Ask the Somm

bewarethejabb

Monkey With A Typewriter
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 5, 2013
Messages
162
Reaction score
20
Location
Chicago
Website
www.scribophile.com
My question is, what are the sweetest wine(s)? Concord? Sangria? Cherry?

Concord is not a wine. It's a grape. You can make wine from concords. It's pretty bad, by most accounts. Some people like it.

Concord is a grape the way beagle is a dog. Cabernet and Merlot and Malbec and Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc and Riesling are also all grapes, the way retrievers and huskies and dobermans and chihuahuas are all dogs. You can make any grape into any type of wine, just as you can train any breed to be a guard dog, but hint: the beagle will not do as well as the doberman. The husky will not do as well as the labrador at retrieving waterfowl from swamps, and the chihuahua will not be very good at pulling a sled.

Sangria is also not a wine. It's a type of punch with wine in it. Sangria is generally a way to use up wine so shitty (or open a few days and about to go off) you had to add lots of sugar to it to make it drinkable. Generally sangria is punch made of shitty red wine (generally red because sang implies blood, though people make white and sparkling "sangria" as well) and some kind of hard liquor to make it stronger, often brandy but anything you have on hand will do, lots of sugar, some fruit juice, and some chopped fruit and any other flavours like vanilla or cinnamon you feel like adding. Everyone insists they have the "real" sangria recipe just like everyone makes the only "real" chili recipe. So, sangria IS almost always sweet... but that's because you add sugar. It doesn't make the wine you used in it sweet. You also add sugar to lemonade. That doesn't make lemons sweet.

I've never heard of cherry wine, but I assume someone added cherry juice to wine. People do all kinds of gross things like that in north america. "Fruit wines" are not wine, they're some kind of punch where you added the juice of other fruits to the wine. Wine, technically, is alcoholic grape juice. Period. It is what happens when you let grape juice turn into booze. When you let apple juice turn into booze, you don't get apple wine, you get cider. When you let wheat turn into booze, you don't get wheat wine, you get beer. Honey becomes mead. You get the idea.

We generally don't ferment most other things because it's really hard to pull off. Technically, if someone fermented the juice of another fruit (this is often done very, very well with raspberries) it would be a liqueur, because all other fruits, if you can pull it off at all, turn into a very concentrated, syrupy, low-alcohol substance that is far more of a flavouring agent than something you drink straight. It's a lot more expensive and difficult to make other pure fruit juices into alcohol, so something like that made of, say, raspberries will come in a tiny bottle, be very expensive and be called by it's correct name "raspberry liqueur" or simply "framboise." If it says "raspberry wine" - it's probably cheap shitty ordinary grape wine with some raspberry flavour (possibly artificial) added. Same thing for cherry.

Here's a cherry liqueur I like I lot. It isn't even remotely wine, btw: http://www.leopoldbros.com/New_site/Michigan_Tart_Cherry_Liqueur.html

The sweetest wines that are actually wines (as in, made from grape juice) would be anything in the category of "dessert wines." (Easy enough to remember, no?) They usually resemble the texture and flavour of honey. Generally, they are harvest very late, so you will often see the words "late harvest" on the bottle (although for very famous types like Sauternes they won't bother to tell you "late harvest" because Sauturenes is ALWAYS late harvest. There is no other kind.) They are made after the grapes have turned into raisins - dried out, water evaporated, sugar concentrated - so when they're crushed, they only give up a very small amount of very sweet juice. Trockenberenauslese (TBA for short) is a famous German style that literally means dry (trocken) berry (beren) special harvest (auslese) as in... the very special grapes we let turn to raisins before we picked them because they're fucking awesome that way.

Icewine (Eiswine if it comes from Germany, same thing) is from grapes picked the night of the first frost, before dawn melts the frost and the juice is lost from the grapes (cell walls now exploded from freezing.) They are crushed while still frozen, again producing a very distinct, highly sweet and concentrated style wine.

Not all rieslings are sweet. Not all muscats are sweet. They CAN be made dry, off-dry, lightly sweet, very sweet, or at a late harvest / icewine dessert level, because you CAN pick grapes at any point (in august when they're barely ripe, or in november when they're raisins and full of sugar.) The category you want, if you want that hyper-sweet literally-thick-as-honey-sticks-to-a-spoon wine, when you go into a liquor store is "dessert wine" and general styles include "late harvest" and "icewine." Sauternes, Barsac, TBA, and eiswine are all specific famous subcategories. Try Inniskillin Vidal (name brand) icewine if you come across it, it's a favourite from Canada.
 

ResearchGuy

Resident Curmudgeon
Requiescat In Pace
Registered
Joined
Mar 26, 2005
Messages
5,011
Reaction score
697
Location
Sacramento area, CA
Website
www.umbachconsulting.com
Cherry Wine

Cherry wine is wine made from cherries. I have an excellent somewhat sweet one from Warner Vineyards Michigan, and a tarter one, quite nice in its way, from another MI winery (Blackstar Farms if I recall right, off the top of my head). Fruit wines (made from the fruit, not fruit-flavored ones from grapes) are popular in the Midwest especially.

Sandhill Crane Vineyards, Jackson, MI, makes a terrific, slightly off dry raspberry wine. Amazing with dark chocolate. And on and on ...

