Sunday, June 15, 2008

How To Pick Red Wine

For the moment, avoid table wines.

One and only one caveat: wine should be stored properly.

Now, to pick a red wine:

A) close your eyes and point. If the price suits you, buy. Go home, relax, open bottle then drink.

B) Repeat with another chateau/ label/country at the same price.

C) Repeat step 'B' as often as you like.

D)Then move up a price point.

E) Repeat 'A'.

In other words, drink as many kinds as you like as it is the only way you will know which ones suits you.

Also, determine the price ceiling of your taste buds. If at a certain price point, you can no longer cannot distinguish wines by taste, then never ever buy wines starting at that price point.

Mine was somewhere at around PhP2,000 a bottle, 2000 prices.

Now that your taste buds have experienced the good, bad and ugly of wines. You may now experiment with table wines and 'two-buck chucks'.

I cannot recommend specific wines... (oh, like, uh... Enate Reserva, Chateau Macallan, Alexander de Gacq, Wente, Llano, Chateau Gichard...)

I can recommend a place to buy: Bacchus, the owners pick tasty wines sell them at a reasonable price.

Though it has been over five years since I purchased a bottle from Bacchus, a wine purchased from them was given to my brother-in-law as a wedding gift, an Argento (Argentina), makes me think they still buy good tasting wine and sold at reasonable price. That bottle of Argento miraculously fell into my hands.

I ignored it thinking it might be a, uh..., disappointment like the other Argentinian wine I had during my sister-in-law's wedding. That one tasted tannin through and through, even the aftertaste was tannin. And it was bad-bitter kind of tannin too. It definitely put me off wines from Argentina. Though it was unfair to judge by just one bottle but, hey, my liver can only take so much.

But one night mom had steak cooking and my brother was coming for dinner and I wanted a drink, so out came the Riedel Bordeaux crystals and out came the cork from the Argento.

And... what a lovely wine it was... sweet, muted tannins (compared to bordeaux) and no aftertaste. Very very nice...

And Bacchus is still a good place to buy wine.

NOTE : Endorsement of Bacchus was not paid for by a crate of fine red wine. HOWEVER, a crate of red wine (UHURMM... enate reserva or llano) from Bacchus will be most graciously appreciated. If ever.