How to appreciate wine
Today I splurged. It's the night before the day before Thanksgiving, all my readings for class are done, and it's been a while since I enjoyed a glass of wine.
So I spent $15.99 on a bottle of Madiran, a French wine that was recommended by the employees at Bello Vino (who are highly knowledgeable and extremely helpful). I described to them the Bulgarian Mavrud and how it tastes - they knew my budget was below $20. And they found me a similar full-bodied, dark-berried wine that sits on my palate and sends warm happy tingles down my spine.
The secret to my extreme enjoyment of this bottle (I sit here typing this as I sniff the glass, sip and swish the wine around my mouth to maximize my enjoyment) is that I've been drinking cheap wine.
There was a point in my life when I thought that anything under $15 wasn't worth drinking. I was living large in DC, drinking great wines, and at some point I stopped appreciating them.
Since I've moved back to Ann Arbor, I've weaned myself down to Charles Shaw Cabernet Sauvignon from Trader Joe's - otherwise known as Three Buck Chuck. It's not bad. It's perfectly drinkable. And it really makes me appreciate this bottle.
When sniffing the wine, I smell multiple layers of flavors - European blueberry, black currant and blackberry. The flavors are magnified when I taste the wine. I have an appreciation for this wine brought on by drinking so many mediocre cheap bottles - where the biggest element in the bouquet is the smell of wine. I'd almost forgotten - wine isn't supposed to smell like wine.
So the secret for those of us who love good wine who are on a budget is to restrict ourselves to really cheap wine (not garbage wine - that's just a recipe for a headache - just cheap, decent wine) 29 days out of the month. And 1 day out of every month, drink a $15-20 bottle. That bottle suddenly takes on heightened characteristics of excellence and becomes a great experience.
Now that I've shared that with my readers, I will return to my glass of wine, and sniff and swish until I'm satisfied.
And tomorrow night, I'm going home with a bottle of brut rose champagne from my favorite Oregon vintners, R. Stuart, to share with my mother. It should be an excellent evening. After all, the holidays are all about extravagance and splurging and what better way to splurge than with good booze.
So I spent $15.99 on a bottle of Madiran, a French wine that was recommended by the employees at Bello Vino (who are highly knowledgeable and extremely helpful). I described to them the Bulgarian Mavrud and how it tastes - they knew my budget was below $20. And they found me a similar full-bodied, dark-berried wine that sits on my palate and sends warm happy tingles down my spine.
The secret to my extreme enjoyment of this bottle (I sit here typing this as I sniff the glass, sip and swish the wine around my mouth to maximize my enjoyment) is that I've been drinking cheap wine.
There was a point in my life when I thought that anything under $15 wasn't worth drinking. I was living large in DC, drinking great wines, and at some point I stopped appreciating them.
Since I've moved back to Ann Arbor, I've weaned myself down to Charles Shaw Cabernet Sauvignon from Trader Joe's - otherwise known as Three Buck Chuck. It's not bad. It's perfectly drinkable. And it really makes me appreciate this bottle.
When sniffing the wine, I smell multiple layers of flavors - European blueberry, black currant and blackberry. The flavors are magnified when I taste the wine. I have an appreciation for this wine brought on by drinking so many mediocre cheap bottles - where the biggest element in the bouquet is the smell of wine. I'd almost forgotten - wine isn't supposed to smell like wine.
So the secret for those of us who love good wine who are on a budget is to restrict ourselves to really cheap wine (not garbage wine - that's just a recipe for a headache - just cheap, decent wine) 29 days out of the month. And 1 day out of every month, drink a $15-20 bottle. That bottle suddenly takes on heightened characteristics of excellence and becomes a great experience.
Now that I've shared that with my readers, I will return to my glass of wine, and sniff and swish until I'm satisfied.
And tomorrow night, I'm going home with a bottle of brut rose champagne from my favorite Oregon vintners, R. Stuart, to share with my mother. It should be an excellent evening. After all, the holidays are all about extravagance and splurging and what better way to splurge than with good booze.
posted by Nixie at 7:19 PM
1 Comments:
You know that anything made outside of the champagne region of france is just sparkling wine.. which doesn't sound nearly as fun which is essentually what champagne is.
There are plenty of great wines for under $20, sometimes they do get better if you just shelf them for a year or two. Then again, I have opened some better wines to find out the cork had spoiled, always a disappointment.
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