Comments on: Bargain Wines and the Dirty Little Secret About Terroir

By: Brad

Brad — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 13:06:52 +0000

@Isabella: this isn’t about snobbery, though. Millions of people like to eat at McDonald’s and consider that to be “good food.” And on one level, it is. I’ve eaten at McDonald’s and enjoyed some of those meals. But if you simply say McDonald’s is good food and leave it at that, you’re putting a Big Mac on the same level a home-cooked meal made with fresh ingredients, or a gourmet meal prepared by a master chef.

It’s more about developing a sense of appreciation rather than an anxious connoiseurship. Sure, there are lots of decent wines for $10, and there’s no reason to think you have to spend $40 or more to get a good bottle of wine. But if you take time to get to know wine and try lots of different varieties, learn how to taste it, etc., your tastes start to develop and you start to value qualities that aren’t often available in the cheaper one-dimensional wines.

By: isabella

isabella — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 00:07:17 +0000

My thought is simpy if you enjoy the wine it’s good if not, it’s bad. Just like art. It’s a personal taste. Let’s not be snobs about this very insignificant issue.

By: liam o k

liam o k — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 22:06:16 +0000

I’ve heard of surveys that show McDonald’s coffee preferred over Starbuck’s; Assuming these surveys are honest, it goes to show that, as they say, there’s no accounting for taste.

By: Brad

Brad — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 21:55:57 +0000

These results probably say more about “average wine drinkers” than they do about the wine. We have friends who “drink wine regularly” but their idea of a good bottle of wine is Yellowtail Shiraz, which to us tastes like someone poured vanilla extract in to give it that oak-barrel flavour. We don’t have expensive tastes, and rarely pay more than $25 a bottle, but I live with a French woman who knows wine and she values depth and complexity. We can find it in some $10 table wines, but it requires a lot of trial and error and frankly we’d rather spend the extra $10 to get something that has a better chance of being enjoyable. I will say, though, that we’ve occasionally spent more (say $40 to $60/bottle) on special occasions and rarely felt it was worth it except in the case of a lovely Mersault and an exceptional Barolo.

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 05:11:40 +0000

Oh. I should add that there are indeed plenty of delicious inexpensive wines. Plenty. Two-buck Chuck not being among them.

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 05:10:13 +0000

I’m sorry, anybody who tastes Two-buck Chuck against serious wine and can’t tell the difference has a dead palate or has been hornswoggled. From time to time somebody puts up a tasting like this–I remember one where they put red dye in the white wine and got a bunch of self-appointed experts to start talking about “graphite” and “mushroom” taste in these “red”wines. Sure, you can fool people, and ho ho ho, especially if you get them drunk enough. But if you think you can tell me that Two-buck Chuck is indistinguishable from Volnay or Chateau Latour or even decent Chianti, well, you’re just woofin’. That’s fraud.