How fussy are you about wine?

[Matthew_King]

@Steve_McLauglin’s recent post/plea to grip and rip when it comes to Burgundy got me to thinking. Here are categories where I’m less fussy, some where I’m still in recovery, and then the shining red lines I still can’t cross …

VINTAGES
I’m a firm believer that the best vintage is the one that suits your mood/purpose on a given night. I used to be a stickler for avoiding so-called lesser vintages like 06 and 11. I know lots of people who decide they don’t like a particular vintage and cast it to the dustbin of history: “I’m selling all my 08s. They are too acidic.” Anyone can do what they want obviously, but I think that’s short-sighted. I like having a mix of vintages in my cellar from the same producers. I’m frequently surprised by how well a bottle from a maligned vintage can show better on a given night than a rock-star vintage from the same producer. One of my greatest joys from this hobby is having my carefully curated assumptions up-ended. I’ve come to realize the more I understand about Burgundy, the less I know.

But where I do stand firm is on when to open and drink vintages. I tend to like my whites young, when they are fresh and fruit-driven. I tend to like my reds older, when some of the tannins have softened and the forest-floor notes emerge. More often than not, I find drinking 20-year-old Puligny more an intellectual exercise than a hedonistic one. Many of my best wine friends disagree strenuously. Same with red – there’s simply no way that a 2019 Clos St Denis is going to taste as sublime as a 1993. @Michael Chang is a passionate defender of opening up Grand Crus early if they are “ready.” Who is right? Neither of us!

PRODUCERS
When I began trying Burgundy, I had very catholic tastes (with a lower case “c”). I tried bottles from a wide swath of regions and producers. My first go-to wines in the 1990s were Dominique Laurent and Denis Mortet. Then I started doing research and going to my first dinners with older collectors who poured me the really good stuff – Leroy, Dujac, Roumier et al. I am honest enough to say I became a bit of a label licker. I thought I had graduated to the “big leagues” and stopped buying and tasting as widely. It may sound heretical, but you get in a rut when you just drink the “best stuff.” You become jaded and a bit of palate fatigue sets in. @Charlie Fu has written about this before. In the same way you don’t want to eat at Michelin-starred restaurants every night, you don’t want to just drink Grand Cru wines from the usual suspects at every wine dinner. At least I no longer do.

One small example from the recent NYC Paulee: The Raveneau lines were a madhouse all weekend. Lines twenty people deep. Right next to Maxime, Edouard Vocoret poured electric and delicious Chablis from Le Bas de Chapelot, located just below Montee de Tonnerre. You could walk right up to the charismatic, skater-dude Edouard and discover something fresh and exciting. I get happy discovering wines like these and supporting emerging winemakers. I’d rather do that than fret over how high the prices have become for Ramonet 1er crus or fighting to hang onto my dwindling allocations as I age out of the market.

But where I do stand firm is producer style. I like less extracted wines with delicacy and finesse. I like stony, succulent, red-fruited wines. Those will always be close to my heart. For whites, I do like the reductive, spent fireworks style with plenty of chewy, dry extract.

VILLAGES
See above. I used to firmly believe what Napoleon once supposedly said: “Life is too short to drink Santenay.” Back in the day, the lesser appellations could be rough – they just didn’t ripen well if the weather became challenging in certain vintages. The wines could be thin, acidic, watery. There was a reason you stuck to Gevrey or Vosne. But with climate change (warmer temps in colder sites), advances in farming/cellar practices and generational shifts in philosophy, wines from the Macon or Fixin can be revelatory. Again, it may sound nuts but I’m often more pleased at a group dinner if someone brings a new discovery from a less-heralded village than yet another young Dujac or whatever.

