Wine

So, this is kind of funny. I was mulling over what type of thesis topic I would come up with if I ever got to work on my Masters of Wine and automatically I was like, WHITE MEN IN THE US AND WINE.

i'm not making a value judgement--craft beer has wrought a lot of terrible product--but natural wine hasn't even made inroads to places where decent craft beer is just assumed. unless the volume of production increases significantly and decent education comes along, i'm not sure it will get there.

Craft beer in all its myriad styles really does taste different than mass market lagers though. Does natural wine really taste any different than mass market wines? That the typical wine drinker would notice?

yes

(for better or for worse)

xpost, I assume you are just talking about the US? Because in a lot of the world outside of the US and certain euro countries, craftbeer is a blip. Even decent beer is a blip.

And yes about natural wine tasting very different. The typical drinker of any beverage won't really notice if their vodka is made from potatos or grain, or if they are drinking a pilsner or lager. they just don't They certainly won't know if they are drinking a $10 bottled of chard from somewhere in all of CA or a bottle natural white from the Loire.

idk, i've had new england ipas in austria, i've had citra-hopped ipas in india, i've had friends send me neipa pics from all manner of european countries. the impact isn't global but it has certainly had an impressive spread.

idg comparing vodka source ingredients to wine at all but suffice to say i have tasted natural wines made from grapes that intermediate wine fans would know which don't conform to style at all--i have no idea if the *typical* drinker can pick these out but i sure as hell could and i'm far from an experienced taster.

I bought a $100 bottle of wine for the first time ever -- a wine-loving couple we barely know (relative of relatives) agreed to host my whole family for several days and we needed a nice gift and hadn't had time to shop around much so I just grabbed something that was highly rated and expensive, a Kamen Cabernet (sonoma). They were nice enough to drink it with us, and it was quite good, but I can't say I found anything about it to be particularly worth $100 and it's still hard for me to believe I'll ever drink a wine that lives up to that pricetag.

Meanwhile, they turned us on to a relatively cheap chardonnay that they keep stocked as their "house" wine, Chateau St Jean (also sonoma).

I mean I've seen Blyn Brewery (not exactly craft I know) for ages now in super mainstream places in Europe which I get a giggle out of. And in Chile I know you can get Evil Twin and some randoms at a couple of places. But thinking about the main beers people drink in Asia, EU and LATAM is not craftbeer. In general, normal alcohol drinkers would not be able to describe differences about these things unless they actually pay attention and make it a point to know. This is not a natural born ability. And yes, wine is probably more offputting to know about because there are thousands of wine grape varieties and multitudes of regions to know about if you want to know what you will be drinking.

The vodka thing I brought up in my example of three just because I have to study and do tastings of a lot of spirits as well as beer and sake.

xpost California wine is typically 30-40% more than it really should be. I never really buy it unless it's some weird thing I am searching for. Do you remember the year?

I was talking about North America, where the craft beer phenomenon is present. But even an Asian who only drinks lagers would be able to tell a very hoppy IPA was different than what he/she usually drinks. Like man alive I don't always taste differences in $8 vs $20 wines. That said I've never knowingly had a natural wine, and depending on the yeast I guess it could be very different (I always associate "natural" wine with no sulfites, which may not affect the flavor as much).

I've had good luck with Chateau St Jean wines too.

The difference between a hoppy IPA and a lager is obvious though, in the same way that cava and rioja are easily distinguishable. Yerac’s example of a standard lager vs a pilsner seems perfectly correct, the inexperienced/disinterested drinker is unlikely to be able to identify and describe the differences.

The example of $8 vs $20 wine is more akin to a $4 vs $5 beer. You want/expect the more expensive one to be ‘better’, but to a certain extent this is subjective, and there are a huge number of variables which can change the drinking experience. The price is also not really based on quality, so it’s an imperfect measure. This is problematic when talking about spending $100 on a bottle of wine - a huge amount of money - because expectations are naturally sky high.

The requirement to have the time/inclination to really educate yourself, the money to experiment your way to discovering your tastes/preferences, the physical space to keep wine until it is ‘ready’ etc. are all reasons why wine is inevitably less accessible than beer.

