We start off today’s rant with an article published a year ago or so in TastingTable (side note: for whatever reason [cough], a lot of the articles with which I take umbrage come from this “fine” online source), entitled: “The Absolute Easiest Way To Make Your Cheap Wine Taste Better”.
Even before reading this article, I had a problem with it: the choice of the word “cheap” which implies both “inexpensive” and “bad”. Why would anyone knowingly buy bad wine? There are hundreds (thousands?) of idiots like me out there telling you which inexpensive wines are “good” (the fact is, most wines today are “good”; you might not like it, but there is likely nothing wrong with it) so the premise that someone is somehow “forced” to buy and drink “cheap” wine is just dumb.
To take it a step further, if you are looking for “the absolute easiest way to make your cheap wine taste better” maybe it’s time for a bit of self-evaluation. Perhaps wine is not the best choice for you right now at your stage in life; if you are determined to drink wine (good for you), can only afford “cheap” wine (I’ve been there), but you have a discerning enough palate to realize that the wine you chose does not taste good, there is a problem.
So the “advice” given in this article? Chill the wine down, almost to the point of freezing, to mute all the flavors and aromas.
Seriously?
That is a dumb and defeatist attitude (“Holy crap, I can only afford cheap wine, maybe if I drink it at 28°F I will cancel out all the negatives and still be able to get plastered while still maintaining the illusion that I am sophisticated and fancy”).
The author, at the end of the article, essentially jumps the shark with some further “advice”:
Some other hacks to improve a bad cheapie wine are to add a few drops of flavor-boosting lemon juice or a pinch of salt to your wine glass, or add some unfermented grape juice to bring a touch of distracting sweetness.
Look, I am a firm believer that you can do whatever you like with your wine. Add an ice cube to your Bâtard-Montrachet? Go for it. Drink Dom Pérignon with a straw? Be my guest. I won’t be doing either and if you ask, I’d be happy to tell you about my choice, but hey, it’s your wine. But adding lemon juice or salt to your wine? Yeesh.
My advice? 1) Do a bit of research and find out which inexpensive wines actually taste good (there are a ton of them); 2) Approach each bottle of wine as a learning experience to better understand both your preferences and what characteristics you consider to be fundamental to “better” wine; 3) Reassess your current career path, get a job at Elmers, and have an endless supply of glue to sniff.
The second article also comes from TastingTable [cough]: “The Wine You Drink With Your Chili Should Depend On One Unbreakable Flavor Rule”. Again, first impressions, based on the title? “Unbreakable Rule”. Arrgh, when you see these words, take the advice with a grain of salt; there are too many people focusing on too many “rules” in wine. And an “unbreakable” rule? Yeah, no. It’s your wine, your meal, your life, do what you want.
Delving into the article, as painful as it was, I never really found this “unbreakable rule” but I did find a consideration from a “wine expert”:
[O]ne expert consideration she emphasized. “Keep in mind the spice level of your chili,” [she] warns. “Spicy foods tend to make wine taste more bitter and astringent, so if you have a spicy chili, you’ll want to choose a sweeter wine to counterbalance the spice.”
I agree with most of this “expert” advice, notably that spice accentuates tannins (which can be bitter and astringent) and alcohol, and that sweeter wines can help mitigate spicy food. But that is not the only answer, as highly acidic wines (which also tend to be low in tannins–a subject for another post) can also work well with spicy food. In the end, as I frequently stress, who cares? You want to open a big California Cab with your chili (or other spicy food)? Go ahead.
Advice in wine is great, I seek it all the time and I like to think I dole it out on occasion, but offering said advice as an “Unbreakable Rule” that, in my opinion, is one of the big problems in the wine world today.
Relax. It’s a beverage. And every day, you get a do over.
the drunken cyclist 