Where I do stand is village preference. Chambolle Musigny brought me to the dance, and I’m sticking with her. I’m glad that she makes up the largest portion of my cellar. But I’m happy to date on the side …

SERVING TEMPERATURES
I’ve written that most U.S. civilians serve their whites too cold (out of the fridge) and their reds too warm (pulled from the rack above the refrigerator). Even collectors can fall into this trap. But I’m getting less nuts about hitting just the right temperature. Sometimes I will drink a glass of white out of the fridge and enjoy it in a weird way and then I’m pleased as it warms and softens and opens up with some warming. That said, I can’t drink red that’s too warm. I am not embarrassed to say that I’ve put an ice cube or two in too-warm reds. Yes, there’s a bit more water but I’m much more happy. Please don’t ban me.

STEMWARE
This is the non-negotiable. I hate, hate, hate mediocre stemware. I’m not fussing whether the Gabriel is hand-blown or not. I’m talking about going to a restaurant or a friend’s house and being served wine in those Crate and Barrel-style stems that look good but are just clunky and lipped thicker than you’d like. I can’t relax or move beyond it. It’s awful. I will often just drink beer if the stemware is lacking. When it comes to the better stems, I am agnostic and don’t feel strongly about Zalto vs. Conterno Sensory or whatever. As long at its thin lipped and balanced in my hand.

COMPANY
I am an open-minded guy. As a former journalist, I like meeting people with different life experiences and listening to perspectives different than mine. I do wish the pond weren’t quite so filled with attorneys, physicians, tech bros and finance, but it comes with the territory! Ha. My point is that it’s often more fun to drink with a wine-loving ex-cop than a snooty somm on his night off.

Some of my friends refuse to drink with people who may have voted for a certain someone for president. I think that’s dumb, but I admire their conviction. I also like to drink with people that have strong stands about wines, vintage and vignerons – so long as they are informed opinions. I don’t like drinking with bullies, know-it-alls or the ungenerous. It makes me nuts to see well-heeled people who should know better bring the least wine they think they can get away with at group dinners.

OK, enough of me and my solipsistic musings. How have you tried to become more flexible in your approach to fine wine?

[MChang]

I think we’ve talked about this before at reasonable length but I feel like I’ve become quite a bit less flexible in some ways over time.

I think the quality I value most in both reds and whites is freshness, and I don’t have time for wines that are tired. In general, that mostly means that I prefer wines to be younger, with the exception of perfectly cellared older wines that maintain freshness. Some, maybe most older wines are just old. I really enjoy drinking grand crus early for the hedonistic pleasure, with moderate age when secondary and tertiary characteristics are just starting to emerge, and occasionally with more bottle age, but only if they are fresh. If not I will immediately pour them out with extreme prejudice.

In reds I value purity of fruit, transparency, and texture, which tends to lead me to a relatively small subset of producers. With a few exceptions I generally prefer destemmed wines to whole cluster, although there are some producers that do whole cluster exceedingly well, and I tend to love them. I used to mostly cellar cote de beaune reds but now buy relatively few with the exception of Nicolas rossignol’s wines and chassagne rouge. In practice I probably only buy wines from maybe a dozen producers for red burgs. I’ll taste lots of wines, but i have an extremely low threshold to pour things out that aren’t to my taste.

With whites I tend to like freshness, and don’t mind and even enjoy reduction. I really enjoy wines that are light but at the same time dense, which is sort of rare, and am a fan of dry extract. I buy very little white burgundy in general at this point, and buy a lot more Oregon Chardonnay. I dislike aged whites even more than aged reds and for the most part don’t care for them with only very exceptions where the wines are super fresh. I can remember only two examples of wines like this in the last 10 years or so, a transcendent 1990 Ramonet BBM that @Alex_Valdes poured at WS, and an amazing 1993 Lafon Montrachet.

I would say in general I’m reasonably picky about stemware and use grassl cru for almost every wine. I like both whites, reds and champagne to be served probably a few degrees cooler than most people. I tend to get along with most people in person.

