I am not a wine person. Emphatically not. I enjoy it and if you put it in front of me I will drink it, but I don't know anything about it and no effort is made to disguise that fact. The only adjectives you'll hear me use to describe it are on the level of "Good." or "This tastes like communion wine / Nyquil." Its history has some interesting moments though. Like the Great French Wine Blight in the 1860s.
Sometime in the 1850s – best estimates suggest 1858 – an unwelcome visitor made its way from the United States to Europe. No one knows where it went first or how it got there but it is known that by 1863 a North American aphid called Daktulosphaira vitifoliae, aka Phylloxera, was appearing in vineyards. The aphid specializes in the roots of grape vines. Being endemic to the Americas, American grapes are largely resistant to Phylloxera. In a reversal of the introduction of European diseases like smallpox to the Americas during colonization, European grapes had no resistance whatsoever to the new visitor. French wine grapes with famous names that became wine of exorbitant value died en masse. There was nothing anyone could do to stop it.
Well, there was one thing. But the French didn't want to do it. They could graft France's legendary wine grape vines onto American grape roots. In theory this maintained the integrity of the French grape varieties, but many purists thereafter considered French grapes tainted by the process of being crossed with their American cousins. Regardless of one's position on that issue one thing is certain: had the American roots not been used, most or possibly even all of France's legendary wine grapes would have been lost. So the bright side is that they all survived for us to enjoy today.
There is a segment of the wine enthusiast community that reveres wine made from the "pure" French grapes, i.e. wine bottled before the aphid made its journey and changed everything. While wine from before 1860 would be valuable today regardless, French wines of that era are especially sought after for their use of the untainted Gallic grapes. Stories of people paying insane prices for such bottles of wine are numerous. Two are particularly amusing to me. They will amuse you too, provided you are a terrible person like me.
In 1985 Malcolm Forbes, magazine publisher and father of 90s punchline presidential candidate Steve Forbes, paid over $150,000 for a bottle of something called Chateau Lafite 1787. Then he did as rich d-bags tend to do and showed off his grand acquisition in the most conspicuous way. He put it in a grand display case under a light. A very bright light. A very bright light that generated a lot of heat. Heat that dried and withered the centuries-old cork. Eventually it shrank and fell into the precious beverage. That was $150,000 well spent.
Forbes looked like a miser compared to wine collector William Sokolin, who paid over 0,000 for an 18th Century Chateau Margaux.
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While showing off his purchase at a social event in New York, Sokolin – wait for it – accidentally knocked the bottle off a serving cart and, in what I can only imagine was the slowest slo-mo in human history, watched it tumble to the ground and shatter. What does one even do in that situation?
For half a million bucks I would get down and lick it off the carpet.
I mean, if the alternative is having everyone at a fancy social event watch you have a complete emotional breakdown then I don't think it's any more shameful. At least get some on your finger and rub it on your tongue. No shame. Do what you gotta do.
The only potential consolation is that many wine experts believe that wine of such advanced age is likely undrinkable anyway. Sure, let's go with that.
Oriscus says:
A wine guy here. I'm in the business at retail.
It's not necessary to buy pre-Phylloxera vintages to get wine from ungrafted vines. There are a few individual vineyard sites that survived the pest, some even in well-known regions of France (they were protected by being in, or surrounded by, exceptionally poor soil, but poor soil often = better wine).
Moreover, wines from Australia, New Zealand and Chile (and I think Argentina and South Africa as well, but I am not certain) are planted on their own rootstock, so you won't get French terroir, but…
Now, the prospect of rich dicks dumping fortunes on vinegar (and often as not succumbing to fraud) remains entertaining. That they so easily go there means they really don't care about wine per se, but are essentially comparing dicks, but we knew that…
Kaleberg says:
My favorite story in this line is that of a connoisseur who bought two bottle of brandy from Thomas Jefferson's cellar. With great fanfare, he opened a bottle at dinner for his friends. To everyone's disappointment, the brandy had gone bad over the years. Knowing the brandy was undrinkable, he gave the other bottle to one of his friends at the dinner. The friend, not greatly enjoying this gift of a rejected bottle, poured out the liquid in it and filled the bottle with a bottle of good high end brandy. Then he patched together the cork as well as he could and resealed the bottle. He invited his magnanimous friend over for dinner and with some fanfare opened it. "Hey, thanks, I got the good one."
