Sitting at a bar and someone ordered a glass of chianti and coke. Not with a glass of coke, but in the same glass, blending the two 
What are some of the worst wine + other combinations you’ve seen? I think the more common ones I see are when people put ice cubes in their wine.
While I dont imagine I will ever order a wine in coke, I tried it once out of extreme curiosity. It really wasn’t bad. Kinda tasted like sweet vermouth, which I guess makes sense.
Once my grandmother emptied a packet of Splenda into her Cabernet 
I remember almost nothing but know that this is a thing in various places. Argentina? Spain? Italy? All of above? Ostensibly tastes decent.
Well it’s tradition in Emilia-Romagna to do that with water and wine, intermittently topping up the glass to taste. I’ve experienced it myself in Predappio.
I do recall a story from a Labour MP over here, about his father buying the roughest possible bottles of wine, then spooning sugar in to taste, and thinking how crazy his son was to buy fancy wines when such a cheap fix was available.
Thanks for posting. And this is one of those examples where it’s easy to have a knee jerk reaction and judge others, but culturally, this is not uncommon at all.
To each their own - and trying not to judge others is a lifelong challenge . . .
Cheers
Maybe they usually drink Caymus, but it wasn’t on the list. Gotta admire the ingenuity.
My best friend spent a semester in Budapest and remembers drinking coke and red wine fondly.
People often used to say this happened in China, including with good wines.
I never knew how much truth there was to that, or if it was kind of racist thing, or some combination.
We have a neighbor friend who only drinks white wine and it has to be on the rocks, no matter how cold the bottle is. It’s a bit awkward in that she kind of knows she shouldn’t drink premium wines that way and so you tend to serve her simpler wines (eg Kim Crawford).
I do really love mulled wine in cold weather. It’s red wine, fruit, cinnamon/nutmeg type spices, served hot. I probably only have it once a year but I love it.
What are the somewhat common or established drinks that blend wine with other drinks in a way that doesn’t make wine geeks’ skin crawl?
Mimosa
Mulled wine
Sangria
Aperol spritz
Bellini
French 75
Kir (?)
I’m sure your handlebar mustache + man bun mixologist guy includes it in various concoctions, but I was just trying to recall major categories.
Doesn’t matter if it’s Montrachet or Franzia, my MIL puts ice cubes in her wine. I don’t care if you want to mix some 7-Up into your Lafite, drink what you like however you like to drink it.
And my guess is that she does it because . . . It makes the wine taste better TO HER!
Love it!
I agree in principle. Doesn’t it make you less likely to serve her the Montrachet, though? Not because you’re stingy or hoarding, but more sort of “what’s the point?”
Kind of like you’re cooking on the stove with wine or putting wine into a marinade, would you use a Grand Cru or First Growth?
I guess this might be veering off topic.
My mom always asked for an ice cube in her white wine and would apologize for it no matter how much I told her it was absolutely fine with me. All that mattered to me was that she enjoy whatever I was pouring.
Eh… I am more keen to respecting the winemakers vision, and enjoying the wine the way it was intended.
I often drink white wine with ice, especially on very warm evenings. Very refreshing and it is a way to slow down the intake. Generally only with low end wines (or something that has been in my fridge for too long). I make sure to evaluate the wine without ice first.
I think here is where opinions truly diverge.
The analogy I always use at this point is music. Once an artist creates a song, they cannot control the speakers that music is played on, the setting in which it’s played, or the background noise in which is played in. As a musician, you are simply happy that somebody is listening to your music.
I pour my wines the way that I feel they are best represented, but I never judge other others who enjoy them differently. Now, if somebody puts ice cubes in my wine and they don’t enjoy it because it doesn’t show much, I could explain to him why that is the case. But I cannot control all of those elements, and I am foolish to think that I can. For instance, I believe my Roussannes and Marsannes are best enjoyed at cellar to room temperature and state that on the bottle . . . but if someone serves them chilled and enjoys them that way, why should I care?
Either we all live by the moniker to truly enjoy what you like the way you like it or we are simply judging others differently than what we would do.
As I said, I know we will not all agree on this, but it sits at the heart of what I do and why I do what I do.
Cheers
If you found out, after enjoying a bottle of wine at just above cellar temperature, that the winemaker’s vision was to make a wine that blends well with Coca Cola, would you prefer to enjoy it that way?
I think that was the crux of the outrage. As the a hole who would request BTAC in Manhattans, I’d be a hypocrite if I threw stones