[Ravi_Raju]

I like good wine, people and stemware. I accept mediocre wine with good company, but not mediocre company with good wine and I bring my own thin lipped stemware everywhere to ensure that I do not have to accept a mediocre wine experience. A thin lipped Govino is better than a thicked lipped Waterford crystal glass, and I can take it anywhere without friends worrying that I might throw the Waterford into the river. I can find joy in wine with all people, even if the wine doesn’t suit my taste, but my best memories are where great wine was enjoyed with great people. I am fussy in my tastes and likes, but not in my love of the moment or the experience. Give me a great wine and I will write it down so I can remember it, but a shared experience with wine will never be forgotten.

[Mikael_OB]

From my first real interest in wine, meaning to get something else than a buzz out of drinking, wine has been a way of exploring and learning on various levels. Including taste and sensory (pleasure).

I saw a clip the other day about a fellow who ate the same lunch every single day as he thought it was so incredibly tasty. The reporter asked what happens if he one day couldn’t have it for lunch. Easy, he just compensated by having it for dinner instead.

Perhaps no surprise that I find dogmatic views about wine close to being a red line. Why close? I’m still interested in people and to understand their perspective, and sometimes the deep very narrow focus can nonetheless brings learnings and valuable insight.

I will taste any wine and vintage with an open mind. However another close to red line is drinking uninspiring wines. I rather drink beer or water… sometimes that’s plonk, sometimes it’s a label wine lacking substance.

I’m a bit fussy about stems and serving temperature, nothing too severe though certain wines deserves decent stems, every wine of meaningful substance should be served at reasonable temperature or too cold.

Especially for Nebbiolo wines it’s the variety’s fussiness (and rewards) having me play along.

[Jim_Stewart]

“Fussy” seems almost a personality characteristic. It usually won’t apply in just one area. If you are very fissy about wine, you are probably very fussy in other areas of your life e.g. clothes. Its not a constant, as you point out, but can trend. As I have aged, I have become less fussy about most things, wine included. Current level is “seldom fussy”

[MChang]

I don’t think that’s particularly true. You can care a lot about some things in your life and not that much about others. Certainly is true for me, most people who have met me at dinners know more often than not I’ll be in athleisure.

[scamhi]

re: STEMWARE
We were going to visit non wine friends in Boca Raton for a dinner at their home. I wanted to bring stems and my husband said " Don’t be an asshole."

[MChang]

Interesting; I would rather drink water, beer, whisky or Diet Coke than mediocre wine.

[Robert.A.Jr]

What a truly fabulous post. So much to unpack, I also need to reread it. Just an excellent post.

Those that know me and have spent time with me, know that I am not fussy at all about my wine. I love my fussy friends, like @ToddFrench and his “clarity”; @CFu and @Marc_Frontario with their stemware; John Kane with his deep analysis of everything. But at the end of the day, I’m probably more @Charlie_Carnes then that, it’s all about pleasure and what pleases me at the moment. I rarely plan when and how I’m going to drink anything, the vast majority of the bottles I open are purely spontaneous. I don’t even have an order to my storage, I don’t use CellarTracker and don’t log anything. I’m sure I have things that I have forgotten; and I’m sure I think I have things, that I have long since consumed.

Like Matthew, I tend to like my whites young and my red wines, mature. But as with everything, there are exceptions. An aged Vatan is a glorious thing. Fresh Beaujolais is often glorious as well.

I guess if I’m fussy about anything it would be the serving temperature of the wine. Personally, I think that is more important than the stem itself. I like my champagne very cold. And I tend to like my whites and my reds slightly cooler than recommended serving temperature, maybe by a couple of degrees. As I follow wine over the evening, I often find myself cooling the bottles where the decanter down a little bit just to preserve that temperature.

Ok, maybe ABV as well. And American oak. Damn, see what Matthew’s thread does. You think you are one way, then you start spilling the beans and maybe you’re not! Maybe learning about yourself is like learning about burgundy, it’s much more mercurial than you think. Apropos to his point.

And with Company, my preference will always be friends, family, and cool people. I don’t go to wine gatherings, or tastings or functions generally speaking. Just not my scene.

[David_Glasser]

I love the subject. And the thread title. It made me chuckle to think that to a “normal” non-WB, we all peg the fussy meter.