--Ken
 
Last edited:

bewarethejabb

Monkey With A Typewriter
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 5, 2013
Messages
162
Reaction score
20
Location
Chicago
Website
www.scribophile.com
Looked up that Warner Vineyards "Cherry Wine," and while it probably tastes lovely, its a cherry liqueur, not a wine. A lot of north american winemakers grossly mislabel their product with no regard to international standards. The way you can tell Warner Vineyards is not to be taken seriously is that they presume to have "Michigan Champagne." There is no such thing, and it's bordering on libel. Champagne is a place in France, and the term Champagne is a protected denomination of origin. They are defaming the French region of Champagne (not to mention trying to ride it's coat-tails) by using their proprietary term illegally. You can't have Puffs Brand Kleenex, you can have Puffs Brand Facial Tissue. This kind of name-stealing (of famous, registered regions like Bordeaux, Chianti, Chablis, Burgundy, etc) doesn't go on anywhere except for in the US, and then only at shitty wineries. The EU actually has a lawsuit against us for that reason, just as Kleenex would sue Puffs if they tried to steal the name.

If you saw a cheap monkey copy labled "iphone" sold for only $30 (widely produced and available in/from China) being sold by a peddler on the street corner downtown, wouldn't you raise your eyebrow and go "bet THAT'S a fake piece of shit?" Yeah. That's how you should be reacting to anything labeled "Champagne" that doesn't say "product of France." You know it's a shitty monkey copy that has so little going for it in it's own right it had to resort to stealing a name.

A real competitor will make their own name. Samsung Galaxy IS a genuine competitor with Iphone and doesn't have to steal the name to let you know it's a damn good product. It simply calls itself a smartphone and stands on it's own merits. There ARE very good sparkling wines from Michigan ... labeled "Sparkling Wine, Methode Traditionelle." You can tell a serious product because they tell you what they are rather than trying to steal the proprietary name.

Because Warner Vineyards doesn't elect to name themselves accurately, I'm immediately suspicious that they have crap product, all across the board. If I find the Chinese knockoff brand that makes fake "iphones" and "gucci bags" and "prada shoes" I'm not going to trust ANY of their imitation products. Am I saying you have to be a name-brand whore? No, of course not. I don't have an iphone, nor do I need one. The part where it's buyer beware is that the knockoff chinese iphone is actually a plastic piece of crap that is going to break on me in the first week. It's SO bad it's just a waste of money. I'd rather have a real item that respects itself enough to have it's own name (perfectly happy with my Galaxy S3.)

Is there good Michigan sparkling wine? Yes. Absolutely. And yes, it's cheaper than Champagne. But we're talking $30-50/btl instead of $60-100/btl. The $10/btl bottom-shelf-at-Safeway stuff is guaranteed crap.

Is there good cherry liqueur? Yes, absolutely. I really doubt any knockoff-producing company incorrectly calling it cherry wine and also producing knockoff "champagne" are the ones making it.

Now, if you don't give a shit what you're drinking or what it tastes like and just wanna get trashed, both the knockoff products will work just fine. They ARE alcohol. My girlfriend happily carries a knockoff Burberry purse, because in her words "it's a fucking bag I put my shit in." Unlike a fake iphone, the odds of a purse malfunctioning in a way that matters are much lower. It is shittily made and the strap on her first one broke in like three months. I offered to buy her a real one. She merrily declined and got another fake one from the peddler, because it's just a bag to put her shit in and $10 on a new one every 3 months doesn't bother her.

Tl;dr: if you want good booze, get actual name brands OR lesser known brands that label themselves accurately. If you don't care and just wanna get drunk, any cheap knockoff will do the job,
 
Last edited:

onesecondglance

pretending to be awake
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 2, 2012
Messages
5,359
Reaction score
1,661
Location
Berkshire, UK
Website
soundcloud.com
Short version: what's the best way for me to get to know French regional wines?

Long version: I have a good enough feel for what the major varieties of grapes will impart to a wine to make me comfortable picking out New World wines that identify themselves as a Pinot Noir, a Cab Sav, etc. etc., but I am utterly clueless as to whether I would get on with a Cotes du Rhone over a Bordeaux, for instance. My palate is fairly broad, so I'm not worried about getting something I won't like - it's more knowing what to expect so I can match it to the right food, that sort of thing. Can you give some kind of dummies guide to the major French regions, with their typical characteristics?

:)
 

ResearchGuy

Resident Curmudgeon
Requiescat In Pace
Registered
Joined
Mar 26, 2005
Messages
5,011
Reaction score
697
Location
Sacramento area, CA
Website
www.umbachconsulting.com
Start here: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/french-wine-for-dummies-cheat-sheet.html

You are welcome.

--Ken

Short version: what's the best way for me to get to know French regional wines?

Long version: I have a good enough feel for what the major varieties of grapes will impart to a wine to make me comfortable picking out New World wines that identify themselves as a Pinot Noir, a Cab Sav, etc. etc., but I am utterly clueless as to whether I would get on with a Cotes du Rhone over a Bordeaux, for instance. My palate is fairly broad, so I'm not worried about getting something I won't like - it's more knowing what to expect so I can match it to the right food, that sort of thing. Can you give some kind of dummies guide to the major French regions, with their typical characteristics?

:)
 

ResearchGuy

Resident Curmudgeon
Requiescat In Pace
Registered
Joined
Mar 26, 2005
Messages
5,011
Reaction score
697
Location
Sacramento area, CA
Website
www.umbachconsulting.com
Warner Vineyards cherrybwine

Really. It's a wine, not a liqueur. One of us has drunk it. That is me. I've also had cherry liqueurs, and recognize the difference.

Folks, do your own homework. Don't take someone's assumptions as gospel. Read good books on wine, and taste, taste, taste.

--Ken
 

bewarethejabb

Monkey With A Typewriter
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 5, 2013
Messages
162
Reaction score
20
Location
Chicago
Website
www.scribophile.com
Short version: what's the best way for me to get to know French regional wines?

