The Pursuit of Wine Appreciation

When I first decided to pursue the pleasures of Wine Appreciation, it became apparent that it was far more complex than one friend’s advice, which was as simple as ABC: “Always Buy Cabernet, Always Buy Chardonnay.” (He was serious.) And while a number of wine drinkers I’m chummy with are still in that paradigm, I found it too confining, too generic, and not the least bit fulfilling. But I needed a roadmap, something to guide me on how to better understand wine.   The first route was sorting out and comprehending each of wine’s underlying components—acidity, sweetness, body (alcohol) and tannins. I soon realized that each of those is determined by (drum roll please!) the underlying grape from which the wine is made . And once I “learned the grape(s),” I came to understand why, say, a Merlot is unlike a Pinot Noir, which is unlike a Cabernet, which is unlike a Grenache. And the same holds for Chardonnay versus, say, Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling or Semillon. That was crucial, inasmuch a

by noreply@blogger.com (tom) · source ↗