Wine Truisms

WINE TALK
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I’m having a pretty good winter Wednesday night sitting by the fire sipping on a 2010 Beaucastel. Gosh, this is good. So a little inspired. I haven’t started a thread in a while.

So wine truisms. Share some collective wisdom. There are some things about this hobby and passion that I have found to be pretty much true. Some are arguably taste, but I expect many would agree.

-Light is the enemy of wine. (Speaking of storage.)

-There are only good bottles.

-Older wine is better.

-The older I get, the more I like champagne and port.

What are yours?

Cheers!

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A wine isn’t dead until it’s aerated and dead.

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It’s important to know how to remove the cork.

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The wine will always have the last word.

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The best tasting wine is the one you didn’t pay for.

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If you like it, it is a good wine. If you don’t like it, it is not a good wine. All the rest - reputation, age, price, growth, scores from pundits, etc. - is window dressing.

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Can you explain this one? Is it saying that you don’t really know if it’s dead until you’ve tried aeration?

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There really are not that many ‘truisms’ that hold up to scrutiny anymore . . .

Older wine is NOT always better
Oxygen is the enemy of wine to me, not light
One truism that is fact - you should ALWAYS be able to get your money back on a corked wine for it was ruined at the time of bottling . . .

Cheers

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Yes. I’ve had a number of wines that seemed dead when first opened but that pull a Lazarus after seeing some air. Most recently, for example, a 1996 Zind Humbrecht Riesling seemed over the hill at first, but kept taking on freshness, fruit, and weight as the night progressed.

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It’s better to open a bottle a day early than a day late.

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IDK about that. My adage is:

You can never trust the palate of the man who brought the wine.

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No 2 bottles ever taste the same, except for champagne and claret where they all do…!

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Americans serve red wines too warm and white wines too cold.

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You can always aerate a wine that didn’t have enough time to breathe, but you can’t fix a wine kept too long in a decanter.

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@Otto_Forsberg (as if you were 5) Sadly, the gentleman is making what are know as homophobic comments. Those are when an individual expresses in offensive terms his prejudice against people who love differently than he does. Sometimes they believe they are being amusing. They are not.

The sexist part is icing on the cake.

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‘brought’ ‘bought’ or both?

For the latter, there are obviously commercial incentives for retailers/sommeliers which should be considered, but the level of trust does vary if you have a relationship. Otherwise, it helps to know their palate, to better calculate the necessary discounting/benchmarking.

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You always say that but in the events I’ve been in lately people have tended to be more hypercritical of the wine they bring. Unless they’re actually the winemaker it doesn’t really matter anyways as they obviously didn’t make it.

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  • The most expensive wine is always the best
  • For a chateau the most important thing is to sell wine at a higher price than the neighbours
  • A wine consultant always improves the wine
  • 200% new oak was a step forward in winemaking
  • Terroir no longer matters
  • Wine lovers always have excellent taste
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Of course you knew that. I have very little hope for any positive response from that those who are willing to make such comments.

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