Long version: I have a good enough feel for what the major varieties of grapes will impart to a wine to make me comfortable picking out New World wines that identify themselves as a Pinot Noir, a Cab Sav, etc. etc., but I am utterly clueless as to whether I would get on with a Cotes du Rhone over a Bordeaux, for instance. My palate is fairly broad, so I'm not worried about getting something I won't like - it's more knowing what to expect so I can match it to the right food, that sort of thing. Can you give some kind of dummies guide to the major French regions, with their typical characteristics?

:)

Short version: KEEP DRINKIN' IT. :D

Long version: Happily! Well, the first important thing to know is the region often is famous for a certain grape - a Cotes Du Rhone is made of Grenache, Syrah, and Mouvedre (in America and Australia you'll often see the term "Rhone Blend" or "GSM" to summarize the style imitated and grapes used) and Bordeaux is Cabernet, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc (likewise, you'll see the term "Bordeaux blend" as a summary of the grapes used on bottles from elsewhere in the world.) The reason they don't bother to tell you the grape names in the more famous regions of Europe is because they do only one thing there, and everyone knows what it is. You KNOW what Champagne is. It's made of chardonnay, pinot noir, and pinot munier, but they don't need to spell that out, because all Champagne may legally only be made of those three grapes. The word "Champagne" covers all of that: grapes used, terroir, production method, style.

Let's cover the concept of terroir: it means "sense of place." It's the climate, the geography, the soil makeup, the altitude, the other local flora, everything that contributes to how the plant grows and therefore how the fruit tastes. Many other foods have terroir; that's why they tell you where your coffee and chocolate beans come from, and why Bourbon is nothing like Scotch. People have terroir; the majority of people in the US have ancestors that are not from the US, and though they may share the same genes, they're not the same as a cousin who was born and raised in the old country. Planting a grape elsewhere is no different than moving a person elsewhere: how you are raised, among what influences, matters a hell of a lot of your final personality.

So, try a few experiments. Get, say, a Cabernet from four different places. Try to get them from close to the same year and vaugely the same price point, so you're eliminating the varience that comes with age and the possibility that people tried harder to make the expensive one and the cheap one was shoddy work. Isolate the variable of terroir. Get a west bank Bordeaux (which will be primarily Cab with a little Merlot - East Bank does primarily Merlot. Google the exact ones at the store for their exact percentages and try to get one that's at least 70% cab for the sake of this experiment.) a Napa Valley, a Chilean (Colchagua should be fun if you can find it), and a Coonwarra (Australia). Pour out little samples in four glasses and taste them side by side, and find out for yourself what a difference place makes. Also, try the same thing with food. Make yourself some good steak or whatever you'd want to drink cab with, and with little bites and sips at first so you don't get drunk until after you've formed your opinions, try all four with the food and see what you like best. Try it with some cheese and charcuterie, too, and some dark chocolate (cab is so good with chocolate) after.

My friends and I get together and do this shit on Tuesdays, btw. We call it Boozy Tuesdays. If you're ever in Chicago, stop on by.

Some more comparisons that will teach you about famous French regions, to stick to your original question.

Chardonnay: get a Chablis, a Puligny-Montrachet (or Chassagne-Montrachet), a California, and a Hunter Valley.

Syrah: Cornas (!!! I love Cornas) Crozes-Hermitage, Barossa Valley, Washington State. You must have lots of charcuterie with this one. Black pepper and pork. Brats. Steak au poive. Chili. And absolutely, definitely Spanish (not Mexican) chorizo.

Sauvignon blanc: Marlborough. Sancerre or Pouilly-fume. California. Chile.

... that's probably more than enough to get you started. Let me know if you have any more specific questions.

ETA: A really good beginner-intermediate book I recommend is Karen MacNeil's "The Wine Bible." I feel that most things simpler than that (or with big coffee table glossy colour pictures) are just watered down to cater to people's insecurity. Your question is very far from stupid or entry-level, so I am certain you won't need a simpler book. What I really like about the Wine Bible is it's tone. It's fun and conversational and you can read it for pleasure, but it contains tons more information than average things of that tone. It's a fantastically comprehensive jumping off point.

When you've made your way through that and are ready for the really definitive textbooks, you want The Oxford Companion to Wine and The Wine Atlas. The Oxford Companion is a straight up encyclopedia - you'll use it to look things up that no one has bothered to put on the internet yet (when I'm studying a subject, I sit around updating wikipedia articles with information from it. I can guarantee you that no one has bothered to put EVERYTHING in there on the internet yet, as I have often taken stabs at that Sysiphean task.) The wine atlas is great if you really want to understand terrior and think visually, as I've never seen better or more detailed maps. The Wine Bible is still the one you'll flip to a random page of and read for fun while eating breakfast, though. It doesn't have everything, but what it has is engaging and high quality.
 
Last edited:

bewarethejabb

Monkey With A Typewriter
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 5, 2013
Messages
162
Reaction score
20
Location
Chicago
Website
www.scribophile.com
Really. It's a wine, not a liqueur. One of us has drunk it. That is me. I've also had cherry liqueurs, and recognize the difference.

One of us is a somm. That is me.

What do you have a degree in? Are you a doctor? I got sick once. A mechanic? I've owned a car! Just tell me your field, I'd be happy to give my anecdotal opinions about how I once did one thing related to whatever you studied.

There's no need to ask doctors when people on the internet can give you links to webmd.