Malcolm Forbes, for all his faults, made a big thing of his luxury purchases in promoting his magazine. His magazine was for the aspirational, a fair bit of fun and informative. Forbes was noted for his collection of Fabrege eggs and Harley Davidson motorcycles. He was a closeted homosexual. His son, Steve, was an uncloseted asshole and turned the magazine into a worthless ideological rag that made Pravda look unbiased.
Major Kong says:
I can't really relate but I did buy an expensive (for me) bottle of Barolo for my anniversary a couple years ago. It wasn't quite $100 but it was up there.
When I opened it the damn thing was "corked". Oh well. Your worst wine is your best vinegar.
Tom says:
There is a statue to American vines in Montpellier, France.
Tim H. says:
I don't know a lot about wine not enough to be sure of not getting the one that tastes like a carburetor was cleaned in it, or the one that reminds you of your first cunnilingus…
Skipper says:
I don't have a "palate" for wine. I drink wine. I know what I like and what I don't, but it has no relation to price. I've had some wines I found very good that I got from TJs for $5.99. I had a friend bring over a very expensive bottle of wine — and I handed the glass back to him after the first sip. He loved it.
Because of my partner's job, we get invited to some very high-end wine tastings. Again, some I like and some I don't, and it has no relation to price. Also, I can't taste the subtle differences — "An aftertaste of cranberry and green apple with just a hint of Crayola."
So, I just live with that "handicap." I drink what I like and I don't go after pricey wines. Hint: The worst buy on any restaurant wine list is the second cheapest wine. People don't want to appear cheap and order the cheapest wine. So they order the second cheapest. Restaurant owners know this and mark that one up the most.
Beer is a different story. I can taste the subtle differences in beer and am somewhat of a beer nerd, although not a snob. But even there, I'm not going to pay $100 for a bottle of beer – and there are beers that run that much. I'm also a cheapskate.
Katydid says:
Like Skipper, I like what I like. I haven't really noticed a price correlation.
Tteddo says:
I drink box wine. There I said it.
Major Kong says:
@Skipper
If you like sweeter tasting wines then stay away from the expensive ones.
Most high-end red wines tend to be on the dry side. A lot of them are also tannic and need to age several years before they're really drinkable. Even then they often need to breath a while to soften them up.
For day to day table wines I tend to drink stuff in the $8 – $12 range.
What it comes down to is: the "best" wine is the one you like.
sheila in nc says:
@Tteddo: Box wine is no shame these days. There is some completely drinkable wine in boxes out there. My husband and I use it for our regular table wine.
Emerson Dameron says:
Further viewing for anyone enjoying this a little too much.
https://reddit.com/r/nononono
https://reddit.com/r/wellthatsucks
Death Panel Truck says:
I don't drink wine, or any alcoholic beverage (it's generally not recommended for recovering alcoholics), but my wife drinks maybe two to three glasses a week. Several years ago a friend of ours gave my wife two bottles of wine. One night I asked her what kind of wine it was, and she said, "It's called 'Two Buck Chuck.'" Seems our friend got it from Trader Joe's. I asked her if such a cheap wine could be any good, and she said, "I like it." She's not a wine connoisseur; she drinks red wine chilled.
bb in GA says:
We used to drink Annie Green Springs, Boone's Farm, Ripple, et al and even smoked (what passed for) weed through some of it back in the day (70s).
That said, I really can't tell the difference between $7 per bottle and $70 per bottle. I try to drink a few glasses of cheaper stuff or a few beers per week for what I believe are health benefits, but rarely get that much in.
