Standing Up for Sweet Wine
I'm more than a little cranky tonight. It's been a really tough day, lots of arguments at work and in social and family life as well.
So, since I'm in the proper mood, here's a little rant that needs to be gotten off my chest.
What the hell is so wrong with sweetness in wine anyway? Look, I'm not talking about selling grape juice spiked with high fructose corn syrup with a touch of alcohol dumped in, but I'm getting a little tired of the assumption that sweet means bad, that liking a sweet wine is an indication of an infantile or ignorant palate.
Okay, so I'm actually worked up about this because I got stuck with a bottle of truly awful Gewürztraminer after a horrendous day. I'm snubbing a nearly full glass of it as I'm writing this. How did this happen? Well, it's painful to admit, but it happened because I let the anti-sweetness snobbery guide my choice. So, shame on me!
Where did I absorb such notions? Well, to start, I've heard over-and-over again the disdain held for little old ladies who want to drink sweet red wine and then proceed to get completely schnockered. I heard about them in the wine-tasting rooms of the Biltmore (where apparently whole busloads of them pull up, gulping down every free taste they can get). I've heard about these same ladies in various blogs, and I've heard about them from wine merchants. I never hear about them spoken of in positive tones, that's for sure. And yes, from the sound of it, some of this behavior is pretty annoying.
Humans like sweetness. Before you can get a baby to like any other flavor, you can get them to like sweetness. Saltiness follows, and then sour, and then bitter. This is why things like beer and coffee (both have bitter components) are aquired tastes. And, if you think about it, having an educated palate means you have acquired tastes. It means you've paid enough attention to your senses that nuance, elegance, and adventure in the form of the use of a wider range of flavors appeal to you, and that you can make sense of and appreciate more types of things.
I think the problem with sweetness is this: Liking something that is sweet is a no-brainer, for most people. So, a lot of people who are not paying attention to their wine at all will like sweet and be repelled by dry or tannic wines. But, an educated palate will notice the interplay between flavors much more, and place greater importance on this interplay than on the levels of the most basic building block flavors. This is the basic theory behind all wine and food pairing, and anyone who's stumbled on a great combination (chocolate-dipped strawberries), or a terrible combination (toothpaste and orange juice), begins to understand the importance of context. And, sometimes, there are wines that simply require some level of sweetness to properly showcase their flavors.
I'm not saying that a good dry gewürztraminer can't be done. Honestly, I don't know enough about the varietal to be able to say. But I do know that the dryness is a big reason this particular specimen disappointed me so thoroughly. (Its smell of canned fruit cocktail didn't endear me to it either.) However, there were some floral notes and some honey and tangerine that a touch of sweetness would have brought out, and the wine would have gone from yucky to, well... not great, but acceptable.
And, I admit, there is a part of me that reads articles describing marketing strategies like these that assume women are, well, what I said earlier: infantile and ignorant. Of course this offends me, and I don't want to be anything like most of the women in the article. For instance, this quote: "I saw 'Sideways,' " she said. "I thought, man, I've been drinking merlot all these years. I'm an idiot!"
She doesn't like merlot because of Sideways? Good. More Pomerols for me. But I admit: loathing her so much meant that my judgement got clouded. To truly be her opposite, I should have intelligently bought good wine instead of trying to artificially cultivate a refined image.
(And, well, to be fair, I thought the joke was pretty funny, but I can't imagine avoiding merlot because of it.)
Hat tip: I found the article on Professor Bainbridge's blog.
So, since I'm in the proper mood, here's a little rant that needs to be gotten off my chest.
What the hell is so wrong with sweetness in wine anyway? Look, I'm not talking about selling grape juice spiked with high fructose corn syrup with a touch of alcohol dumped in, but I'm getting a little tired of the assumption that sweet means bad, that liking a sweet wine is an indication of an infantile or ignorant palate.
Okay, so I'm actually worked up about this because I got stuck with a bottle of truly awful Gewürztraminer after a horrendous day. I'm snubbing a nearly full glass of it as I'm writing this. How did this happen? Well, it's painful to admit, but it happened because I let the anti-sweetness snobbery guide my choice. So, shame on me!