(ETA: I agree. People, do your research and ask more than one professional opinion. You'll quickly find out if the doctor or the guy who's "been sick once, and recognizes the difference" has any idea what he's talking about.)
 
Last edited:

RedRajah

Special Snowflake? No. Hailstone
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 23, 2010
Messages
3,886
Reaction score
2,363
Website
www.fanfiction.net
bewarethejabb: I know you've mentioned having misgivings about Californian wines (at least w/Rieslings). Is there anything from CA you like? Maybe outside of Napa/Sonoma?
 

bewarethejabb

Monkey With A Typewriter
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 5, 2013
Messages
162
Reaction score
20
Location
Chicago
Website
www.scribophile.com
bewarethejabb: I know you've mentioned having misgivings about Californian wines (at least w/Rieslings). Is there anything from CA you like? Maybe outside of Napa/Sonoma?

Lots of things. My misgivings with California Riesling has to do with climate; Riesling does well in cooler areas. There's very good non-German ones coming out of Washington State, and the Maragaret River Valley in Australia. (Alsace and Austria also do Riesling well, but I wanted to point out new world ones in particular.)

Napa kicks ass at Cabernet, which is why you practically say "This is a Napa" without further explanation, as you can with famous European regions. Sonoma does really well with Chardonnay, which is also a cool-weather grape (still in the cali style - it does not approximate white Burgundy.) and contains the Russian River Valley, which is famous for Pinot. I can get really specific if you're curious, but I don't mean to slight those regions. I just really don't like how much they over-ripen Riesling, personally.

Outside Napa/Sonoma, Mendocino and Monterey also do many good things with cool-weather varietals. I personally don't care for Burgundian varietals done in their style as much as ones from Burgundy itself, but I wouldn't go so far as to say "WTF" as with Riesling.

Walter Hansel is an excellent specific example of a Russian River producer (in Sonoma) who does really, really tasty things to even my palate which is biased against the Russian River style.

Look for Lake County, outside Napa, for other promising Cabs.

If you want to go off the beaten path of French varietals, Central Valley is known for Zin.

My palate is biased against new world styles, but not everyone's is. Try the same grape from two or more places (I gave a list of fun ones to start with above) and see what you prefer. Even within a general trend I personally don't care for, there are awesome individual examples of everything.
 
Last edited:

sunandshadow

Impractical Fantasy Animal
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 17, 2005
Messages
4,827
Reaction score
336
Location
Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Website
home.comcast.net
Huh. That's completely different from the American-written materials I've read on brewing and alcohol varieties. I have no idea what's right and I'm not really bothered about it, aside from figuring out how to tell if I am going to like or dislike a drink from the name. So far I've learned that I don't like hops, I don't like anything oaked, I don't like anything with an alcohol percentage higher than 10%, and I do like lambics and things that are sweet and fruity. I actually love concord wine (though it's even better served as half concord wine and half concord grape juice) - I keep wondering if the people who put it down have ever tasted it, or if they have the sort of tastebuds where they like bitter things like black coffee and tea, instead of a serious sweet tooth like I have. But concord wine is one of only a few wines I will drink straight, because most of them are just too bitter for me to be able to enjoy them.

But for comparison here's what I read when studying homebrewing:
- Wine names correspond to the blend of grape varieties (or other fruit) used to make the wine; in other words, the recipe; they have no relation to where the wine is brewed or the grapes grown.
- Chanpagne is sparkling wine made with extremely high attenuation yeast and bottled while it is still fermenting, in reinforced bottles due to the danger of explosion if regular wine or bear bottles were used. Champagne has the highest alcohol content of non-fortified or distilled wines.
- The difference between wine and cider is the type of yeast used (its attenuation) and whether the resulting drink is served aged and flat or young and fizzy. Cider is aged less than a year, wine more. Beer is essentially barley cider. Barleywine, on the other hand, is, well, barley wine.
 

bewarethejabb

Monkey With A Typewriter
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 5, 2013
Messages
162
Reaction score
20
Location
Chicago
Website
www.scribophile.com
Huh. That's completely different from the American-written materials I've read on brewing and alcohol varieties. I have no idea what's right and I'm not really bothered about it, aside from figuring out how to tell if I am going to like or dislike a drink from the name. So far I've learned that I don't like hops, I don't like anything oaked, I don't like anything with an alcohol percentage higher than 10%, and I do like lambics and things that are sweet and fruity. I actually love concord wine (though it's even better served as half concord wine and half concord grape juice) - I keep wondering if the people who put it down have ever tasted it, or if they have the sort of tastebuds where they like bitter things like black coffee and tea, instead of a serious sweet tooth like I have. But concord wine is one of only a few wines I will drink straight, because most of them are just too bitter for me to be able to enjoy them.

But for comparison here's what I read when studying homebrewing:
- Wine names correspond to the blend of grape varieties (or other fruit) used to make the wine; in other words, the recipe; they have no relation to where the wine is brewed or the grapes grown.
- Chanpagne is sparkling wine made with extremely high attenuation yeast and bottled while it is still fermenting, in reinforced bottles due to the danger of explosion if regular wine or bear bottles were used. Champagne has the highest alcohol content of non-fortified or distilled wines.
- The difference between wine and cider is the type of yeast used (its attenuation) and whether the resulting drink is served aged and flat or young and fizzy. Cider is aged less than a year, wine more. Beer is essentially barley cider. Barleywine, on the other hand, is, well, barley wine.