//bb
Mo says:
Remnder to self to re-read Thorstein Veblen.
mothra says:
More fun facts to know and tell: many French vineyards have roses planted at the end of vine rows. Not because it is purty, but because the Phylloxera will attack the rose first and give the vintner a heads up as to impending infestation.
I never really knew much about wine, but did have the good fortune to learn about it when I worked as a tour guide for luxury bike tours in Europe. Really, all I learned is what certain wines should taste like and indeed that the price of a bottle of wine has no relation to its taste. We did have a regular customer, though, who thought he was the shit when it came to wine and wanted to help pick the wines we would have with our dinner, etc. One time in the Burgundy region, he picked the wines and insisted that the red wine–of a vintage just a year or two old–be decanted. The waiter was flummoxed by this absurd request (I had to make it because I spoke French and our know-it-all customer didn't), and looked at me with a look like "what?" and I just responded with a look that said "yeah, he's a dick, but he is my customer and WTF?" and he looked back at me with pity and understanding. Priceless.
Pete says:
I too often cannot exactly identify the flavors I taste in wines and need the power of suggestion to "help." I suspect we're both like Ned here:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/426786502159915172/
The Dark Avenger says:
This is from a review of The Billionaire's Vinegar that I found on Amazon(dot).com. I think it's a great read, and the bottle referenced above is part of the overall story.
SPOILERS AHEAD
There wasn't anything vintners could do in the seventeenth century to make sure that counterfeits didn't show up two centuries later, but Wallace explains that steps are being taken these days to make sure no future Rodenstock can pull the same tricks. Laser-etching of bottles or embossing them with particular marks is one step, as is using watermarked and ultraviolet-tagged labels. Another step is using particularly adhesive glue to affix the label, but this will irritate collectors who like putting labels in their scrapbooks. There will be future wine counterfeiters, but they will have to work harder. And that bottle sold at Christie's in 1985? It was bought by Kip Forbes, under orders from his father Malcolm Forbes. The father was furious that the son had paid so much, but he always had a yen for publicity, and realized that having such a headline-making bottle was just what he needed. He put it on display in a case specially highlighted, and the heat from the light made for just the opposite of a wine cellar. It shrank the cork, which fell in, and even if the wine was fake, it wasn't even wine after that, just the vinegar of this book's title. You couldn't ask for a more fittingly symbolic end to all the selfishness and self-importance that Wallace has illustrated in this fascinating tale.
Emerson Dameron says:
@Death Panel Truck:
Another Friend of Bill here who sometimes has to awkwardly explain why he's looking at a website with "gin" in the URL. I had many pseudo-profound party conversations over Two Buck Chuck in my 20s and I'm pretty convinced that you could put a different label on it and make a lot of money off of wine aficionados.
Skipper says:
@Emerson
That has actually been done. In one case, they did a blind tasting among "experts" and many of the experts preferred Two Buck Chuck to more expensive wines.
My favorite test was when they had the "experts" review a white wine. They described it as "light and fruity, with overtones of peach, and a hint of green apple." Then, they took the same wine, added a coloring that turned the wine a deep red, but didn't affect the taste. The same experts then described at "rich and dark with flavors of black cherry and chocolate, accentuated by a slight coffee overtone."
Two friends of mine ate at a fairly good restaurant one day. They had a glass of the house chardonnay — $6. Then, they ordered a second glass. Instead of just bringing out a new glass of wine, the hapless waiter brought out the bottle to refill the glasses — Two Buck Chuck. Not only was it a rip-off, it was illegal since Two Buck Chuck is only sold at Trader Joe's and restaurants can't buy their wine there. They have to buy it from a distributor.
Ahab says:
Skipper — I'm the same way. I can't detect subtleties in wine to save my life. I have yet to taste anything resembling oak, cinnamon, plum, chocolate, etc. in red wine.
