Listen to wine professionals chat, and it’s not long before someone deplores the popularity of this wine or that.
Usually the subject of scorn is a bestselling number with jammy-fruit flavours, not much structure, some residual sugar (sugar not fermented out) and high alcohol (alcohol contributes to a perception of sweetness).
It’s not that anyone objects to sweet wines in themselves. But the thinking is that some wines accustom consumers to a particular style (the kind that smacks you in the face with a sugary fist) that makes it difficult for them to appreciate more subtle styles — in the same way my food columnist colleague, Gay Cook, says ketchup (which is loaded with sugar) accustoms children to sweetness and makes it difficult for them to appreciate savoury flavours.
This concern about wine isn’t new. During the 19th century, wine connoisseurs in England used to deplore their fellow citizens’ drinking habits. They argued that the English drank so much high-alcohol, sweet and intensely flavoured Port, as well as other similar beverages, that their palates were ruined. They could no longer appreciate more subtly flavoured wines such as Claret (as red Bordeaux was known), which tasted bland and insipid compared with fortified and sweet wines.
It sounds like a case of wine snobs who can’t bear people not liking their kind of wine, but there was something to their complaints.
French winemakers at the time customized strongly flavoured wines for the English market. Rhône wines destined for England were fortified with brandy and even flavoured with essences of fruit, such as raspberry.
In contrast, wine being shipped to the Netherlands and Germany was left unadulterated, because Dutch and German palates were considered more sensitive and refined.
Even Claret, the English wine of preference, was adulterated during the 1800s, Bordeaux’s supposed “Golden Age.” In this time before appellation laws, Syrah from the Rhône Valley was regularly blended into Bordeaux wines to give them more colour and spiciness.
I was reminded of this “spoiled palate” argument recently when a friend of mine spent some time in France and Germany for the first time.
She’d been a big fan of New World reds, especially a highly popular Australian Shiraz that dominates the LCBO shelves, but she spent a couple of weeks drinking reds (Grenache, Mourvèdre, Syrah) from the Rhône, and Provence and Pinot Noir from Germany. Her first night out back in Ottawa, she ordered the familiar Shiraz, but she almost spat it out. “It tastes like Kool-Aid,” she spluttered. “It’s so sweet!”
I guess that was a good thing, because it shows that someone devoted to jammy wines can appreciate other styles. But it also made me think that my friend might not have discovered the variety of wine styles if she hadn’t had to try them. It’s very easy to buy the same wine time and again if you don’t drink very often and you find a brand you like.
So if you’re into a particular style of wine, why not branch out this weekend? Take a chance on something entirely different, whether it’s a different colour, country, or grape variety. There’s a whole world of wine to discover.