After you have gone to a few wine tastings that have included more than your local wines, it’s time to reflect on what you might (or should) have learned.  First: have you  really sampled a broad expanse of possible wines?  Let’s say at least a hundred representative from the main countries of Europe (France, Germany, Spain, and Italy), South America (Chile is the only one that really counts), Australia, and California.  Yes, Portugal, Argentina, South Africa, Canada, New Zealand and even England grow wine but they are off shoots of the other countries and as of yet do not have a real wine identity established.  Actually California is an off shoot too but as most of you readers grew up on California wines (and those vines saved the French wine industry from oblivion in the late eighteen hundreds), we will have to talk about them too as being important even though they really aren’t.

Most people think the most important consideration in choosing a wine is whether you prefer white or red.  In serving wines over the last twenty years, three times more people prefer white over read when given the choice but red appears to be coming on more strongly in the last few years.  But really the color is a red (pardon the pun) herring.  There are so many of each color that when people get down to choosing, they really should think about the consistency of the wine first.  Do you like a heavier or a lighter wine?  And there are in between wines too.  Believe it or not, the consistency of a wine has more to do with whether a person likes it than any other factor including the food they are paring it with or whether they just want to have some to sip on while they are dreaming about things.  

Next come quality and balance.  Too much tannin makes a red wine too grating on the palate and too much acidity makes a white wine too grating.  Cheap wines have one or the other or both.  It takes a careful vintner to produce a balanced wine that creates the quality that allows the breadth of taste in really good wines to come through.  It is very difficult to find good balanced wines with sufficient quality to allow a good intense flavor to come through al the way to the finish.  And with balance and quality comes price.  Most good California wines cost more than most good European wines even though the dollar doesn’t go as far as it used to.  The trick is to find the smaller wine producers who don’t advertise (advertising inflates the cost of wine enormously) but who manage to get their wines to the retailers who take the trouble to find the hard to find good wines.  Most of the chain stores don’t bother.  You will have to find a specialty store to have a chance.  Madinger can be that store but it is not the only good store.  Still, good luck on finding the others.