Regarding price, I'll take my homemade fruit wines over high-end whites and reds any day.
My father tried and failed to age wine so that it would rise in value. He purchased and saved several bottles of wine back in the 70s and 80s, but over time, the corks dried out. Air then entered the bottles, turning the wine brown and malodorous. Sorry Dad!
Robert says:
I find that I can drink cheap wine and liquor with pleasure. There are exceptions, but that's the general rule.* Cheap black tea, and there is such a thing, no. Even milk and sugar cannot save it.
*I got a bottle of bottom shelf supermarket whiskey once that should have been labeled "Victory Whiskey". Neutral grain spirits, caramel coloring and the souls of the damned.
Major Kong says:
Very few wines even benefit from aging. Only certain high end red wines that are extremely tannic when young.
The wine bottles need to be stored on their sides to keep the corks moist. Even then there are no guarantees.
duquesne_pdx says:
I don't drink alcohol, but my ex-wife used to go on and on about the time she had a couple of glasses of a Bordeaux, and how good it was, and so on. So for our first anniversary, I went to a (snobby) wine store and ended up with a $150 bottle of Bordeaux that I couldn't really afford, but what the hell, I was stupid and in love.
She ended up drinking the bottle in under 2 hours after it was corked and got so drunk she couldn't remember if she liked it or not. There are definitely reasons that she is my *ex* wife.
Major Kong says:
You can get a decent Bordeaux for $10.
A red Bordeaux is just a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot generally speaking.
What confuses people is that American wineries usually name wine after the grapes that it's made from. The French name it after the place it was grown.
That's why you won't see a "Bordeaux" from California but you might see a "Bordeaux-style blend" or a "Claret", which is an English designation for the same thing.
Deborah says:
My husband wanted an expensive bottle of wine one year for a birthday present (I think it was his 60th). So I bought it and the one thing I remember the guy said who sold it to me is, that you have to let the bottle sit perfectly still for a number of days, don't remember how many, so that the sediment settles to the bottom, and then you have to pour it in such a way that the sediment doesn't get all up in it again. It wasn't worth it to me but my husband liked it. I don't like Two Buck Chuck but other Trader Joe's wines are good in the $6 to $10 range, in my opinion. Sometimes I splurge there and get an Italian that is about $20.
Isaac says:
My uncle gets some good $$$ stuff in for the holidays, and I drink as much of it as I can stomach, but wine is totally the law of diminishing returns. For $3, only 1 in 10 bottles is tolerable and has any kind of character. For $4 it's maybe half. By the time I'm spending 5-7 bucks, I usually have something that I won't regret. Anything in the wine row for $8-12 at my local grocer is good, if I ignore the national brand stuff he shoves over to one side because his distributor makes him carry it. $15 from France, California, or Washington will please all guests. Beyond that, yes, sometimes it's noticeably more "interesting," but I pretty much can't spend ~$10 and lose, unless it's something random from the Southern Hemisphere, but there's so much good stuff for the price in U.S. or European vineyards I don't have to take any risks.
Isaac says:
When in doubt, buy a Red from Paso Robles.
bob mcneilly says:
Father in law drank a case of brother in laws expensive wine and filled the bottles with water. This was discovered at a dinner he had for business partners.
Sluggo says:
Being a cheap drunk is how I originally found gin and Tacos. I bought on bottle of Burnett's Gin around 2006 Googled it to find out more..That led me to you. The pix accompanying the types of gin and the people who drank those brands was the funniest thing I've ever seen. Too nad that got lost with tje new website format.
Nick says:
@mothra: "Pity and understanding" is the universal expression of service workers interacting with one another.
@sluggo: Same here. I Googled something like "best cheap gin" (because I was 19 and wanted to try gin) and found the Ginaissance. My friends and I drank a great deal of Burnett's for a while; if you kept it cold, and mixed it with orange juice, it was one of the better drunks $7 could buy. I still remember one commenter noting that because Burnett's came in a green bottle, "it is healthy, like vegetables."
