If It Tastes Good, It Might Be Fine

In my profile, I mentioned that I enjoy good wine. In fact my wife and I both enjoy good wine. I would imagine we would enjoy great wine too, but most great wine is beyond my average everyday pocketbook.

Long ago, I realized that grapes were not cognizant of dollar signs. I've had some fine tasting Chilean wines. I've had some good Australian wines. Currently I have a bottle of Cabernet Pinotage from the western cape of South Africa. I'll give it a try.....after all it was less than $10. What raised my interest was a hand lettered sign in front of the stock which read "this is a very dry wine!" The store where I bought it was not a very sophisticated wine merchant. So....we'll see.

When growing up, alcohol was rarely consumed around our house. We didn't have anything against it, but just didn't have it around on a regular basis. Daddy used to have a drink or two during the holidays. And, once in a while, he and Momma would drink a beer in the summer. Before I graduated high school, we became rather sophisticated. Daddy brought home a bottle of Mogan David and declared it to be fine wine (meaning he liked the taste).

I think the situation around my wife's home was about the same except they probably consumed more beer than my family. When we married, they had some awful tasting Champagne at the reception. At least I thought it was awful, but it was the first time my lips had ever tasted that bubbly concoction.

As the years went by, we moved around the country a little bit and slowly learned that there were actually some pretty good tasting wines out there. We learned that we are not too fond of sweet wines or lite wines. We enjoy the robust flavor of good dry wine.....Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, full bodied red Zifandel, Bordeaux, Gamay Beaujolais, Syrah, and occasionally Merlot. In white wines we like Chardonnay, and Chablis.

When we first started purchasing wine, we primarily bought French wines. They were good, mighty good. For the last ten or fifteen years, we have mostly purchased west coast wines from the USA. We have found excellent wines from Washington and Oregon as well as California. And recently, we discovered a small winery in the hill country of Texas that makes some good products.

For the most part, the wines we purchase are in the $10 to $20 range. An expensive wine for us would be in the $35 a bottle range. A good wine is one that tastes good to you. It is not determined solely by region, price or grape. My mother loves a sugary sweet wine. We have friends that like the real "soft" white wines like Pinot Grigio or the white Zifendels. Hey if you like it and it tastes good to you, have at it.

The other day, I got sentimental and realized I had not had a bottle of Rose' in a long time. I thought it would be a good idea to reach back to my younger years and purchased two bottles by Lancer and Mateus. Both are Portugese wines. We used to really enjoy sitting around, conversing and sipping on a glass of Rose'.

There's an old saying that "When you become an adult, a $4 bottle of wine is no longer 'pretty good stuff'." That's reasonably true. Taste buds change over time. And we found that the Rose' wines we formerly enjoyed are best left to savor in our memories. So for now, for us, Rose' is passe'.