Tag Archives: wine terms

Wine terms: Flabby

wine terms flabby

A flabby wine has a lot in common with this fellow.

A well-made wine should have structure, and this is something that holds true regardless of price. Just because a wine is cheap doesn ?t give it an excuse, and the best cheap wines do just that.

Structure means a wine should have a pleasing aroma and a beginning, a middle, and an end when you taste it. You should be able to taste the tannins (if the wine has any), as well as the acid, and the alcohol will stay in the background. In this, the wine is in balance, and that should be the goal for every winemaker.

A flabby wine doesn ?t really have any structure, and one part ? usually the fruit ? predominates. The wine can taste almost syrupy, or more like grape juice than wine, and everything you taste sort of runs together.

The best analogy is an overweight man, whose muscle tone long ago went wherever muscle tone goes. It ?s important to note, though, that ? like people ? a wine doesn ?t have to cut and buffed to do its job. Too much structure can be just as bad as not enough, producing a wine that may be technicially correct but that offers little pleasure when you drink it.

Wine terms: Grocery store wine

One of the biggest changes in the wine business over the past decade has been the growth in wine departments in grocery stores. Just a decade ago, they were often small and cramped and dirty, and there wasn ?t much to choose from ? even among the biggest national chains.

Today, they look like this.

There are many reasons why this happened, but the most important was the emergence of the specialty grocer like Trader Joe ?s and Whole Foods. They had well-stocked wine departments, and the national chains and their regional counterparts had to respond or risk losing that more affluent customer. So, today, you can find $100 bottles of wine in your local supermarket.

The irony about all this? That the staple of the new and improved grocery store wine section is not high-end wine or those from smaller, more interesting producers (though, oddly enough, they do seem to carry regional wines). Rather, the mainstays are the dozens and dozens of labels from the world ?s biggest producers that have been developed to sell on grocery store shelves. In this, there are even companies, like The Wine Group, that specialize in these wines.

In many ways, the economics of the grocery store wine business are no different than the economics of laundry detergent or ketchup, taking into account local laws and regulations, of course. Wineries pay for shelf space and prominent displays like endcaps (those stacks on the end of an aisle), just like cereal makers. They offer special pricing to retailers, which is reflected in the sales prices in your weekly circular. And there are even loss leaders ? wine sold at the retailer ?s cost to lure shoppers into the store, just like milk.

Hence a grocery store wine ? a brand probably from one of the largest national producers and sold mostly at supermarkets for $8 to $15. It ?s usually a varietal, often from California, and has a cute label or a cute name. Though they are simple wines, without a lot complexity, they can be good values.

The other thing about the term? It applies even in those dozen or so states that don ?t sell wine in grocery stores, like New York. The concept remains the same, even if the retailer doesn ?t.

Five wine facts that aren’t necessarily facts

wine mythsThe wine world is full of people who know exactly what they ?re talking about, even when they don ?t. My pal John Bratcher loves to tell the story about the guy at a wine tasting who said in no uncertain terms that blended wines were inferior to varietal wines (those made with just one grape, like chardonnay or merlot, instead of more than one grape). John then mentioned that all of the great French red wines were blends; how did that fit into the man ?s world view?

So the next time you ?re buying wine, don ?t be afraid to be skeptical. Taste is in the palate of the beholder, but there are objective truths about wine and the wine business. After the jump, five of the most annoying facts that really aren ?t:

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Wine terms: Wine glasses

wine glasses

Pretty pictures notwithstanding, wine glasses affect the taste of wine.

This may seem like a silly topic for a post. How are we supposed to drink wine unless we use a glass? Would that it were that simple. The concept of wine glasses can be as complicated as wine itself; how else to explain something like Riedel's $139 sommelier black glass?

The trick, then, is to approach glasses with the same skeptical eye that we approach wine with. Do you need a decent wine glass to get the most out of wine, even if you're drinking $10 bottles? Yep. Do you need to go overboard and spend hundreds of dollars on a glass? Probably not.

After the jump, a few thoughts on buying and using wine glasses:

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Wine terms: Food friendly

The words "food friendly" crop up on the blog all the time (as well as in many other examples of wine writing. What's most interesting about the term is that it's not really official winespeak — doesn't show up on a lot of wine tasting terminology lists, for example. But it's still an important way to describe wine.

That's because it's not a winespeak term. You won't see it, for example, on many reviews that include scores, which prefer to stick to their tried and true adjectives like cigar box and leathery. For them, food friendly isn't an accurate description of what the wine tastes like. It's an assessment of the quality of the wine, and they have scores for that.

Which is just fine with me. Food friendly wines complement what you're eating, and that is an important assessment to make. If the wine is going to overpower the food — think of an inky, 16 1/2 percent alcohol shiraz — you need to know it before you serve it with a piece of beef that cost an entire week's salary. In this, a food friendly wine is not the star of the meal, but the part that helps to bring out the flavor of the food.

