After some feedback from a few of you, I’ve renamed this series from “What Do I Like to Drink?” to “How to Discover your Taste in Wine”. If you’re curious about the wines that I personally like to drink, don’t worry, we have an annual end-of-the-year series on the way for that, where hopefully we’ll get to hear from you about your dream cellar as well.
This last installment of our 36-bottle journey is perhaps the most difficult. We’ve covered white and red wines so far, making the job before us a daunting one. We’ll need to cover sparkling, sweet, rosé, and orange wines at the very least – styles that are all internally varied. Note that we have excluded fortified wines from our efforts to keep things neat and tidy (does aromatized fortified wine like vermouth count, for instance?). This is by no means a slight on the classic fortified wine styles of the world, which are well worth seeking out.
As a reminder, this entire endeavor is in answer to the question: The world of wine is vast. With so many options, how do I figure out what kind of wine I like to drink?
On to the final case!
Case 3: The Kitchen Sink
A Classic Champagne: this one should come as no surprise. Yes, the new-school growers are leaner and meaner with lower dosage, but we’re after a classic yeast-bomb. No tête de cuvée necessary – we’re going for an ever-faithful non-vintage with plenty of reserve wine in the mix.
Our recommendation: NV Pol Roger, Reserve Brut
A Rosé Champagne: the pink stuff in Champagne is usually a touch sweeter and less lees-y, made in a giving, friendly style. While something like Henri Giraud’s Dame Jane is more subtle and complex, we’re not looking for that today. We want the golden retriever of rosé Champagne – the embodiment of the word “lovable”.
Our recommendation: NV Bollinger, Rosé
A Non-Champagne Traditional Method Sparkler: you owe it to yourself to understand, and to taste the difference (or lack thereof) between what’s happening in the rest of the world’s traditional-method sparkling wines vs. what’s happening in Champagne. Traditional-method sparkling wines are made all over the world, but there is a lot of buzz about the high-end efforts of Southern England at the moment, which is where we’re headed for this pick.
Our recommendation: Gusbourne, Blanc de Noirs, England
A Tank-Method Bubbly: I can hear the gasps, but I implore you to release your grip on your pearls. Yes, you should absolutely know what tank-method sparkling tastes like, ideally tasted blind next to the jolly Roger or bouncing Bolli above (in this case the Bollinger for some rosé-on-rosé action). While certain industrial-scale producers have given Prosecco a bad name, there are plenty of examples that will put a lasting smile on your face. But we’re bucking the Italian tradition altogether and recommending a fruity rosé from the south of France.
Our recommendation: Mas de Daumas Gassac, Rosé Frizant
A Lighter Rosé: still one of the greatest values in the wine world, rosé doesn’t need to be forgettable. This category has become synonymous with opportunistic celebrity influencers and rock-bottom juice quality, but stalwart producers remain for the savvy buyer. Despite the hype, Tempier still produces a phenomenal product, as does Château Simone in a slightly more textural style. For its strictly representative nature and quality-for-price supremacy, we’re going with Ott’s Bandol property.
Our recommendation: Ott (Romassan), Rosé, Bandol
A Richer Rosé: whether from grapes with thicker, more pigmented skins or simply with longer skin contact during winemaking, these darker, richer rosés range from intensely fruity to dark and brooding. Often they can be difficult to tell from lighter red wines if the taster is blindfolded. Many countries turn out excellent examples, but the intense cherry notes of Italy’s Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo is our pick.
Our recommendation: Valentini, Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo
An Orange Wine: sure, multi-day (or multi-week) skin-contact wines abound, with funk enough to spare, but the purpose here is to taste what white grape skin-contact during winemaking does to a wine without introducing a bunch of other factors like oxidation and bacterial spoilage (read “influence” if you are a natural wine devotee). Slovenia’s Brda region is well known for orange wine production from the Ribolla Gialla grape, also called Rebula in the local language. This producer is not only meticulous in the cellar, but also leaves the wine on the skins for only 24 hours, achieving a result that is representative without being overblown.
Our recommendation: Marjan Simčič, Opoka Ribolla
A Botrytized Sweet Wine: noble rot (the colloquial name for infection of grapes by botrytis cinerea) creates not just incredible concentration of sugar in grapes, but a complex array of aromas and flavors not found anywhere else. There is simply no substitute, and dessert wines in general are some of the wine world’s greatest values. Smart diners never turn up their noses at the elaborate dessert courses of a three-star Michelin tasting menu, and wines like this one have taken just as much dedication and craft to create (if not more).
Our recommendation: Château Suduiraut Premier Cru Classé, Sauternes
A Dried Grape Sweet Wine: just like botrytis, drying grapes on racks or in the sun shrivels the berry, concentrating the sugars for sweet wine production. But the flavors of these sweeties are wildly different than those of Sauternes or Trockenbeerenauslese. Spain’s Pedro Ximénez and Italy’s Vin Santo are perhaps the best-known examples. We’re headed to Italy on this one for a top-tier Vin Santo. Try it with the classic Cantucci cookie!
Our recommendation: Avignonesi, Vin Santo di Montepulciano, Occhio Pernice
A Frozen Grape Sweet Wine: yet another way to concentrate the sugar levels in a grape is, you guessed it, freezing! From Canada’s Niagara Peninsula to Germany’s Eiswein, these sweet wines feature crystalline purity and raging acidity to balance out sugar levels well north of 100g/L. Purists should seek out the elusive Egon Müller Scharzhofberger, but we’re choosing another classic German producer whose wines are a bit more attainable.
Our recommendation: Joh. Jos. Prüm, Graacher Himmelreich Riesling Eiswein, Mosel
A Flor-Aged Wine: this is a weird one, but it’s a taste that crops up from time to time across the wine world – Fino sherry and sous voile wines from the Jura in France are the two most iconic culprits. Flor is a protective layer of dead yeast that forms a cap over a wine in tank or barrel, protecting the wine from oxidation, but it also interacts with the liquid, converting acids into other flavorful compounds like acetaldehyde. The aroma is distinctive, and it’s a love-it-or-hate-it kind of thing, which is why every wine lover should try it at least once.
Our recommendation: Jean Macle, Sous Voile, Côtes du Jura
An Icon of the Natural Wine Movement: we could write multiple articles about so-called “natural wines”, a wide-ranging moniker that has perhaps more definitions even than it has acolytes. But suffice it to say that wine acts very differently when you intentionally remove the scientific advancements that have rendered it stable and consistent in the modern age. There are iconoclastic examples in almost every corner of the winemaking world, but for this one we’ve picked one of the OGs of the current renaissance.
Our recommendation: Nicolas Joly, Savennières Coulée-de-Serrant
As always, wine is best enjoyed with interested (and interesting) friends! We hope you seek out distinctive taste across the wine world, ferreting out the weird, the wild, and the downright delicious. Since you’re here reading this, we feel (with perhaps a touch of bias) that you’re on the right track.