Is it just my palate, or is white wine (and bubbly) more consistently enjoyable than red?

Is it just my palate, or is white wine more consistently enjoyable than red?

I drink more red wine than white and bubbly, but I’m rarely disappointed with the white wines in my cellar the way I can be with the reds*. Like many of us, I’ve posted numerous notes through the years of off and underperforming bottles and they almost always seem to be about red wines. I’m pretty sure it has a lot to do with the tannins in reds, that many need a long time to get to the point where my palate loves the structure. But when aging a red wine for 25+ years, bottle variation inevitably becomes a bigger issue that young whites just don’t run the same risks with. I also find white wine and champagne much more flexible with various cuisines or without food at all. Opening and drinking a red can sometimes seem like work. Maybe it’s partially age as 50 looms on the horizon, and my tolerance of tannins and extract wanes. So, I’ve found myself buying for more white and sparkling wine in the last 4 or 5 years, and reaching less often for a red with dinner.

At the same time, red wine plays a bigger role in my wine “life” (at least to this point), as it can do things I almost never experience in a blanc. For my palate at least, the best red wines are almost always better and more interesting than the best whites. Reds can attain a complexity and a full palate register that whites only rarely attain, and reds usually are a more intellectual experience than the (comparatively) more hedonistic whites.

I guess I’m wondering if others share these impressions, if maybe age is playing a role.

*There are plenty of white wine styles I dislike, just like for reds, but I’m talking about reds and whites here in a style I like.

Premox has a serious impact on enjoying White Burgundies from the cellar. So not always more consistent. But perhaps if you mostly drink whites made to be drunk young then yes.

I have asked the same question at many a wine dinner. The answer seems to be that in general we don’t hold white wines to the same exalted expectations that we do for reds. It’s easier to clear a lower bar. That’s not me saying that white wines are not as good as red. But we often expect the stars from a red, and just the moon from a white.

Yeah, I thought about white burgundies, but I really only started buying these long after premox was fully documented, so I drink my white burgs on the young side (<10 years). Really the only whites I’ll cellar longer than that are german Riesling and champagne.

This is where/when I wish I scored more wines than I do.

Of the wines I scored in CT:

2020:
Red: average score of 90.6
White: average score of 90.6

2019:
Red: 90.1
White: 91.0

2018:
Red: 89.7
White: 91.8

2017:
Red: 90.5
White: 90.6

None of those years have enough quantity to be statistically relevant/reliable.

From the beginning of my CT time (13 years):
Red: 88.8
White: 89.2


Not sure there’s a whole lot to be gleaned here, but there ya go.

ETA: I’m forty.

I’ve found that with whites (maybe Viognier excepted) and Champagnes, if nothing else, they’ll likely refresh you and go down easy while a disappointing red will feel like a chore to get through.

I’m in my early thirties if that helps at all!

I guess you still have a lot to taste then. I’ve had tons of disappointing whites that have been technically fine yet still feeling like a chore just to get through one glass!

There are lots of very high highs and remarkably deep lows both in whites and reds. And rosés. And oranges. All styles including still and fizzy wines. I haven’t noticed whites would be any better or worse than reds on average. The only thing is that apart from a handful of exceptions, rosé wines very rarely manage to create any real thrill. To me, they all too often feel like red wines stripped of depth, structure and character.

I don’t find whites more consistent than reds or reds more consistent than whites. As with many things in wine, I think that the most consistent types of wines are the types we love best and know best. The wines we like best we tend to study most and therefore buy wines from really good producers, making the wines the most consistent for us.

For example, I own the most German wines from JJ Prum, von Schubert, Zilliken and Reinhold Haart. I have tasted many, many wines from these producers and have had very few wines from any of them that is not at least excellent. But from tastings, I know that not all German wines are this good. I have learned what I love and buy what I love.

I have more white wine and Champagne in the cellar by a fair amount than red wine. The whites are not skewed young or younger than the reds although I do backfill more older reds than older whites (80s and earlier) mostly because I am more wary of provenance with whites and more reds of that age are available at auction. I don’t get more enjoyment out of reds than whites or vice-versa that I’ve noticed. I wouldn’t say I’ve had more profound experiences with reds than whites.

Piggy-backing on what Howard just said about buying what you love: if you set White Burgundy aside, generally, there might be something to the following hypothesis/rhetorical question: Excellent whites tend to be more affordable than red wines of similar quality. If true, and I believe it is, this means it’s easier to buy the whites you love than it is to buy the reds you love, which could lead to greater success with whites than with reds.

You. Not “we”.

I study all kinds of wines, those that I have tasted and those that I have not. I’d say probably half of the stuff I buy is what I know / have tasted and know is good and half of the stuff I really don’t know and want to learn more. However, quite rarely I buy something I really don’t know anything about - I usually do at least some kind of background check on the stuff I buy to know they are worth the buy. However, every now and then I come across stuff I really can’t find any data on - those I might buy just for the heck of it, to learn more.

I wouldn’t say this kind of adventurous approach to wine buying would fit everybody, but neither would I say that the wines we like best are the wines we tend to buy most often. Surely those wines that I buy often are reliably wine I know I’m going to like, but quite often I manage to stumble upon wines I’ve never tasted before and they outperform most of the stuff I have in my cellar.

I think this really depends on the region. And defining the similar quality of reds vs. whites is really a swamp I don’t want to get into.

I would say just the opposite, red wines are more consistently enjoyable than white for me. But I think it’s partly in what you’re looking for. I think it’s more rare to have a really awful white wine than red, but the reds get to the heights more consistently. There are a lot of “pretty good” white wines. At the higher end they are often not worth what you pay for them. But I find it’s rare to have a great white wine – I can think of only a few I’ve had in my lifetime. In contrast I feel like I drink multiple bottles of great red wine a year.

I don’t like “meh” kind of wines, I’m in this for superlative experiences, and I find reds get you there more easily and also at a lower costs – white Burgundy grand crus are pretty much unaffordable at the higher ends. But white is probably cheaper if you are looking for an “average, not bad” wine experience.

exactly, well put. I feel like I have similar expectations for whites as reds (I want it to be a really special experience) and for that reason often end up disappointed, more than I do with reds.

I have sort of come to the same conclusion as in the original post – that is, that I have fewer off bottles with red than with white. Maybe. I think. That is, I haven’t made a tally, and I definitely have off bottles of both red and white.

But I think that off bottles are fewer with red than with white, as reds seem to shut down for longer – and that results both in more bottles that are opened while they are shut down, and more bottles that you open too late. I’ve also found that whites that you open that are shut down will often come around with a day or two of air, and reds rarely seem to come around if they are really shut down.

Just thought of another likely contributor – probably 50% of the bottles of red that I drink are at least 15 years old, and there’s more variation in older bottles (both white and red). Under 10% of the white I drink is that old.

Only orange wine and Viognier.

But do you spend as much on those bottles of white as you do the reds?

I have no idea what your are responding to. Are you really saying that the wines you buy that you are experimenting with are as CONSISTENTLY good as the wines you buy that you know well? Wow. You must have incredible powers of ESP or something. Does anyone else “stumble” into wines that they have never tasted before and find them as CONSISTENT as the wines they know well? This is just an incredible power.

More consistently enjoyable? Not sure i can answer that, but I can say, unreservedly, that I find it easier to enjoy the “average” white than the average red. Maybe that’s the same thing, lol. I bet we drink more white than red, particularly in summer, but year round, by a 60/40, maybe even 70/30 ratio.