I have a wide and deep cellar with all kinds of wines and my tastes are pretty firmly established around old world classic wines styles. But somehow over the last 4-5 years I have started to buy and drink a lot more Nerello Mascalese wines from Etna. Up to this point I was buying a lot of Burgs, Bdx, Barolo, Nth Rhone, German Rieslings, Chianti/BdM, Champagnes and selected NZ wines.
For the Etna wines I am mostly buying wines from Passpiscario, Terre Nerre and Benanti as these are the most widely available producers here in NZ
This is the first new wine region and wine style I have added to the āportfolioā in a long time. So what led to the change? Well I first got to really get to know the wines thru wine thru a tasting group in Melbourne, this led to the following realizations;
I really like Nerello Mascalese it is lovely, interesting with lots of personality and elegance
Extremely reasonably priced compared to my beloved burgundies
Flexible with foods and also on their own
Entry levels Rossos only need 4-5 year from vintage to show well
Have others had any similar changes to their established set of favourite regions / styles?
I almost never bought bubbles, even though champagne was my first bite from the wine bug at age 16. I somehow persuaded myself, subconsciously, that these were only special occasion wines. Nowadays Iām much more likely to replace white wine with sparkling on occasion, and happy for it.
Tomas, I also had the same attitude about Champagne, but now life is too short not to enjoy it regularly! And I also am drinking and buying Chablis regularly. I was always a big Cal Chard fan but I was at a tasting and was served a 1981 Paul Droin Grenouille and was blown away by it. Iāve had plenty of Chablis before that but maybe not the right ones or ones with age.
I have moved most of my Napa Cabernet budget to Barolo and Oregon Pinot Noir. I have plenty of Cabs and just donāt drink them that much anymore and more focused on wines under $60 that age well and go with a wider variety of foods.
My buying and drinking have been pretty much the same for quite some time - Bordeaux, Loire and Northern Rhone - but I have had an uptick in Champagne these last five years, and definitely this past year. My wife, in particular, has gone Champagne bonkers. I cannot afford her anymore.
My biggest change is easy - Rich Trimpi introduced me to Oregon Chardonnay.
My wife and I love Chardonnay - but too many premoxed bottles of White Burgundy had caused me to curtail my buying severely over the past decade. And while we drink and enjoy substitutes like Sancerre and Muscadet, for us, nothing really scratched the itch like Chardonnay. So when Rich started turning me on to wines from Cameron, Goodfellow, etc., the lightbulb went on. And the added bonus to me - the wines are less expensive than what I used to buy in Burgundy, and in many cases, I donāt need to age these in order to maximize my enjoyment.
While I donāt track my consumption, Iām pretty confident that Walter Scott and Goodfellow have been my two most consumed Chardonnays in the past two years, and Iāve also tried them from Patricia Green and Vincent as well.
DOWN TO ALMOST ZERO
Priorat, Chateauneuf du Pape, Ribera del Duero, Australia, Central California, Sangiovese, Tuscan Bdx Blends, Sweet Wines, Washington Cabs, everything from other more or less obscure grapes and regions
MORE THAN HALVED
Napa Reds, Napa Chardonnay
UP A BIT
Red Burgundy, White Burgundy, German Riesling, old Rioja
UP A LOT
Champagne
UNCHANGED
Bordeaux, Northern Rhone, Barolo, Non Burg Pinot
More ā Champagne, Tuscany, Sicily Etna Rosso and Rioja. Great cellar defenders in these areas.
Starting to explore ā Oregon and Germany.
Level ā Bordeaux and Zinfandel. Bordeaux is my wifeās favorite. And I love a good Zin with almost any grilled food.
Less ā California Cabs, Port and Sauternes. Not because we donāt like them, but we have plenty now. Being more selective with California Cabs, and not buying new Port and Sauternes because we have enough of them and donāt drink those we have often enough.
I bought more bottles of Champagne in 2019 than in the previous 25 years combined and then bought even more in 2020 than in 2019. In a similar vein, before 2015 I had almost no Oregon wine in my cellar and now it is about 7% of my cellar.
Seems to be a similar movementā¦huge uptick in Champagneā¦lots of Oregon Chardonnaysā¦lots of high acid, un-oaked white varietals like Vermentino, Arneis, Chenin Blanc, Grenache Blanc, Ribolla Gialla, Malvasia, Tocai Friulano, and Etna Bianco.
Champagne for me is stable. It is mandated at least weekly in our household. But I started buying bottles for aging which was not the case a few years ago.
Less: RhƓne (south declined sharply, north more slowly), Spain
More: Italian reds (Barolo, Barbaresco, Chianti, Brunello), South African whites
This is a good question, was just thinking about this last week as I looked at my cellar:
-Iām buying materially less French wine for some reason. I still buy some CdR and other Rhone wines, but thatās about it.
-Iām buying about the same amount of Italian wine and Spanish wineābut for Italy I have shifted from mostly Tuscany to mostly Piedmont, and for Spain Iāve shifted from mostly Rioja to mostly Priorat.
-But the biggest change has been an increased purchase and consumption of California wines. Five years ago, I probably had a few CA pinots in the cellar, but thatās about itāmy cellar was probably 90% Italy, France and Spain. Now, my cellar is almost 50% California wine. I just think the variety and value in CA wines, particularly Syrah and Rhone blends, has hit the spot for me in terms of flavors and price points. And this board and Berserker Day hasnāt hurtāhave been introduced to a lot of great producers this way (Halcon, Bedrock, Riverain, Enfield, etc.).
For me, less āchasingā of wines and more enjoying whatās in my glass; less consumption in general but enjoying more variety and not afraid to try wines from anywhere made by anyone; definitely more movement towards earthy and ārusticā wines rather than really āpolishedā ones.