My Take on Value Wines
Growing up in Wisconsin, it’s safe to say I wasn’t exactly surrounded by wine country. There are regional craft wineries today that dot the landscape throughout the upper Midwest, but 30 years ago was a different story. My first experience with wine was the ‘wine cooler’. I remember Bruce Willis doing an ad on TV in the 80s for some brand of wine cooler, and he was singing the blues drinking a beer sized bottle of wine (cooler). I truly didn’t appreciate the difference between wine and wine cooler at the time. Our high school parties were basically beer with an occasional wine cooler, usually brought by a girl who didn’t care for beer.
College was more of the same, basically beer, with the occasional Greek social where the sorority would call the shots and require wine. We dubbed these ‘Wine and Cheese’ parties, and we would parody the request of having wine by whining, “I want a wine and cheese party!”. We were very classy. Speaking of which, our stocking of the party consisted of two-buck chuck, which had more sugar than wine, and of course beer, because…Wisconsin.
So, it is safe to say that as I entered my adult professional life, I was woefully deficient in my wine education. This deficiency bred fear. How do I choose a wine? What’s the difference between this red wine and that red wine? Why does this one cost three times as much as this other one? Is the cheaper one bad? This perception that the less expensive wine was ‘cheap’ or ‘bad’ was incorrect, of course, but I carried that around for a long time. I was not helped by the marketing I was exposed to. It seemed you either had wine coolers or you had some fancy special occasion wine. Those were my choices, or so it seemed to me.
I began traveling around in Europe starting in my late 20’s, and that was when I first noticed a different approach to wine. It was just there. Everywhere. Omnipresent and inexpensive. In France it seemed I was more likely to get the house wine set on my table than I was to get water. In Spain, wine is included in the menú del día (daily menu special) and was essentially priced the same as a soda. This experience was true in the wine rich areas of Europe: Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Greece. It was eye opening to me. It was disarming actually. I came to realize the intimidation I had been feeling around wine and started to feel more comfortable. I started to appreciate wine.
A few years after that, I met a friend who worked in the wine industry. I was still carrying around the misconception that expensive = good and inexpensive = bad when it comes to wine. When faced with a decision to buy wine, price seemed to be my guiding principle. If this wine was $30, and this wine was $15, then I knew which was better. My friend, his name is John, helped educate me, that the quality of wine wasn’t necessarily tied to the price. Many factors come into play, like basic supply and demand. Sometimes, wineries or wine regions have bumper years and flood the market with wine, which impacts price. The quality is there, but the price is relatively inexpensive. Some wine regions have more prestige than others producing essentially the same product. Champagnes from the Champagne region of France typically demand a higher price than a Cava from Spain, regardless of quality. The grape varietal is also a factor. Anyone shopping for Pinot Noirs recently can appreciate that. Varietals come in and out of fashion, which also impacts price.
And so, it began and continues, my wine education. I now shop with an eye for value. If I can get a good Spanish rosé for less than $10 instead of the $30 rosé from France, I’m all in. That’s the focus of the Value Wine section of Boozer Blog. We’ll discuss wine trends, regions, varietals and most importantly value. I know I still have much to learn and look forward to the journey. After all, we are not just buying the wine, we get to drink it too.