As for wine, one of the best parts of going to Italy recently was the ubiquity of cheap, solid quality house wines. You can get a liter of wine for €7-10, and while it'll never be the best thing on the menu, it's generally good enough that a bottle would be double or triple that in an American restaurant. Like others here, I've never had the palate for fancy wines, so "pretty good and in my price range" are my only real criteria. The downside of course is that Italian beer sucks and is completely overpriced, but you can't have everything.
Delbort says:
I have never been able to get on board the wine train. I've even seen Sideways, so I really have no excuse. My parents watched it when it came out and they became snobs, but I just don't have the gift.
I can kind of get where things are going with cigars and scotch, but I don't make enough money to indulge those vices.
chris y says:
In Italy, Spain and France if you're not in a snobby restaurant, you just ask for red or white wine in the confidence that whatever they bring you will be perfectly good and almost certainly cheaper than at home. I think people probably consult wine lists for birthdays and anniversaries only. NB. In Provence it seems to be a good idea to drink the local rose with anything, at least according to waiters. People whose experience of rose has been that nasty Portuguese stuff that was trendy 20 years ago have a treat in store.
Khaled says:
@Nick, Mothra-
along those lines, I remember rolling my eyes in sympathy to the workers at a Middle Eastern place in Chelsea, London near the Notting Hill Tube stop as the loud Americans – because, if you're not sure if someone speaks English, yell, amirite? – asked if they could make hamburgers because that's what the kids would eat. I was getting a chicken shwarma as big as my head for like 4 pounds…
Katydid says:
@Robert; I'm not educated in wines, but I do know my teas. I learned to appreciate a warm cup during the 2 years I lived in England, when I couldn't afford to raise the heat on my rental hovel much above 55 degrees. I really can't drink Nestea or any of the low-end American brands of teas anymore, but lucky for me you can buy some good brands even at the supermarket, not to mention the tea shops that seem to be popping up. For under $20, I can get several varieties of teas to match whatever mood i'm likely to be in for the next few weeks.
Robert says:
Just remembered from my trip to Provence – a wine shop in a small town had vin ordinaire in bulk. Wall-mounted pumps, like gas station pumps, with red, white and rose; customers brought in plastic carboys and filled them up. Never knew that was a thing.
Most expensive wine I ever had was a US$150.00 bottle of French champagne (sister in law's birthday). Definitely better than the usual sparkling wine I've had, but not something I've been pining for ever since.
Burnett's gin! There's a line in "A Tale of Two Cities" about a character who has a taste for fine vintages. He mortified it by drinking gin. My first taste of Burnett's reminded me of that line.
Piperspace says:
Target (!) makes a good table wine in a box. Vintner's Red. I prefer it to Two Buck Chuck.
Isaac says:
I also found Gin and Tacos way back when by searching for information about Gin. (I was already well acquainted with tacos.)
Katydid says:
This topic gave me something to think about during a long car trip this weekend. I thought about why it is I am pretty uneducated about wine. i suspect part of the reason is that I live in a state where you can only buy alcohol (that includes beer and wine) at a liquor store; not in grocery stores, not in convenience stores, no Two-Buck Chuck, nothing at Costco or Target or WalMart. Different liquor stores carry different products, but unless you go to a really big, huge place (or drive out to a winery, which is not a quick trip), most store-front liquor stores carry wines that can best be described as "kool-aid with a very low alcohol level", much of which tastes the same–disgustingly sweet, not much buzz. For your alcohol dollars, you're better off buying just about anything else in the liquor store that provides a better buzz for the buck.
ninja3000 says:
My mom (French) drinks good wines, and so one year I asked my local wine shop to give me their best Pinot Noir from France. It was $100. I gave it to my mom for her birthday with no comment. A few months later I asked how she liked it and mentioned that it was a $100 bottle. "What?" she said. "If I knew it cost that much, I would have enjoyed it more!"