Why Not To Love It.
The Wine Guy
WINE COLUMN
MONDAY, MARCH 1, 1999
BY ALEX MARSHALL
There are a lot of reasons not to get into wine. I’ll tell you a few.
One: It’s expensive, or easily can be. While a few good cheap wines still exist, it’s becoming more difficult to find quality for less than $10 a bottle. That can be a lot to spend if you drink wine daily.
And the more one learns about wine, the more one is inclined to spend. You begin the taste the difference between an okay and a great Pinot Noir, and you are lured upward along the price curve as your tongue pursues mre intoxicating flavors.
So great is the reality distortion field of wine, that when you really get into it, you find yourself nodding your head in agreement when an article refers to a $50 bottle of Bordeaux as “affordable.”
Two: It can be obscenely complicated. Only a full-time professional could know the thousands of makers and dozens of sub-regions that exist in one major wine region alone of France. And to be really good, one should have actually tasted a substantial portion of those wines.
With wine, you have layers of information and knowledge lying over one another that influence a bottle’s taste and role: grape variety, the region, vintage year, accompanying food, and what else you are drinking. All these different facets interact with each other, making the subject interesting but hideously complex to all but those who persevere.
Three: Wine is an orphan in our culture, a mistreated step child. On the one hand, Thomas Jefferson loved wine and drank it daily. On the other hand, the rest of us have mostly not grown up with a bottle of wine on the table, as in France, Spain or Italy. You won’t find it served at McDonald’s.
Fourth (but not least): It can be incredibly pretentious. When you combine arcane fields of knowledge and large sums of money you are sure to get people named Buffy standing around talking about the bucks they dropped on big-named bottles of Burgundy.
Okay, that’s it for the negatives. This set of difficulties — expense, complexity, pretense and the ambiguous relationship wine has with our culture — will form a backdrop against which I hope to show readers wine’s more appealing aspects. They are:
One: Nothing goes better with conventional western cuisine than wine, despite its tortured history here. Whether it’s Hamburger Helper, or filet mignon, a glass of red wine cuts through the grease, sets off the flavors, and aids digestion. Until Americans convert en masse to Thai or Mexican cuisine, one should learn enough about wine to enjoy the simple pleasures of drinking it with much of what one regularly eats.
Two: Those touted health effects of wine are not just hype. A glass or two of daily really does calm the blood and clear out the arteries. Peasants have said as much for years, and now science is backing them up.
Three: The complexities of wine become oddly comforting as one grows older. As I approach middle-age, it’s strangely reassuring that there is a field I can devote the rest of my life to and never master.
Four: I like that wine has no redeeming social value. It is a purely sensual pleasure, good because it is good, and bad only if one does not like the taste. Drinking a great glass of wine is like staring at a great painting, enjoyable only for itself. For someone who can be overly inclined to think about “the big questions” of society, history and politics, wine can be a comfort.
So that’s it. If you choose to go along for the ride, my mission is to find good and great bottles at reasonable prices, and to together find our way through the forest of dollar signs and hype. With that in mind, allow me to introduce:
Great Wine List of The Month: Meredith Nicolls, the new owner of Cafe Rosso in Ghent, has put together a marvelous short wine list and hit on a clever way to introduce it. He calls it “21 for $21 on 21st.”
Translated, that means that he is offering 21 bottles of wine, all for $21 each, at 21st Street in Ghent where Cafe Rosso is located. Putting all wine at the same price helps people try different wines and different types of wines, without fretting. It is a marvelous counterpoint to the list that subtly encourages one to trot up the price curve until you arrive at the $100 bottle of California Cabernet.
Nicholls, a first-class chef and former owner of “Meredith’s” at Willis Wayside in Virginia Beach, provides a sampling of some of the best wines from around the world. He has a Viognier from France, a Pinot Blanc from Alsace, a Barbera from Italy, and a Rioja from Spain. He avoids relying too heavily on California. It’s a list that both a novice and a connoisseur could love. He also offers five or six wines by the glass each night. All this with good food at good prices.
Nice job, Meredith!