They say you should always have a few bottles of wine on hand for unexpected occasions —
to celebrate a girlfriend’s job promotion, to host a prospective girlfriend for an
impromptu dinner or to drown a buddy in after he gets dumped by a girlfriend.What they don’t say is what these bottles should be. What regions should they come
from? What price ranges they should fall in? What are the beginner bottles that a man can
count on for different occasions, but also start his wine education with? I’ve asked
a number of wine snobs this question, and most of them have given me the same response:
“It depends what you like.” That’s not very helpful. I want specifics,
damn it!Well, I finally got them. A couple of weeks ago, I attended La Grande Degustation de Montreal, a wine
show in Montreal, where I asked the true experts — the winemakers themselves — for their
first-buy recommendations.Here’s what I asked:If I
want to buy three bottles of wine that will have me covered for most hosting occasions and
help me start learning about wine, which three types of wine should I buy?By “type,” I mean what region the wine comes from or the variety of the grape that
it is made from. Some of the most recognized wine regions are Bordeaux
in France and Tuscany in Italy, and some of the most recognized varieties are Chardonnay
and Merlot.But being a beginner doesn’t have to mean being predictable
or boring. I wanted to provide you with three wine types that were reliable but also
original. So I steered clear of the crusty old Italian and French winemakers and instead
asked this question to three experts from emerging, “New World” wine regions:
California, New
Zealand and Portugal.
Here’s what they each answered.John J. LockeWinemaker, BirichinovinoBirichinovino.comJohn’s three beginner wines:
Grenache, Barbera, Syrah“I personally would rather get hung up on the
specific, brilliant wine rather than on trying to find the brilliant combination of wine,
time and food. I want to get that delicious wine that’s always going to be
delicious.”Grenache: “Grenache is a fabulous variety. It’s really
versatile, juicy, bright and flavorful. It goes with a lot of different dishes and has a
slight exoticism which makes it interesting — not like boring Cabernet and Merlot and
crap like that. You can bring Grenache someplace with you with the confidence that people
will assume you’re the big man on the wine campus. And it offers great value. You
can get a lot of wine for not a lot of money.”Barbera: “Generally,
Barbera is not produced in a lot of different places outside of Piedmont and northwest
Italy, but there’s a lot of it. It’s totally delicious and interesting. It has
a really particular flavor. It’s different than the wines that people typically
encounter, and, generally, the standard of wine-making associated with Barbera is pretty
high. It’s neither heavy nor super-light, which makes it incredibly versatile. You
want something that you can always go to, and Barbera is super-tasty.”Syrah: “Syrah is great. It has a lot of different personalities, from those that
come from Australia, where it’s big and jammy, to those that come from France, where
it’s really fragrant and perfume-y. And in California there are more and more
examples of all the Syrah styles. They’re a little more expensive than the other
ones, typically, but they’re very interesting and distinctive.”Next up: A Kiwi shares his beginner wine cellar…