I’ve become a lot more fussy over time with respect to regions and producers that I’ll buy. I do almost no experimenting in the purchasing department. There’s plenty of stuff I like and I don’t see much point spending money or my gradually dwindling drinking days left buying new stuff just to try it. But I haven’t lost my enthusiasm to try something different at a tasting.

I’ve become a lot less fussy about vintages. I used to skip all but the “best” until I realized that there was a lot to like in many of the good but not great ones. That may be more a function of improved vineyard management and climate change over the past 40 years. They aren’t all vintages of the century, but there are fewer disasters.

Temperature: I’m not overly fussy here with wines that are too cold, and never have been. I’m patient enough to pour a glass from a bottle in the fridge and warm it in my hands, enjoying the changes as it does. Too warm is a different story. I won’t put ice in it, but it’ll go in the fridge or freezer for a bit. Or I’ll ask for an ice bucket.

I have a strong preference for thin lipped, well balanced and visually attractive stemware, but care little about the shape of the bowl. It makes no difference to me if it’s a wider Burgundy or a narrower Bordeaux style bowl. An exception of sorts: I don’t serve Champagne in flutes. None of this means I won’t drink out of a jelly jar or paper cup if that’s all that’s available.

The importance of wine vs people: this has changed a lot. I used to love large walk-around tastings where the focus was entirely on the wines. Now I’d much rather get together in a smaller group and open a few bottles. I also strongly prefer drinking to tasting. As my alcohol tolerance has decreased with age, that usually means no more than 3-4 different wines on any given evening with friends, and that when it’s just the two of us a single bottle usually lasts 2-3 days.

@Matthew_King

Who is right? Neither of us!

I quoted the only part of your post that you got wrong: Who is right? Both of you!

[Charlie_Carnes]

Gold rimmed… to match the label!

[Rahsaan_M]

@MChang

I don’t think that’s particularly true. You can care a lot about some things in your life and not that much about others.

Agreed. Most people don’t have the bandwidth to be fussy about everything in their life!

[Mark_Golodetz]

Thank you for the thoughtful original post. It did make me reexamine, and I realize that my tastes and preferences had narrowed.

In the last ten years, my buying habits have changed. I have sold my DRC, Rousseau and my small amount of Roumier. I figured if I wasn’t going to buy a bottle for several thousand dollars, why would I want to own one, when I can use the money to buy other things. I did keep my Tremblay, but even those I am not drinking fast enough, and will probably sell some this year.

Last Saturday, a friend came, and we drank a really wonderful bottle of Jouan Clos Saint Denis 2016. My only regret was that wonderful as it was, it was not twenty years older. I did not any have any regrets that it was not a Roumier. I have had them, I have enjoyed them, and if I really thought about it, there have been a smidge more concentration, but what a waste of energy it is, to wonder if there is better, if you are loving what you have.

As far as Burgundy is concerned, I a seem to be narrowing to a few beloved producers. Trapet, Tremblay, Jouan, Billaud Samuel, a few Dujacs and Niellon. For my 20 bottles of annual Burgundy consumption, that’s more than enough.

I am also narrowing what Bordeaux I buy from pleasure. I make a distinction here, because I buy for other people and also for profit. But the wines I want to open, are generally traditional, and with at least twenty years of bottle age. I have enough of these that I plan to whittle them down, although if I do find something older and interesting, I will buy.

As for the social stuff, I have purged the people whose politics I despise. I don’t see any point in breaking bread or opening a bottle with them. But I have generally found wine drinkers are interesting, and my closest friends have almost all come from wine.

[Robert_Dentice]

Great post! I am VERY fussy about serving riesling at the perfect tempurature. I agree most whites are served too cold except riesling. Serve it slightly too warm and it will be out of balance and feed into the riesling is too sweet thinking!

[Rahsaan_M]

@MChang

Interesting; I would rather drink water, beer, whisky or Diet Coke than mediocre wine.

Sure. In many cases (e.g. office parties), where the wine is not inspiring, I abstain and save the boozing for another occasion.

But I think @Ravi_Raju’s point is that he prefers a dinner with great friends and basic convivial wine to a dinner with great wine and obnoxious people. On that, I agree.

[MChang]

Sure; I would say in most of those cases I’ll be supplying the drinks so it’s a non-issue.

[Robert_Dentice]

One thing you did not touch on is winemaker / owner. There are lots of great wines in the world so I prefer to drink wines made my someone I have a strong personal connection to and respect. I travel to wine regions frequently and this connection really enhances my overall enjoyment of wine. I feel the same about music. I prefer to listen to and support musicians that I know personally. Of course there are exceptions to every rule…

[Sarah_Kirschbaum]

I think I am both quite fussy and not so fussy.

Vintage - Not so fussy. I enjoy almost all vintages of the wines I love, though recognize that some are better than others. But so long as a wine is delicious, I have rarely thought “this is really good, but I am sad it isn’t this other vintage that I like even more.” My brain just doesn’t work that way.

Producer - Fussy or not, depending on what you mean. I have strong preferences, but they are not limited to upper echelons of label. We don’t explore much anymore, and I am fine with that. We encounter new producers from time to time in our travels, and very occassionally add a new one, but at this point, I know what I like when it comes to producer and style. So I am choosy about producers I buy, but quite open to trying what others bring.

Temperature - very fussy. I won’t drink a red that is too cold, as there won’t be any expression, but I also don’t want one that is too warm. I’m a little more forgiving of whites, which I don’t enjoy even close to room temperature, for the most part. Not fridge temp, but definitely cooled down. We are extremely fussy about sake temperature.

Stems - fussy, but I have a broader range of what’s acceptable than most. Sure, I prefer the ultralight and thin stems, but I still use my old Riedel vinuums from time to time and don’t really mind the weight. I care enough to bring my own glasses to restaurants, on trips, and even on planes when there is good wine.

Pairings - this one hasn’t been mentioned yet, I don’t think. Very fussy. I’d rather not drink wine at all than drink a wine that clashes with the food. I feel sorry for the chromatically challenged who want to drink only red wine, regardless of the food. Ugh. For me, anyway.

Overall - despite everything above, and the fact that I generally don’t drink wine at places with only bad wine (office parties, conferences, hotel bars etc.), I think I’m more forgiving of a range of wines than most people would expect of me. With almost any decent wine list, except maybe way out there natural, I can find something to drink that will please me. I also feel strongly that “better” wine is not always what I want. I have many great wines in my cellar, but I also have a plethora of modest, well made, food friendly wines that perform beautifully in the right circumstances. We are about to go to Galicia, Spain, and will very happily drink wonderful albarino with most of our meals. Even if I were offered Coche and Lafon and Raveneau, I wouldn’t always choose them.

[David_Glasser]

One more thing: this thread reminded me of one of my favorite memories about “appropriate glassware.” This was 50 years ago, pretty early in my wine journey.

First year of med school, Gross Anatomy is kind of a stress test/boot camp. Just totally different than the book learning or labs from undergrad. An experience that can forge lasting bonds. It didn’t suck that our senior professor was terrific: helpful, encouraging, generous with his time.

The last day, I brought a bottle of Champagne to share with him and my lab partner. Nothing fancy, a NV Pol Roger or Moët or some such suitable for a student budget. I had the foresight to bring it in a cooler, but forgot about stems. The only thing we could scrounge were styrofoam coffee cups from the break room. Well…

When the laughter and the overflowing bubbles died down we all enjoyed the hell out of that wine, and started a friendship that lasted through the rest of our time there and beyond.

[Robert.A.Jr]

@Robert_Dentice

Great post! I am VERY fussy about serving riesling at the perfect tempurature. I agree most whites are served too cold except riesling. Serve it slightly too warm and it will be out of balance and feed into the riesling is too sweet thinking!

Agreed. I like my Riesling colder than any of my other whites. I also prefer Kabinett.