Help me get excited about white wine

WINE TALK
21

Grüner Veltliner

22

Not to mention good Pinot Grigio from Alto Adige. But props on these.

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A few suggestions for wines to age (medium term), other than what you exclude

Chablis 1er cru or Grand cru (prices distinguish these from white burg but trends are worrying)
Santorini Assyrtiko
SA Chenin Blanc or blends

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Drink Montrachet.

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Then file for bankruptcy after being served with divorce proceedings.

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Only a fool would divorce someone with Montrachet in the cellar.

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CHAMPAGNE!!!

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Aren’t white burgs excluded? I was pushing it with Chablis but I think price is on my side on that.

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Sure. You’re pouring?

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If you cannot find affordable Champagne to your liking, you need to spend less time on the Coronavirus thread criticizing the US and more time looking at Champagne threads.

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31

Only a fool would purchase Montrachet without ensuring that it would not cause financial ruin. Andrew may have excess funds, but few do.

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You do realise this is a wine geeks forum? :slight_smile:

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Yep, and one sure way to slice purchasing power is a divorce settlement.

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Noah,

For me, getting excited about white wine is just like you said it…I drink them a lot. While I really enjoy aged reds, aged whites are more a hit & miss for me. There are a lot of white wines I really enjoy the freshness that comes from the first 5-15 years in whites. Where as I really dig a wide range of reds that are 15-40 years old. So for me, a balanced cellar is 1/4 white, 1/4 bubbles, 1/2 red with a few…and a few sweet wines that account for about 1-2% of my cellar.

So having said that, there are wines I do get really excited about…I get excited when I find them because they are difficult to source and hard to find most years. I like a balance of German Riesling, OR Chardonnay, and whites from most French regions. So there is this exciting adventure in trying & finding new white wines from regions I have not had much experience with. So finding new wines that I want to build a long-term relationship with is the fun with white wines.

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My cellar is probably not “balanced” by most people’s standards, as about 75% of my cellar is white wines. But I drink much more white than red.

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36

The premise that 3/4 of white Burgs are premoxed or underwhelming is part of the problem here. There’s plenty of amazing white Burgs that won’t break the bank.

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I feel like 75% of my wine purchases are white and yet I drink 20x red. [bye.gif]

I’m just a sucker for some amazing whites and chasing the dream.

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I posted a thread recently on three white grapes that don’t get no respect. All of them make ageworthy dry whites:
Chenin Blanc
Pinot Blanc
Semillon

If you are looking for Big and Majestic, only Semillon among these three (sometimes) qualifies. Sometimes as a varietal, more often blended. For the first, look for Hunter Valley in Australia (not easy to find, especially not with bottle age) and top white Bordeaux (Pessac-Leognan is the Appellation, although some Graves can be fine and ageworthy). I’ve had a single Pinot Blanc that qualifies (Terlano ‘Vorbourg’), but a bevy of others that offer great pleasure, reasonable prices and age up to 10 years.

The Rhone (north and south) can also be a serious source of Big Boys. Tan Dinh restaurant in Paris used to pour wines blind in purple glasses. A lot of people could not tell red from white, as long as the whites had the right quality, intensity and concentration. White Hermitage (I sell one, so no name) is one of the world’s greatest wines.

White Burgundy is a minefield, but if you don’t hit a mine, there is a lot of excellent wine out there that doesn’t cost a fortune and drinks well from 5 - 10 years, or even (much) longer. Meursault, Chassagne and Puligny are serious minefields, requiring serious coin, with a sorrowfully high ratio of overpriced wines that are mediocre and/or damaged. St Aubin is entering that territory. But Savigny and Pernand are good to explore, as are the Chalonnaise Appellations of Mercurey, Givry, Rully and Montagny. South of there, Pouilly Fuisse is no longer a faddish joke. St Veran is rarely excellent, but rarely less than good and rarely expensive. And there are Macons that make sense.

If I had to pick a few for real excitement, they would be:
Northern Rhone whites, especially Hermitage.
Pessac-Leognan in Bordeaux.
Hunter Valley Semillon (but good luck finding the right stuff).

Dan Kravitz

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Not sure if this would is helpful…. I would try to join more tasting if possible and or visit wineries. Also you can see if wineries have tasting kits that they could send you. There’s an offline in nyc for oct.

40

what whites are you drinking exactly? it sounds like you listed off most of the ones drank most often by the community as a whole with a reason you’re not excited about them. but then you say you drink more of it. so I’m curious what you’re drinking? sounds like you’re already plenty excited about whites in general. are you hoping to get more excited about AGING whites? if thats the case, the best way to do that I think is to have some aged white wines that impress you. but I would agree with others, it can be a minefield and often as not the wines are at least as good young as aged. except riesling. that stuff is just always good.