It’s a similar story with natural wine imo. Because it’s such a slippery definition you can’t really expect a natural wine to taste a certain way - Chapoutier is (I think) a natural winemaker, but their wines are a world away from the stuff you might get from a little one-man band winemaker on a volcano in Slovakia.

I think the growing prominence of natural wine, along with the fact that it’s an opportunity to be obsessively nerdy/collect things/travel, while being a more affordable interest than being really into burgundy or whatever, means that it will inevitably creep a little more into the mainstream (in the UK a budget supermarket has just become the first to stock an own-brand skin contact wine, for example).

which supermarket and wine is that ?

Aldi

Heh, I was kind of drunk last night. Sorry. I still do think, though that the huge popularity of craft beer is still pretty America (and ok Canada) male centric. And natural wine, I don't really think of no sulfites, I think more about no filtering or fining (this may be the first thing you notice about the bottle before you even drink. It's basically just letting the grapes express themselves with very little interaction from the winemaker but there are different levels from mild to extreme styles.

The price of wine is a lot of things: how it's produced (new barrels are expensive), buying grapes vs. growing it on your own land, storage on site during aging (loss of income), all the regular overhead of running a business, demand. This is why a few wine regions are starting a beaujolais nouveau style festival/release of bottles. It's the most recent harvest, fresh, simple, no wood, no storage, get income within 2-3 months of harvest

I don't think Chapoutier is on the natural wine kick. He makes a crapload of wine though.

Chris B4tes, who is a master somm was trying to diffuse a fight about natural wine vs. crafted wine (kind of confusing in light of the term craft beer). And he used bbq to kind of explain the differences between the extremes of each style. This is kind of long, the relevant part that I am pasting.

In an ideal world:
Natural Winemaking version of BBQ- Start a fire, season a locally raised (ideally by the person cooking it), responsibly farmed, healthy, humanly butchered brisket with salt and pepper, hang brisket over a few feet from the the coals, turn occasionally until ready to eat. Serve to friends and neighbors.

Crafted Winemaking version of BBQ-Dry rub and rest an A5 Kobe beef brisket with 2% salt and 1% pepper over night. Begin fire 12 hours before you plan to serve. Once coals are ready, adjust airflow to stabilize temp at 225F and load brisket fat cap up. Hold at 225 for 7 hours, making sure internal temp hits 136 within hours of loading. Use K-type thermocouple to ensure internal temp never exceeds 148 and air temp stays between 210-235 at 60% humidity (set out of range alarm if leaving the cooking area). Wrap in foil and damper down coals, and leave brisket to rest in foil, cap up, for 1 hour before serving. Serve to friends and neighbors.

In an idealogical sence, that more or less sums it up.

In practice though, it can become extreme in either direction very easily, and it is easy to become cynical about the camp on the other side of the spectrum. In the real world, it all too often becomes:

Extreme Natural Winemaking version of bbq- Dig pit. Light fire in pit. Take brisket from animal raised by cook, without any medication, slaughtered because it started to wheeze a little, by the cook in their garage with unsanitized tools. Throw leaves from the yard onto the fire, throw unseasoned brisket on top, and throw on more leaves. Cover with dirt and close pit. Leave 48 hours. Invite all the people you know who have tattoos and mustaches. Unearth the brisket pit, remove brisket to the unsanitzed board you trimmed it on 2 days prior, and slice it and serve it, wether it is cooked through or not, tender or tough, safe or spoiled. Ignoring any comments or questions of its quality or soundness by explaining how naturally it is made.

Extreme Crafted Winemaking version of brisket-Take beef trimmings and mechanically separated chicken from whichever countries are producing the cheapest usda allowed version. Mix with corn syrup, potassium lactate, sodium phosphates, Sodium Erythorbate, Sodium Diacetate, Sodium Nitrate, and flavors, as well as liquid smoke, granulated onion, etc, and form it into brisket like shape using Transglutimate (Meat glue) to add a fat like layer to the top. Cook in giant steam injection ovens before cooling, slicing and shipping to Arby's for their new Texas Smoke House Sandwich.