The first two items are more or less true, but somewhat limited. The name of the grape used is often on the bottle, but not always. Laws vary by region of the world. Some places mandate it, some forbid it, some don't specify. It isn't a matter of what's wrong or right, it's that for the purpose of locating and identifying wine you like, if you follow that advice, it's not going to work, because half or so of the wine in the world and more than eighty or so percent of the high quality wine don't put the name of the grape on the label, irrelevant to what the guy who wrote that textbook thinks. Whether or not they should in that opinion, I doubt that he is going to succeed at standardizing wine production laws across the globe where so many others have failed. The practical answer is: the labels say different things in every country and you just have to memorize it.

The second one is also correct in that that is how champagne is made. Simply making jug wine in the region of champagne would not make it legal to put the word champagne on the bottle. There's tons of regulations on correct production methods in order to be allowed the name, including what your book said and more. It also has to be taste tested by a governmental board and approved as "true to style." Anything outside of the delimited champagne region produced in that method can correctly be called "methode champagnoise" although "methode traditionelle" is usually considered more respectful, as it doesn't even come close to infringing on their protected branding.

The third one I can't answer because I don't know enough about the regulations surrounding cider production, and my assertion that apples=cider is an admitted generalization. It may very well be legal to include other basic ingredients, including grape juice, in cider. But I can tell you definitively that wine means grape juice. "Barleywine" is kind of a grandfathered exception from before the word was formally defined for the sake of regulation of sale, though it must be sold as the whole word barleywine, not just wine, for the sake of avoiding confusion. "Fruit wines" are colloquial modern category that include things like framboise, though they're legally liqueurs - a place that has a beer and wine licence but not a hard liquor license can't sell them. For the sake of what you said, again actually finding things you want to drink, it depends on if you like shitty flavored wine. A high quality framboise will never be labeled raspberry wine, but if you want artificial flavored plonk, it will be. I am not insulting artificially flavored plonk. Know what my guilty pleasure is? Nacho cheeze. The neon yellow shit out of the pump at the greasy drive thru that goes on my chili fries. It is most assuredly not cheese, nor does it even really resemble it. I don't care if anyone wants to argue it is: if I want the liquid yellow goo on my fries, I am going to look for the word "cheeze"and if I want to make a party tray, I'm gonna use cheese labeled with an s instead.
 

bewarethejabb

Monkey With A Typewriter
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 5, 2013
Messages
162
Reaction score
20
Location
Chicago
Website
www.scribophile.com
Also, you're completely right about tastebuds and acclimation. The actual complete answer about concord is that it is an American variety, as opposed to a European one, and those all taste recognizably different. Not bad, different. Americans all know it at the "welch's" or "smuckers" taste. The vast majority of people who like wine like bitter flavors like tea and coffee, as you said, because most wine is comparatively bitter and you're not likely to get into it unless you like that. Therefore, most people who say they like wine don't like wine made from concord, as it's so far outside the thing they like. However, a few persistent wineries in Virginia are treating it seriously (a large number of producers formerly didn't, and there is also a lot of shoddy work out there from concord) and it seems determined to become a thing. Then again, you may not care, as all the "serious" producers are trying to make it come off less sweet and jammy and Welch's-y, as that's what the majority of wine consumers want.

So, you're right, it's all taste buds. If you like what others don't like, ain't nothing wrong with that, but you'll have to get used to merrily describing it as "no, really,I have a soft spot for cheap shitty sweet stuff" just as I happily call nacho cheeze terrible and still like it. If I ask for cheese, i will be misunderstood when, no really, I want the awful day glo orange stuff.
 

sunandshadow

Impractical Fantasy Animal
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 17, 2005
Messages
4,827
Reaction score
336
Location
Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Website
home.comcast.net
The vast majority of people who like wine like bitter flavors like tea and coffee, as you said, because most wine is comparatively bitter and you're not likely to get into it unless you like that.
I wonder how it worked out that way historically. A few centuries ago there were some commonly available sweet alcohols like syllabubs, nogs, flips, sweet mead. But now? Liqueurs generally seems to be intended for making mixes out of, not drinking; they tend to be ridiculously high proof and are pretty terrible if you try to drink them straight from the bottle.

In the 80s in the US wine coolers seemed to be the only commercially available ready-to-drink sweet alcohols, though there was a slightly larger variety available in mixed drinks, especially daiquiris and coladas, and soda/liquor mixes. It's only been pretty recently that we've seen hard lemonade, rock'n'rye, chocovin/adult chocolate milk, lambics, alcoholic egg nogs, and sweeter indie ciders are becoming widely available in the US. It's still impossible to find a sweet mead in a liquor store, though you can find 4 or 5 dry meads. I wonder if it has to do with the idea that sugar in the final product is wasted alcohol potential and the drinker isn't getting drunk efficiently, or that drinking is supposed to be a tough-guy or self-disciplined high-culture *coughsnootycough* activity which shouldn't be softened with sweet flavors. If there were a wide variety of sweet ready-to-drink alcohols outside the US 30 years ago I'd put the blame all on the cultural damage done by prohibition, but I haven't really heard that to be the case. Or maybe it has more to do with the cost of ingredients and technical difficulties of getting sweet stuff not to ferment further in the bottle. Someone probably knows, but it isn't me, lol.

But yeah, I don't really care if people consider the wine I like to be crap or not. I'd disagree on the basis that if I like it that makes it good to me, and my opinion is equally valid compared to theirs. So I'd call concord wine "underappreciated" or something more flattering. But they can call concord wine crap if I can call $100 a bottle wine terrible when I don't like the taste.

