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Wine Terms and Tips

FRUITY: Citrus -- grapefruit, lemon; berry -- blackberry, raspberry, strawberry, black currant (cassis); tree fruit -- cherry, apricot, peach, apple; tropical fruit -- pineapple, melon, banana; dried fruit -- strawberry jam, raisins, prune, fig.

VEGETATIVE: fresh -- stemmy, cut green grass, bell pepper, eucalyptus, mint; canned-cooked -- green beans, asparagus, green olive, black olive, artichoke; dried -- haw-straw, tea, tobacco.

NUTTY: walnut, hazelnut, almond.

CARAMELIZED: honey, butterscotch, butter, soy sauce, chocolate, molasses.

WOODY: vanilla, cedar, oak, smoky, burnt toast, charred, coffee.

EARTHY: dusty, mushroom, musty (mildew), moldy cork.

CHEMICAL: petroleum -- tar, plastic, kerosene, diesel; sulfur -- rubbery, garlic, skunk, cabbage, burnt match, wet wool, wet dog; papery -- wet cardboard; pungent -- acetic acid (vinegar); other -- soapy, fishy.

PUNGENT: hot -- alcohol; cool -- menthol.

MICROBIOLOGICAL: yeast, sauerkraut, sweaty, horsey, "mousey."

FLORAL: orange blossom, rose, violet, geranium.

SPICY: cloves, black pepper, licorice, anise.

BEATHE:  As a general rule the practice of giving wine time to "breathe" before it's served to be is somewhat overrated.  The idea behind it is simple: Wines that need aging may be shy on aroma and flavor when they're first opened, a characteristic that's sometimes described in winespeak as "closed" or "tight." Give them a little exposure to air, the theory goes, and you're providing a rough-and-ready substitute for the more gentle oxidation that occurs with fine wines as they age in the cellar.

While there's some truth in this, it's worth remembering that it only applies to certain wines. Most wines are fresh and fruity and ready to go as soon as they're put in the bottle, and letting these wines
breathe risks missing out on their first blush of freshness. Worse still is the risk you take in breathing an older wine that's fully mature, as some older wines--like some older people--become fragile
with age and may give up their spirit very quickly after the cork is pulled.

Use breathing only for young, tannic wines, typically reds (or, even more so, youthful Vintage Ports), as a way to ease the initial "closed" quality or harshness from tannins. But if you do it at all, don't simply pull the cork, which exposes only a tiny circle of wine the size of a dime in the bottleneck to the air. Rather, pour a glass, and do it briskly so the wine gets a good exposure to the atmosphere. Then leave it for an hour or two, and you may find that the wine "opens up" before dinner.

Another approach, of course, is simply to open the wine at the time you serve it, take it as it comes, but if you find it shy, harsh, and astringent, push back your glass and enjoy it after dinner, when it's
had a little air. 
 
How much should you pay for a good cheap wine?  Perhaps surprisingly, there is no simple answer to this simple question. Wine prices vary considerably around the world, depending on such variables as shipping costs, local taxes, currency exchange rates, and even the competitive situation in the local market.

Also, the increasing demand for premium-level wines has driven substantial inflation. As recently as the early 1980s, U.S. retailers used to say that anything over $6 a bottle was a hard sell. Nowadays, if you're looking for anything more interesting than "jug wine," it's almost impossible to find quality for $5 a bottle, and the breakpoint between interesting wine and "plonk" is getting dangerously close to
$10.

In my wine buying, I consistently seek wines "of value"--wines that taste more expensive than they are, whatever their actual price. In practice, most of the wines I report here will fall in the $8 to $15
category, and I try to stay as close to $10 as possible for everyday drinking. But if I have reason to believe that a wine is very good, I'll occasionally go for a $20 or $25 bottle. Anything above that,
though, is strictly limited to major holidays and celebratory events like anniversaries and birthdays.

Ultimately, much depends on your personal priorities and the nature of your interest in wine. If I were simply buying wine as a beverage with dinner and didn't consider it a hobby, I'd try to identify a few good, affordable "house" wines and buy them by the case. But both as a wine writer and as a wine hobbyist, I enjoy trying something different just about every day--and with that as my priority, I'm afraid the under-$10 niche becomes exhausted quickly.    Brought to by  by Robin Garr host of The Wine Lovers' Page at www.wine-lovers-page.com

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