Know, too, that a food friendly wine is versatile, and will pair with a variety of dishes. Think of pinot noir, which goes with salmon, lamb and chicken. The same holds true for red wines from France's Cote du Rhone, which is almost as versatile as pinot noir, or many sauvignon blancs.

So, yes, food friendly wines tend to have softer tannins and more fruit — but that doesn't mean that food friendly wines are always lighter. It's more about balance. Cabernet sauvignon, which is usually tannic and acidic, can be food friendly if those characteristics are in balance with the fruit. Chardonnay can be incredibly food friendly, but not if it's over-oaked or too high in alcohol. High alcohol, in fact, makes a wine food unfriendly, because a high alcohol wine needs food to soften its characteristics.

Wine I like

wine I like

The most common question people ask the Wine Curmudgeon is, not surprisingly, “What’s your favorite wine?” My answer, also not surprisingly, usually disappoints them. I am, after all, the Wine Curmudgeon.

That’s because I don’t have a favorite. One of the tenets of the Wine Curmudgeon’s faith is that wine should not be about playing favorites, but about looking for new wine to enjoy. What’s the point of drinking the same wine over and over when there is so much still left to try?

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t certain wines that I like. White Burgundy is my guilty (and expensive) pleasure. Sparkling wine always makes me smile. Well-made regional wine, preferably with obscure grapes, is a huge treat. And, of course, any of my $10 wines — whether I’ve had it before or I’m tasting it for the first time — is a reason to open a bottle.

Which raises an important question that I’ve never really addressed in the blog’s three-year history: How do I decide which wines I like? What are my criteria? What makes a well-made wine? This is especially relevant given Monday’s release of the 2011 $10 Hall of Fame. It is, as always, an eclectic mix — grocery store wines, wines made with odd grapes, lots of rose, wines from small producers, and even chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon. What qualities do I find that sets them apart?

The first thing to understand is that wine is subjective. Everyone’s palate is different. What I taste in a wine may not be what you taste. The second thing to understand is that there are no bad wines. If you like a wine, it’s good, and it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.

That’s why I don’t use the words “good” and “bad” to describe wine. They’re empty adjectives and much too subjective — my interpretation of what wine should taste look, as if I was the wine tasting god and everyone had to obey my decisions. I’m also not a fan of descriptions like smooth; I’m not quite sure what that means. Water tastes “smooth,” but it’s not very wine-like. Smooth, I think, is an adjective people who drink a lot of poorly-made wine use when they find a wine that isn’t too tannic or too acidic. Too often, it’s a backhanded compliment.

Instead, I look for several other criteria:

• Is the wine flawed? It is corked or oxidized or dirty or out of balance, or any of the countless faults that can creep in?

• Is it varietally correct? If it’s chardonnay, does it taste like chardonnay? This is the most difficult criteria, oddly enough, since wine styles are ever changing. What was considered pinot noir 10 years ago is not necessarily considered pinot noir today, and I have to take that into account.

• Did the winemaker accomplish what he or she wanted to do? Does the wine taste like the winemaker wanted it to taste? This is not always as easy as it seems.

• Can I appreciate the wine even if I don’t like the style? I’ve noted many times how I feel about merlot, yet a merlot made the Hall of Fame in 2009 and 2010. I was able to put my prejudices aside and taste the wine for what it was, not what I thought it should be. (Note to wine snobs: Do this the next time you drink riesling.) This is the most difficult thing to do in wine, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve been drinking wine as long as I have or if you’re just starting.

• Is the wine honest? Yes, this is probably subjective, but I think it’s crucial to determining quality. Think about how many $10 red wines, regardless of producer, taste more or less the same, full of fruit and without much acid or tannin, and the cabernet tastes like merlot and the merlot tastes like shiraz. In this, they’re made to appeal to a specific demographic, and the idea was not to make quality wine, but to make adequate wine. And who needs adequate wine? Adjectives like interesting or intriguing are hallmarks of honest wine, because honest wine offers some characteristic that adequate wine doesn’t.

Because, in the end, it’s about finding wine that I like — and, hopefully, that you will too.

Wine terms: Oak

Winespeak always includes references to oak (even the Wine Curmudgeon is guilty of this), and most of the references always seem to describe the wine as toasty and oaky. This can be quite confusing, since the relationship between wine and oak is not obvious.

How can something made with grapes be toasty and oaky?

That's because some wines are aged in oak barrels. Generally, but not always, these are more expensive wines, and they are more often red wines than white wines.

Oak aging helps temper the acid and tannins in red wine, making it more drinkable. The only white wine that gets much oak is chardonnay, and California has turned this into a unique style — rich, buttery, oaky, almost caramelly wine. I recently tasted a high-end chardonnay from a major California producer, and the wine was spot on for creme brulee. More, after the jump:

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