(And I can certainly appreciate some nice hot gooey nacho cheese; makes me want to plan my Saturday lunch somewhere I can get some.)
 

bewarethejabb

Monkey With A Typewriter
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 5, 2013
Messages
162
Reaction score
20
Location
Chicago
Website
www.scribophile.com
I wonder how it worked out that way historically. A few centuries ago there were some commonly available sweet alcohols like syllabubs, nogs, flips, sweet mead. But now? Liqueurs generally seems to be intended for making mixes out of, not drinking; they tend to be ridiculously high proof and are pretty terrible if you try to drink them straight from the bottle.

You're spot-on with this; I've read a lot of things referring to people's palates preferring sweeter things in the past and I'm not sure what caused the shift. It's often mourned on subjects like port, which can have examples that are beautifully complex and exquisite examples of type, but the modern drinker just isn't into it.

My anecdotal experience (not from any official, cite-able source, just me observing people) is that there seem to be three phases of palate evolution: what I call the "little kid" palate, where sweet = good and bitter = gross, followed by the rejection-of-little-kid-palate where you want MOAR BITTER ALL THE TIME, almost as if to prove you can take it (thinking of the manly-man hoppiest-beer-ever brands that advertise with names that imply it's a "death by hops" challenge of sorts) and then the phase where you suddenly, regrettably, like everything expensive, both sweet and bitter.

I THINK there's biological and psychological reasons behind this: we instinctively crave sugars, fats, salts, etc, for obvious evolutionary reasons of those flavours being scarce in a pre-industrial world and indicative of high caloric density, therefore good, and most bitter flavours are poisons, therefore, children are born with an instinct for what is most nutritious least likely to kill them (the child palate.) I read somewhere that if you are exposed to a certain formerly negative flavour x amount of times and don't die, basically, your brain rewires to say that it is acceptable and safe. Apparently you do this much more easily around 2-4 years old, when you're copying your parents, which is why toddlers forced to deal with eating things like dark bitter green vegetables get over it much more easily than someone who made it to adulthood without getting over it. Evolution in a non-international-shipping world meant you've probably been taught to eat everything you're ever going to eat, because that's all that's available in your region of the world, by the time you're four.

The second phase of prove-how-bitter-I-can-take seems to be some kind of macho pride when you force yourself to cross that acclimation gap as an adult. I think you were spot on with that idea as well. I did it myself - went from HATING coffee (and alcohol, btw - I didn't voluntarily drink until after 21) to only being able to stand, like coffee flavoured ice cream, to affogato, to I WILL HAVE MY DOUBLE ESPRESSO BLACK PLEASE. I've softened out of that now - cubano with a splash of cream - just as most people I know get over their psycho-IPA and fear-of-riesling phase after they've had a few years to revel in the fact that the can finally tolerate bitter.

The third and final unfortunate phase of palate development is what I seem to be hitting now - an uncanny ability to recognize the expensive stuff. It's a chicken or the egg question: is the expensive stuff better, and I have good taste? Or is it expensive because the "pros" like it? I think it's entirely possible that because of some biological reason, anyone who drinks a lot and goes through all the natural phases of palate evolution will eventually end up in the same place, liking the same things. Those things are not necessarily better than anything else, they're just the end of the road if you happen to go that far. However - all "pros" drink a lot, so we all go that far. So suddenly, there's this illusion that "all the pros agree that we like this" when really you could replace the word "pros" with "maxxed out, jaded people." Then the price goes up because it's the things all pros like.

I honestly was really dreading reaching that point people better trained than me kept saying I would. "eventually you won't be able to stand swill." I don't WANT to not be able to stand swill. Swill is CHEAP. I LIKE cheap.

It's kind of like the time when, after a bad breakup, I drank a whole bottle of abolut while eating a family size bag of jalapeno Krunchers, then proceeded to vomit uncontrollably for like two days (like, I couldn't stop gagging long enough to fall asleep, it was awful.) As a result, I am now scarred for life and can not go anywhere near cheap vodka or jalapeno flavoured potato chips. Cheap, fake-sugary "fruit wines" give me a gag reaction for reasons that probably have much more to do with overexposure than relative quality. All the pros (read: alcoholics in suits) I know dislike similar things... probably because we all drink too much.

I should add, I REALLY like many dessert wines (and sweet liquors) but they're all the expensive ones. I more gravitate away from artificial flavours, and require a sense of balance and complexity to go with sugar content. "Good" (whatever that means) sweet wines are almost always very high acid as well, because acid and sugar compliment each other. it's why lemonade is good, but lemon-water or sugar-water minus the third ingredient is not nearly as easy to guzzle.

I wonder if people in the past liked sweet booze because refined sugar was relatively nonexistant? Maybe they gravitated towards it for the same reason people gravitate towards fats and salts - we naturally seek the flavours that indicate the greatest caloric density, and in a situation of scarcity it's impossible to get burned out on it.



I'd put the blame all on the cultural damage done by prohibition, but I haven't really heard that to be the case.

This is totally true as far as I know, btw. Prohibition, world wars I and II, and phylloxera pretty much decimated the world's supply of high quality alcohol production for like 80 years. Almost all of the western world had to re-figure out what it was doing in the 1950s.

Or maybe it has more to do with the cost of ingredients and technical difficulties of getting sweet stuff not to ferment further in the bottle. Someone probably knows, but it isn't me, lol.

