slightly above an entry level Perrazzi. Red in the face he got quiet, then after another 15 minutes "this is really coming around in the glass".

If you care to share, what bottles do you have?
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I will have to look when I get home.
 
neffa3 said:
While I appreciate the level of guidance, all of that is simply too high for my low level request.

Rainer, PBR, Coors, Keystone... they're all the same, slightly different, but all tasty. Most IPA's, if they're just trying to be beers, are good to great. If they try to be something else, they're bad. If the label says anything about an ingredient not on the Reinheitsgebot, then it's going to be bad.

My BIL brought 3 bottles of 94 pnt or greater wines to Thanskgiving. All were terrible. If it gives you a bitter beer face, then it shouldn't get high ratings. It's like a good lambic- THERE'S NOT SUCH THING! A lambic, by definition, is bad beer.

So for a "decent wine store" would that be Safeway or Fred Meyer?
Click to expand...

Our local Safeways have great selections, I'm sure Fred Meyer does too, but with grocery stores you sort of need to know what you're looking for first.
As for the "94 point" wines, that's a rabbit hole in itself, it's just someone who is often trying to explain their biases of the 30-06 over the 300WM, it's all subjective.

Technically it could be 94 points, but do you like it? Was it the right wine for the meal? And of course someones 94 points is someone else's 84.
 
jryoung said:
Was it the right wine for the meal?
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You lost me.

I will routinely make mandarin chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy. I do not believe that things "have to go together" something is either good or bad, and that distinction is independent of other foods/drinks.

I used to think that I could go based on styles, because merlot, Syrah, and chardonnay, along with anything sweet/dessert was on the no go list. But that only pairs down a couple of the isles at the store.
 
Often can’t go wrong with a Cotes du Rhône. I usually look for something with the AOC designation that was bottled on site.

Beaujolais Nouveau just hit the shelves recently if you’re trying to party on new wine.

That’s about all I know about the stuff. Usually just let my Frenchy GF do the choosing.
 
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