Both practices/camps can make fantastic wines, each with strengths for certain needs in wine world. Both can, and are, easily taken to negative extremes.

That’s a neat analogy.

And yeah a quick google sees M. Chapoutier call all natural wine ‘defective’ so I dunno what I was thinking of there. I’m sure there are relatively large operations out there who will prove my point tho! (Zind-Humbrecht?)

On a recommendation from a very nice member of bar staff in a good bar in San Sebastian, I found myself drinking this: https://www.decantalo.com/en/ube-miraflores.html

I thought it was absolutely outstanding, I don't know that I fully understand the process(es) by which it's made but I think it's kind of manzanilla without the fortification process, which winds up with a v dry white with lots of sherry notes but also amazingly fresh and zingy.

(This comment not in respect of natural wine, just a bottle of wine I was excited about. the natural wine stuff is v interesting but I don't have much to add.)

Great recommendation! I know v little about sherry, and have only really drunk the sweet stuff (which I enjoy a lot) - I’ll keep my eyes peeled...

If you find any in the UK (and particularly SE15/ SE22 :)) let me know.

sherry is so good and such a great way to get legitimately high quality wines at very reasonable prices (due to its relative unfashionability (in the mainstream))

here is the pet nat we had: https://dzwonsemrish7.cloudfront.net/items/2b0Q3i2T0w1a2a3Q3Q0M/IMG_8581.jpg

warning my wife likes ipas and kombucha

^^^That label is so charming.

I am going to be on the lookout for the Ube or a similir wine from that region. Dry sherries used to freak me a out a lot because I thought they tasted like bone broth. That salty umami.

I always think of sherry as something I should avoid because of its association with with a local bus station legend who was known as QC Mary. Might try some out this week, under the dodgy pretext that it is needed for a risotto!

I was into tawny port for a while a few years ago, but have drifted away. Good with many cheeses. Hardys (Australia) was one I liked that was affordable, US$12-14.

Tawny is my preferred port, particularly 40 yr OF COURSE

xpost There are some nice sherry cocktails.

The uk supermarket premium sherry brands aren’t bad at all. Sainsbury Taste the Difference and Morrisons’ equivalent are both made by Lustau which is a reliably good maker. In both cases the dry oloroso is decent and I like the fino too. Tesco’s was Barbadillo iirc but they’ve stopped stocking that at the local big Tesco.

I haven't had a cream sherry in decades, sometimes I wonder whether it's nice.

The folklore regarding cider armadillos is long-forgotten around here but that is what comes to my mind whenever anyone mentions sherry cocktails (I've tried a few proper sherry cocktails at reputable places but I can rarely detect the sherry involved).

Yeah, a lot of people still associate sherry with Harveys Bristol cream from the 1970s.

Sommelier cheating scandal!

http://www.laist.com/2018/10/10/sommelier_cheating_scandal_23_master_sommeliers_stripped_of_titles.php

Some of them already took the tasting retest and passed.

My boss was one of those stripped of his MS status after the scandal--my heart hurt so badly for him! We had congrats banners hanging in the restaurant...general jubilation and then the title got yanked away. CMS fast tracked a new tasting trial a few months later which he didn't pass. He's going again this fall.

oh damn. I know some people opened and drank once in a lifetime bottles, printed up new business cards, accepted $$$ gifts and higher speaking fees related to the new title. SUX.

Gruner Veltliner is the best white wine grape.

Cancel me if you want, this is my opinion.

It's okay I like Napa cabs more than Bordeaux so you can judge my suburban mom or shallow businessman tastes to make yourself feel better.

If someone wants to buy me some 1er cru to try and sway me, please do!

In recent blind tastings organized by the Austrian Wine Marketing Board, Grüner Veltliners have beaten world-class Chardonnays from the likes of Mondavi and Maison Louis Latour.[1]

Gruner Veltliner is a good, cold picnic wine and I like that most bottles are actually liters and not 750ml

I know there are high-end Gruners but I've mostly quaffed the sub-$20 bottles, which are nice and crisp