Non Wine friends keeping you honest

Friday night i was in a non wine scenario, there were people there with whom i drink wine regularly but they are not in the least bit swayed by price or reputation its purely on enjoyment. They like wines like KB pinot and Bedrock zins.

So Friday we had a nice 12 Cali cab cost approx $125, well know maker board favourite, then we had a $15 generic Portugese red, no idea what. Most preferred the Portugese wine just because it was easy to drink, the cab while to me very structured and with great potential was viewed as far to austere to be enjoyable. It made me think that as i get further up the cost ladder with wines that am i really doing the right thing ? i know that a great bottle of wine is a wonderful thing and my cellar is reflective of incremental growth in quality and focus but sometimes dont you just miss a simple $10 red with pizza being your limit ?

Why are these choices mutually exclusive? There is a category in our cellar my spouse refers to as Friday night wines (from her working days when by Friday night, all she wanted was something that hit the spot and she considered herself to taste impaired from fatigue to think about more complex wines. These were generally inexpensive (below $20-25, sometimes way below) that went with home made pizza and that we both liked. Having such wines for when that was our mood, hardly stopped us from acquiring others based on other criteria.

Alan - I think the problem is that you needed to bring a $200+ bottle. That would have made all the difference.

John

I was going to take Macdonald, except i dont of course have any

If they drink Bedrock, they sound like geeks to me!
I don’t know why you need to drink oouzey Cali cab, unless your company is utilizing their tax cuts on someone in the group.

They drink Bedrock because i bring it !!

There is no doubt that non wine-geeks tend to enjoy more ‘easy drinking’ wines. Things like extreme tannin, acid, bitterness, etc are just not things that most folks tend to ‘enjoy’. Why do you think wines like The Prisoner and Meiomi not only are popular but are very well liked by the masses?

Cheers.

What are these “non wine friends” you speak of?

Non wine friends do keep me honest because they always follow the one rule we high-spending high-falutin’ Berserkers often tend to forget when we get caught up in the chase – they drink what they like and they like what they drink. That reminder keeps me humble and is the reason I have fruit wines and sub $20 CDN Muscat, Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc and sparkling non-champagne wines in my collection along with the trophy wines.

Someone (i.e. the OP) seems clueless on the concept of “cellar defenders”. There’s nothing wrong with having friends who like (or even love) wine, but aren’t themselves geeks or aficionados about it. We have cases of easy drinking wines for precisely those folk who’d consider something like a Bourgogne rouge too “extreme” for their tastes. Pushing something more “complicated” at them would be akin to a car salesman trying to upsell a Mercedes AMG G-wagen when all the buyer really wants and likes is a moderately optioned Toyota RAV4.

What was your own opinion of the Portuguese red?

If I want a simple cheap wine I drink it. That happens quite a lot - it seems to be more apropriate with what I eat mid-week and do not feel like giving too much attention to the wine. It doesn’t stop me drinking the better stuff at other times, and I think it keeps me more grounded and puts the better wines into persective.

Alan - I understand what you are getting at, that when you have a good experience with an inexpensive wine, it makes you wonder why you spend so much money on more expensive wine.

But I think if all you drank was $10 simple wine, you would absolutely miss the pleasure you seem to get from a bottle like Saxum. There is a time and place where cellar defenders are appropriate (such as large gatherings or perhaps a weekday at home), and it’s great if there are some under $20 wines that you like for those ties. But I don’t think one of those is going to do it when you are having an amazing dinner or celebrating an occasion or when you just want to drink a killer bottle.

Maybe just watch your pairings. If you’re crushing pizza or chili or barbecue, drink a wine that’s appropriate. I’d wager that your pals would love plenty of $125 great wines, but a big tannic cab or something is just not their style. I understand what you’re trying to say…is getting caught up in this passion sensible at all? By pursuing more complex and “greater” wines are we skewing our tastes and straying from just casual enjoyment and losing the point of what wine is about? I’ve faced this a bit not from a taste perspective, but from a cost perspective. Pursuit of more prestigious wines, chasing that dragon, resulted in me spending more money per bottle year over year. The result was cellar size stagnation (and non-existence) despite ever increasing monthly bills. And for what?

I loved Mark Golodtez’s post about finding the “almost as good” for a fraction of the price. Discussions like his have me purchasing more lower-priced bottles of stuff I’d not been drinking much of, like barolo, brunello, and rhones, and reinvigorated my interests in Oregon pinot noir. Bobby Alfert has me even considering swampy cab francs from some place called the Loire. It’s about enjoyment, more than anything. If the wine you’re drinking isn’t giving you the casual enjoyment you’d like, move on to something else and reset those perspectives and buying parameters.

I find the use of clueless in your reply extremely rude. Is that how you talk to people every day?

I think its a know your audience kind of scenario. and maybe you needed this experience to get to know them, but now that you know they will gush over the easy drinker, dont bring the cerebral one any more. a $125 cab offers a lot of enjoyment to the right person, and might be preferred over the portugese red in the right crowd. sounds like this crowd wanted something quaffable.

…the cab while to me very structured and with great potential was viewed as far to austere to be enjoyable…

In other words, the primary interest in such a wine that isn’t ready to drink is wine geeky. Some people are fine drinking a wine that’s corked, or has massive EA, or massive tannin. Others, not so much. It shouldn’t be a surprise most people, even wine geeks, prefer to actually drink wines that are pleasant. Keep in mind, too, that tasting well and drinking well aren’t the same thing. Also, it’s false to say all inexpensive wines are simple. There’s plenty of inexpensive, fun, complex, ready to drink stuff out there.

Related: So a non-wine friend asked me: What’s the least expensive wine that you would willingly drink the whole bottle in one sitting, say a normal one hour dinner? For lightweight me (excluding low -alcohol rieslings and similar) probably a Produttori Asili at about $50…can’t think of anything else at a lower price, maybe an Eyrie pinot or a Rancia. Of course, La Tache no problem, and Prum Kabinett at $20-something no problem. How cheap would you go?

Dollar for dollar and ounce for ounce, bourbon is a far more enjoyable cellar defender than cheap wine :wink:

It was a very nice boring fruity red, nothing actually bad about it but equally nothing great.

I get the concept of cellar defenders but for me those are things like a Bedrock north Coast or OVZ, Washignton State cabs maybe Columbia Crest or similar but even these can be extreme for a non wine person.

I know there is no answer to my post, just wanted to start a conversation on the subject to get other thoughts