This is also true as far as I know, but in a slightly more complicated way. Traditional fermentation without modern equipment was really pretty much something you could only do until it stopped naturally, which was usually after all the sugar was gone. Sweet wines only happened if 1. the region was so cold the yeast died from winter temperatures before it fermented all the sugars, which is why germany has a tradition of sweet rieslings being the ones harvest later, with greater sugar contents to start with and a smaller window of time before the freeze (this is also why champagne originally bubbles - it's fairly far north in france, and the second fermentation was caused by the yeast going dormant with cold, then starting up again in spring) 2. there was SO much sugar in the grape juice the yeast would die from the alcohol content before it could finish the sugars (late harvest and icewines are from such concentrated grapes with so much sugar to so little liquid, even when you reach full alcohol potential there's tons of sugar left) 3. you purposely stopped the fermentation by pouring distilled alcohol (usually brandy) into the wine before it was done, which is how fortified wines like port are made.

But stuff like chocovin and mudslide mix and mikes hard lemonade and wine coolers? That's all because processed sugar (or high fructose corn syrup) are available and cheap in the post industrial world, so we go crazy on it.

.... Now that I think about it, the stuff I don't like is always the stuff that has processed sugar in it. Including sangria. Maybe it's just processed sugar I don't like in wines or wine-cocktails.

But yeah, I don't really care if people consider the wine I like to be crap or not. I'd disagree on the basis that if I like it that makes it good to me, and my opinion is equally valid compared to theirs. So I'd call concord wine "underappreciated" or something more flattering. But they can call concord wine crap if I can call $100 a bottle wine terrible when I don't like the taste.

(And I can certainly appreciate some nice hot gooey nacho cheese; makes me want to plan my Saturday lunch somewhere I can get some.)

I agree with your philosophical point completely. It's all a matter of perspective, and btw, I do (secretly) call all kinds of expensive wines I don't like but am supposed to, crap. But mostly I use the word "crap" as a synonym for "not popular with jaded foodies" and don't really worry about quality connotations with it. If I really thought something was bad, I wouldn't like it, so using the oxymoronic phrase "I like this total crap" it effectively just means "I'm totally happy to be in the minority here." For the purpose you originally put forth of "describing what I want so I can find it," describing sweet concord wine and day glo nacho cheese alike as "no, not the real thing, you know, the cheap crappy stuff," is the most effective method I've found for actually obtaining what I want when asking someone who would sell it to me.

To answer your original question: concord still isn't a wine, it's a grape from which a wine could be made, but ain't nothin' wrong with liking it. Try some of the fancy ones coming out of Virginia side by side with the ones you already know you like, so for your own reference you can isolate if you like the concord-varietal flavour or the sweetness in the style. (any grape can be done dry or sweet, if I haven't mentioned that.) If you want to get REALLY scientific about it, make a four-wine flight with a european grape done in sweet and not sweet styles too, and taste back and forth so you can isolate different combinations of sweet/dry american/european.

Sweet is a style. If you're looking for sweet, the incredibly easy, obvious answer is that there is a category called "dessert wines." ALL of the above - sweet concord, sweet riesling, sweet grenache, sauternes, icewine, tba, port depending on who you ask, framboise, and probably whatever cherry crap from michigan my friendly neighborhood troll friend recommended, fall under "dessert."

Everything else is just memorizing shit because no two places label them the same way.

Also: thank you for making this thread WAY more interesting and complex than these types of things usually are!
 
Last edited:

mccardey

Self-Ban
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 10, 2010
Messages
19,213
Reaction score
15,828
Location
Australia.
Originally Posted by bewarethejabb
I read a study recently that suggests drinking alcohol, of any kind, is good for your heart until the point where it's bad for your liver. The happy medium is an average of 4-6 drinks per day, depending on body weight. .

I can't believe that's not per week. That has to be per week; I've never seen close to anything like that recommended by any health professional anyplace.

Yes - that caught me. In Australia the guidelines for women are no more than two measured units in a day, and to take two or three alcohol-free days a week.
 
Last edited:

bewarethejabb

Monkey With A Typewriter
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 5, 2013
Messages
162
Reaction score
20
Location
Chicago
Website
www.scribophile.com
Yes - that caught me. In Australia the guidelines for women are no more than two measured units in a day, and to take two or three alcohol-free days a week.

It's not the official guidelines anywhere, it was a recent single study I read that observed rates of heart disease and liver disease and compared it to alcohol consumption, in southern European countries where that level of consumption is quite typical. It's in no way definitive, but a large number of people in that area of the world seem to be doing very well with living it anyway.

... on second thought it MIGHT be official guidelines in Spain, France, or Italy, I wouldn't know. But watching people gulp down a glass in 2 minutes while standing up at a counter at 10 am on their morning work break has definitely convinced me it's standard practice, whether or not it's actually anyone's guidelines.
 
Last edited:

mccardey

Self-Ban
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 10, 2010
Messages
19,213
Reaction score
15,828
Location
Australia.
It's not the official guidelines anywhere, it was a recent single study I read that observed rates of heart disease and liver disease and compared it to alcohol consumption, in southern European countries where that level of consumption is quite typical. It's in no way definitive, but a large number of people in that area of the world seem to be doing very well with living it anyway.

I'd be surprised if it was. I remember being highly embarrassed the only time we asked if there was more wine with dinner (one bottle between four of us). There wasn't. And last year in France there was nothing to challenge that.

ETA: (Except my Beloved, of course ;) )
 
Last edited:

onesecondglance

pretending to be awake
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 2, 2012
Messages
5,359
Reaction score
1,661
Location
Berkshire, UK
Website
soundcloud.com

bewarethejabb

Monkey With A Typewriter
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 5, 2013
Messages
162
Reaction score
20
Location
Chicago
Website
www.scribophile.com
I'd be surprised if it was. I remember being highly embarrassed the only time we asked if there was more wine with dinner (one bottle between four of us). There wasn't. And last year in France there was nothing to challenge that.

