In addition to my geeky wine group, I attend wine tastings at my country club with my golf friends. These people tend to like wine, but don’t read about it, obsess about it, etc. It is very informative to see the wines they like. It kind of teaches me that I don’t think I could ever be a good wine retailer because I have a very had time guessing what people will like.
For example, last week we had a person from Touton come and open Bordeauxs for us. The two I want to discuss are 2016 and 2018 Chateau Phelan Segur. The wines were very enjoyable to drink. The 2018 was very plush and easy drinking. Good richness, nice flavor, virtually no finish. The 2016 had a lot more to it. More complexity, more flavors, more of a finish, and a bit of tannin. I think this wine could improve for a few years.
As you can tell, I liked the 2016 better. Everyone one else at my table (including disappointingly my wife) liked the 2018 better and really could not understand how I could like the 2016 better. We have a guy from a local wine store who runs the group and gets distributors, etc., for the tastings. He came by our table and we asked him which wine he preferred. Not surprisingly, he agreed with me.
Sometimes it happens to me. The key to talking to non-wine geeks is to preface everything by the statements “there are no right answers” and “everyone’s palate is different”.
After that, I tell them what qualities I see in the wine I like that makes me like it. Most times, folks will say “oh, I see what you’re saying”. The same for why I didn’t care for something in a different wine, but since they might like that wine, I always say “but that’s my palate. Again, there are no right answers.”
This style of discussion usually brings people into a discussion and gives them the freedom to say what they like or don’t like without it sounding like a competition where someone has to be right and someone has to be wrong.
Yes, all the time; I work for a wine agency that imports small artisanal producers and brought a few selections to my partner’s recent family gathering after they requested a tasting. Uniformally, the folks who drink the widely-available brands here in Ontario retail wine shops dismissed most of the Loire, Southern French, Austrian wines and - apologetically and with kindness - found them too thin/acidic/tart/other adjective that can be a substitute for not up to the usual large-framed, exuberant wines that they usually buy.
The the vast majority of people buy, enjoy, and are used to very demonstrative wines in general. Working on restaurant floors for years, when someone says they like full-bodied reds you have to remember that this almost always means Josh, Decoy, Cakebread, La Crema etc - not Bordeaux or [INSERT COOL WINE HERE] - and use that lens to guide them accordingly, and hopefully in the direction of something that will make everyone happy.
I always find it really instructive at gatherings when people bring these types of wines and always make a point of having a bit of them when I can because it’s important to remember what people are actually drinking the majority of the time and what they consider to be “good wine”. I am unsurprised that a more fruit-forward, accessible vintage was preferred by most of your friends, because it’s more immediately pleasurable (and, I mean, is that so wrong?)
It’s kind of a hazard that comes with the territory. My general approach when drinking wine with family members or friends who are not wine geeks it to treat the beverage as if it were iced tea. Some may like a particular wine, often since I have brought it, and engage me about it, and I’ll share what I know about its source etc, maybe even overshare at times. But if no one comments on the wine, I leave it alone and enjoy their company and talk about other things we do have in common.
I would most likely like the 18 more too. I’ve opened very good 16s lately and they definitely need a lot of time to show well. 16 brane cantenac which is outstanding took 2 hours in decanter to start showing well.
Years ago when my daughter was little it snowed here and their one day a week class was canceled so some of us got together so the girls could play and threw together a pot luck lunch. One of the moms, Dawn, liked red wine and bought a very cheap 1.5 cab at the grocery store and would drink on it for the week and we’d talked about it and she was in the ‘I can’t really tell a difference’ camp so I decided this was the time to try and expand her knowledge. I brought a semi-older Williams Selyem Olivet Lane and I will never forget the look on her face when took her first sip, it opened the flood gates for her and she started her path of better buys. I think she’s the only person who I ever gave my last bottle sign up to.
When I worked in retail and poured at big tastings, my least favorite wine on the table was typically the one that sold best. My favorite wine was usually in the bottom two or three for sales.
One thing I do sometimes try, and succeed, as a mini-breakthrough to civilians is on the front of chardonnay.
So many of them dislike chardonnay, but in reality, they dislike sweet oaky mass produced chardonnay. I say, “You know, it actually isn’t chardonnay itself, it’s the style that it’s commercially made in most of the time. Would you mind trying a small glass of this [Kutch, Ceritas, Walter Scott, Chablis, whatever]? If you don’t like it, you can always toss it, no problem.”
I have managed to open a number of minds to that. Not only do they learn something, but it gives me a little credibility as a wine enthusiast who can show them ways to enjoy wine more, rather than a boring stuffed shirt, or someone who is going to try to talk them into wine collector wines that they wouldn’t in fact like.
“Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world, and one of the natural things of the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection, and it offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than, possibly, any other purely sensory thing which may be purchased. One can learn about wines and pursue the education of one’s palate with great enjoyment all of a lifetime, the palate becoming more educated and capable of appreciation and you having constantly increasing enjoyment and appreciation of wine even though the kidneys may weaken, the big toe become painful, the finger joints stiffen, until finally, just when you love it the most you are finally forbidden wine entirely. Just as the eye which is only a good healthy instrument to start with becomes, even though it is no longer so strong and is weakened and worn by excesses, capable of transmitting constantly greater enjoyment to the brain because of the knowledge or ability to see that it has acquired. Our bodies all wear out in some way and we die, and I would rather have a palate that will give me the pleasure of enjoying completely a Chateaux Margaux or a Haut Brion, even though excesses indulged in in the acquiring of it has brought a liver that will not allow me to drink Richebourg, Corton, or Chambertin, than to have the corrugated iron internals of my boyhood when all red wines were bitter except port and drinking was the process of getting down enough of anything to make you feel reckless. The thing, of course, is to avoid having to give up wine entirely just as, with the eye, it is to avoid going blind. But there seems to be much luck in all these things and no man can avoid death by honest effort nor say what use any part of his body will bear until he tries it.” - Death In The Afternoon, Ernest Hemingway
Living in the US, and more pertinently, near a major wine region, I’ve found that almost all non-wine-geeks drink predominantly domestic wine. It’s familiar and it’s readily available with lots of inexpensive options. Knowing that, I almost never bring old world wines to gatherings because, for palates accustomed to domestic, mid-tier wines, they very rarely are enjoyed. That’s probably akin to the reason the OP’s peers preferred the more forward, plush 2018.
It’s not bad, it’s just how it is in my experience.
This, in conjunction with reading European wine labels. Many don’t state the variety used and variety is what most US consumers are comfortable using in their buying preference.
If I were to take a stab at it, I’d say that most of this isn’t about refining the “non-wine geek” palate to detect tertiary flavors or their ability to pick up an interesting nose, or savor the taste for 30 seconds… it’s about the perception/expectation of what wine is to them as a drink.
If you’re not “into” wine, you drink grocery store wines. Nearly every red on the shelves of a grocery store is a sweet, concentrated, fruity, and/or oaky. The people drinking these wines are fully capable of deciding if they want bright red fruits, or dark black fruits, or green apple or melon flavors, but what they don’t understand is balance. The balance of a wine with fruit, and earth, and acid, and sweetness, and oxidation, and a drawn out finish, and ripe fine tannins. Nor the elegant way that such a wine can pair with what you’re eating.
They either want a big dry red, or an easy drinking red, or an acid bomb sour white, or an easy drinking round white. There isn’t much room for appreciating secondary flavors or the fineness of the tannins when you only care about the initial fruit flavor, or getting a grippy tannic tongue wash. They either want the face pucker of a New Zealand Sauv Blanc or a crushable forgettable Rose. As long as they get the flavor they’re looking for, the rest isn’t of interest.
Quite often, again because of the mass produced wines at a grocery store, the flavor they’re looking for is also sweeter than “wine geeks”. Deceptively sweet. Most people would have no idea how much more residual sugar is present in their Yellowtail Shiraz or Meiomi Pinot than a typical European red. And when you’re expecting a concentrated, fruity, ripe, sweet, tannic/or smooth wine… it doesn’t matter what the other wine is, they’re going to prefer what’s most similar to what they think of when they think “wine”. What they’re expecting when they take a sip. Which more than likely is not what is preferred by those on this board (save for the Caymus people )
I agree. It depends on where you live and what kind of social circles you have – I do recall there have been those who have hipster NYC lives and their friends all apparently love Lambrusco, Dolcetto and so forth – but in general most civilians like wines with fruit ripeness.
I do think you can expand beyond USA when picking more accessible wines from Tuscany, Spain and elsewhere. Sometimes that will be well received as seeming more exotic and adventurous while not getting away from being easy-to-like ripe wines.
Our club would have charged us about $75 each of the two Phelan Segurs. The wines were nice, esp. the 2016, but given the prices out there for classified growths from more recent vintages, I would think they would have to be a whole lot cheaper before I would be interested in buying.
I don’t like drinking wine with non wine people. I wouldn’t like going to a Michelin rated restaurant with non foodies. Fortunately I have friends with whom I can share these experiences. I’m too old and irascible to work with the others.
This is the same just about everywhere isn’t it? I’m Australian and consumption of non-Aussie wines at home is strictly for geeks. And in France, Italy etc you’d have to hire a search team to find a foreign bottle.
I am just finding out myself that “converting” non-wine geeks into wine geeks can be a very hazardous thing. Over the summer, I gifted the youngest sister with 4 different wines: a red Burgundy, a white Burgundy, a Rhone and a Riesling. Total was about $CDN 200, let’s say average $50 a bottle. Not Berserker level high-end, but not cheap supermarket wine, either.
So she calls and tells me how much she enjoyed them and sharing the bottles with her girlfriend’s family at a dinner. Her girlfriend’s mother apparently still talks about the red Burgundy and that was six months ago they enjoyed it. Then she hits me up for – wait for it – can I bring her a CASE of wine from my collection? Oh, and could I make 4 of those bottles Champagne?
So now she’s got the taste for the good stuff now and absolutely no sense of the economics involved. But here’s the best part. When I asked her why she needed 4 bottles of Champagne – keep in mind I only have 12 vintage Champagne bottles in my entire collection – she tells me that she’d like to give Champagne to her girlfriend’s parents as a thank you because they’re paying to take them along on a surfing holiday vacation in Costa Rica and when they return they are immediately going up to ski cottage country in the Laurentians in Quebec for another week of skiing. So it’s not even for her, it’s for her to make an impression on the new girlfriend’s apparently wealthy parents. The other bottles, she joked, was because she was becoming a wine alcoholic. I presume that it was a joke. I can’t fully be sure.
It took all of my willpower not to tell her that her girlfriend’s parents should either buy their own damn Champagne or else take me instead of her and her girlfriend to Costa Rica and the Laurentians if they want my Champagne. I talked her down to a couple of bottles for her and her girlfriend. Understand that none of this would have happened but for my own desire to “upscale” the wine tastes of my own family. That’s going to end immediately.
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