Where did I absorb such notions? Well, to start, I've heard over-and-over again the disdain held for little old ladies who want to drink sweet red wine and then proceed to get completely schnockered. I heard about them in the wine-tasting rooms of the Biltmore (where apparently whole busloads of them pull up, gulping down every free taste they can get). I've heard about these same ladies in various blogs, and I've heard about them from wine merchants. I never hear about them spoken of in positive tones, that's for sure. And yes, from the sound of it, some of this behavior is pretty annoying.
Humans like sweetness. Before you can get a baby to like any other flavor, you can get them to like sweetness. Saltiness follows, and then sour, and then bitter. This is why things like beer and coffee (both have bitter components) are aquired tastes. And, if you think about it, having an educated palate means you have acquired tastes. It means you've paid enough attention to your senses that nuance, elegance, and adventure in the form of the use of a wider range of flavors appeal to you, and that you can make sense of and appreciate more types of things.
I think the problem with sweetness is this: Liking something that is sweet is a no-brainer, for most people. So, a lot of people who are not paying attention to their wine at all will like sweet and be repelled by dry or tannic wines. But, an educated palate will notice the interplay between flavors much more, and place greater importance on this interplay than on the levels of the most basic building block flavors. This is the basic theory behind all wine and food pairing, and anyone who's stumbled on a great combination (chocolate-dipped strawberries), or a terrible combination (toothpaste and orange juice), begins to understand the importance of context. And, sometimes, there are wines that simply require some level of sweetness to properly showcase their flavors.
I'm not saying that a good dry gewürztraminer can't be done. Honestly, I don't know enough about the varietal to be able to say. But I do know that the dryness is a big reason this particular specimen disappointed me so thoroughly. (Its smell of canned fruit cocktail didn't endear me to it either.) However, there were some floral notes and some honey and tangerine that a touch of sweetness would have brought out, and the wine would have gone from yucky to, well... not great, but acceptable.
And, I admit, there is a part of me that reads articles describing marketing strategies like these that assume women are, well, what I said earlier: infantile and ignorant. Of course this offends me, and I don't want to be anything like most of the women in the article. For instance, this quote: "I saw 'Sideways,' " she said. "I thought, man, I've been drinking merlot all these years. I'm an idiot!"
She doesn't like merlot because of Sideways? Good. More Pomerols for me. But I admit: loathing her so much meant that my judgement got clouded. To truly be her opposite, I should have intelligently bought good wine instead of trying to artificially cultivate a refined image.
(And, well, to be fair, I thought the joke was pretty funny, but I can't imagine avoiding merlot because of it.)
Hat tip: I found the article on Professor Bainbridge's blog.
1 Comments:
I agreed with this portion of the article:
Not surprisingly, the very notion of a woman's wine has already generated a mini-backlash. "I find it demeaning," said Kris Curran, of Curran Wines in the Santa Rita Hills, near Santa Barbara. "It's implying that women don't have as sophisticated a palate."
Ann Colgin, owner of Colgin Cellars in St. Helena, which makes collectible, small production "cult" wines, said she would find the idea of a male wine "a little silly."
"Women enjoy fine wine as much as any man out there," she said. As for calories, she added: "I'd rather have one great glass of wine and a small piece of dark chocolate than a whole box of SnackWells."
I don't precisely look down on sweet wine: I tend to view it more as a gateway, unless it's something like an Inniskillin Icewine or a dessert wine from Sauternes. It has its place.
It can be useful to get people into wine. I liken it to my progression in drinking scotch.
When I went to my first tasting, they served a very smoky, peaty single malt. At the time, I felt like I was drinking motor oil. I don't remember the name of it, but it was lighter and more moderate than Laphroaig.
Time has passed, my palate has expanded, and I now have a bottle of Laphroaig in my cabinet that I tend to enjoy on cold nights. :)
"Wine snobs" have a point that a developed palate provides the ability to make a more accurate assessment of the quality of a given wine. However, I think some of them are perhaps too dismissive of sweet wines as a point along the journey toward educating one's palate in the first place.
Personally, I've never been a fan of sweet wine, but that's just me. I am not fond of sweet foods in many cases, either. I'm more of a savory girl. Give me a choice between chocolate and a bag of vinegary potato chips, and I'll choose the chips 90% of the time. I do, however, respect the place of sweeter wines in the pantheon of tasting.
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