ETA: (Except my Beloved, of course ;) )

I don't know where you went, but I'm very sorry to hear that. Please, you and your beloved travel with me and mine sometime. We can't even close to finish half the wine people are always bringing out, and if we tried to keep pace with the locals in bars and restaurants, we wouldn't be able to drive.

... it does help when you're walking home to take a nap before going back to work, I suppose.
 

mccardey

Self-Ban
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 10, 2010
Messages
19,213
Reaction score
15,828
Location
Australia.
I don't know where you went, but I'm very sorry to hear that. Please, you and your beloved travel with me and mine sometime. We can't even close to finish half the wine people are always bringing out, and if we tried to keep pace with the locals in bars and restaurants, we wouldn't be able to drive.

... it does help when you're walking home to take a nap before going back to work, I suppose.

Well, I was living in the village of Sablet, (Côtes du Rhône) a few minutes away from Chateauneuf-du-Pape and a very short bike-ride from Gigondas. The wines were fabulous, but I don't remember huge amounts being drunk at any one time. The locals loved their wine, and were hugely knowledgeable about it (most of them grew it, of course) - but they drank very moderately. The busloads of tourists, on the other hand...
 

cornflake

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 11, 2012
Messages
16,171
Reaction score
3,734
It's not the official guidelines anywhere, it was a recent single study I read that observed rates of heart disease and liver disease and compared it to alcohol consumption, in southern European countries where that level of consumption is quite typical. It's in no way definitive, but a large number of people in that area of the world seem to be doing very well with living it anyway.

... on second thought it MIGHT be official guidelines in Spain, France, or Italy, I wouldn't know. But watching people gulp down a glass in 2 minutes while standing up at a counter at 10 am on their morning work break has definitely convinced me it's standard practice, whether or not it's actually anyone's guidelines.

It's certainly not anyone's guidelines. It's also not apparently standard practice; it'd be double, which would be four times as much as the rest of the world, so says the WHO -

Alcohol consumption by adults over 15 years in the EU is more than double the world average. It is the equivalent of 12.5 litres of pure alcohol a year, 27g of pure alcohol per day, or nearly 3 drinks daily.

There are over 40 recognized alcohol-use disorders and conditions, including alcohol dependence and the harmful use of alcohol, alcoholic liver disease, alcohol-induced chronic pancreatitis, accidental alcohol poisoning, and fetal alcohol syndrome. There are many more health conditions where alcohol is a contributory cause, such as injuries and deaths from road traffic crashes.

One in 10 cancers in men and 1 in 33 cancers in women are alcohol related.

In the EU, 11.8% of all deaths in 2004 among those aged 15–64 were due to alcohol, the equivalent of 1 in 7 deaths in men and 1 in 13 deaths in women.

A total of 3.3% of all deaths in 2004 among those aged 15–64 were due to alcohol consumed by others.


The European action plan to reduce the harmful use of alcohol 2012–2020, endorsed by the 53 Member States of the WHO European Region in September 2011, is the latest Region-wide policy response to reduce the health burden caused by alcohol. It gives a comprehensive overview of the problem and provides policy options proven to reduce alcohol-related harm. Policies such as regulating alcohol pricing, targeting drink–driving, and restricting alcohol marketing are known to be effective.
 

bewarethejabb

Monkey With A Typewriter
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 5, 2013
Messages
162
Reaction score
20
Location
Chicago
Website
www.scribophile.com
It's certainly not anyone's guidelines. It's also not apparently standard practice; it'd be double, which would be four times as much as the rest of the world

That looks quite correct to me, and I don't think the study I referred to disagrees. I just think I didn't state it clearly. The average in Europe is three drinks per day according to WHO, and the study I read says nothing about the average. It suggests four to six drinks per day, depending on body weight, correlates with the greatest longevity and balance of cardiovascular and liver health. It doesn't state that that 4-6 drinks is what the average European consumes, it states that those who do consume 4-6 drinks also seem to have the highest levels of health.

"It seems like common practice," is something I said, and I still think that doesn't contradict your statistic. If the average is three per day, that means that half the population drinks more than that. We know nothing of distribution (technically, it could be weighted towards six and one rather than being an even gradient) but at least half of them must be over three to balance the half under three.

Half of the population of Europe is enough for me to causally look around a room and observe that it certainly does seem common to have a glass of wine or a beer with every meal.

Four times the rest of the world is probably true, but beside the point. I only said I think it "seems common enough" in southern Europe, which your WHO statistics support.

McCardy: A bottle of wine has five glasses in it, so one bottle between four people at dinner is 1.25 drinks per person and sounds like about what I'd go through at a given meal without feeling stinted. If you had a single beer with lunch, a cocktail before dinner (a cocktail is 1.5-3 standard pours, usually) a quarter of a bottle during dinner, and a glass of digestif after, you are easily, easily at 4.75-6.25 drinks or more for the day, without ever being buzzed. You can skip the digestif and do the equally common espresso after the meal and still be at 3.75-5.25.

I was actually just outside Avignon last year, so I'm not quite sure how we observed such different parts of the culture. Everyone I was around seemed to practice having a single beer or glass of wine with lunch and dinner, and a conversational cocktail at some point in the evening. I spent awhile in Lyon and in rural Piedmont last year as well, a while in Haro (Rioja) and Bilbao (Basque country) two years before that, and spent this fall living in Vals (Catalonia) working the harvest.

Now, granted, I'm always exclusively around wine industry people because that's the job I'm there for, so I may be unfairly slanted towards the half of the population that's over three...
 
Last edited: