Not enough fiber in their diet, maybe?
Oh I agree there’s a huge difference - and that ideally most folks would find Beaujolais/Chianti to be perfectly cromulent with food.
Biondi Santi is also sorta upscale.
Surprising to me as well but often true. I regularly have dinner parties and weave in traditional European wines with standard California fare to groups that are not wine folks like most on this board. As much as I love Beaujolais, it’s a harder sell to some folks, who used to big oaky cabs, find them thin and light. Nuance lost on them. I see it every thanksgiving and Xmas with my own family.
But then sometimes the reverse happens. I remember bringing a Pepiere Muscadet to a random gathering and one person’s eyes lit up and she said, “What is this? I thought I hated white wine!”
Oh no doubt, I’ve converted many over the years. That is why I generally like to serve a mix of wines at larger gatherings, so there’s something for everyone, and everyone gets to experiment. The general counsels to one of my largest clients as someone that I have entertained at dinners over the years, mostly with big cultish Cabernet from Napa, and one day we tried a 99 Musar, and he flipped over it, bought all he could.
I love German Riesling, white Burgundy, Loire Chenin Blanc, etc., but if all I ever had tasted were “mass produced oaky buttery chardonnay” and mass produced Sauvignon Blanc, I would probably go around saying that I don’t white wines.
And mass produced oaky sweet fruit bomb Cabs… ?
I think this comment is addressed to, or in reaction to, a post of mine above, so I will try to clarify better what I was saying.
Mike said early in the thread he was looking more to serve this group wines they would like than either (a) to find the most perfect wine geek food-wine pairing or (b) to try to educate them on new horizons. I took some contextual hints that suggested these were folks with more mainstream American tastes in wines, and sure enough, that was confirmed later in the thread (e.g. Caymus would be the wine they would splurge on).
I wrote the following: “I’m making an assumption that your company has “regular wine drinker” tastes rather than a European or wine geek set of likes, but if that’s not correct, then disregard my suggestions.”
Regular wine drinker, deliberately in quotation marks, was just a shorthand to refer to them having mainstream tastes in wine for American non-geek wine drinkers. If they are the exception, and are people whose favorites are Old World wines or AFWE type wines, then the advice I was giving in that post wouldn’t apply, and I was just clarifying that. It wasn’t any slight on European wines, nor any kind of statement that regular folks couldn’t like old world wines, just that I was trying to connect my suggestions to who this particular audience is and what they like.
I probably have a thousand bottles of Old World wine in my cellar, including many from highly geeky nooks and crannies, and I own zero Caymus, Prisoner, Meiomi or Rombauer, so I’m definitely not some kind of old world wine hater, by any means. But I think many of these threads, wine collector/enthusiast types mistake their love for old world wines and styles and/or obscure wine geek wines with what their neighbors and relatives actually want to drink at a cookout, dinner party, or holiday meal. There might be times for trying to push people into new categories, but it sounds like this is not really one of those times.
One other thing to add – in threads like this, it’s not even really a reluctance to suggest things like Burgundy, Bordeaux, Champagne, and Toscana. Many of the suggestions in this and other threads like it are dolcetto, Fleurie, Trousseau, Cinsault, Zweigelt, Chinon, Brachetto, and things that are fun for WBer types to consider as food pairings, but frankly just aren’t what most of your relatives and neighbors are going to like.
And again, if this is a “try to open their minds to something new and very different” occasion, then sure, go for it. I certainly do that some times. But if it isn’t, then serve them a good wine that is also something they’re highly likely to enjoy.
I hope that clarifies what I was trying to say, maybe better than I did the first time around.
My unscientific observation is that, in your average/typical American non-geek wine drinker population, there is much more of a split over sugar and oak bomb whites than there is over their red counterparts. They might be 50-50 on Rombauer chardonnay, but 90-10 in liking The Prisoner.
Maybe any red you tend to serve chilled?
As an experiment, I wonder how a red that expresses “salinity” would be. Like maybe a lower alcohol Shiraz???
I’d also go with a lighter grenache. As far as producers something inline with some of Tribute to Grace offerings. They’re just fine slightly chilled as well.
They are equally horrible - even if they are not mass produced and cost a whole bunch of money.
No doubt, the recs in threads like this often escalate quickly to quite obscure/challenging styles which probably does not make much sense unless the OP is specifically looking to surprise/educate. I guess you and I were both thinking along the same lines, just from different perspectives (US vs Europe), although we seem to differ somewhat in terms of what we view as geeky/“only fun for WBer types”. A totally non-wine geek friend a couple of years ago approached me to ask where she might find (at retail) this “delicious yet very unfamiliar” red wine she had drunk in an upscale restaurant in Stockholm and fallen in love with. When she sent me the photo she had taken I was totally blown away: Foillard’s Morgon Côte du Py. It’s incidents like this that make me not want to “underestimate” the casual wine drinkers’ ability to enjoy wine styles that differ from the things they know better and as such I always prefer to serve wines that I personally enjoy but also feel like would appeal to larger audiences too. YMMV, of course.
I agree, avoid anything overtly tannic (which includes not just cab but some cru Beaujolais), and big, ripe reds (which could make the chicken seem sour). A red Sancerre comes to mind, or a lower level Burgundy, but those aren’t likely to be crowd pleasers. For this crowd, maybe a a medium/light-bodied Cotes du Rhone (low tannin Grenache) or a lighter Chianti (bright red fruit and acid).
Rose champagne is your answer. It’s festive and they’ll love it.
Beaujolais
Great call, Keith