#i've had a glass of rosé and moscato

[docholligay]

Hi Doc! I'm looking to buy a nice wine to celebrate with tonight and I've got about $100 set aside for it. Is that enough to buy a good wine with, or should I splurge a little more? I'm not necessarily looking for a high alcohol content, but I'm not afraid of that either; I'm looking for something that tastes lovely and goes well with fish. Do you have any recommendations?

Wine Anon: Ok so I consulted my co-celebrator and here are some answers!

I thought we were doing a fancy dinner but we're getting a bunch of sushi with some appetizers (edamame, maybe some oysters.) We aren't doing dessert with dinner tonight. We are eventually going to do a 3 course dinner with dessert, and we will be getting several bottles so I'll def have to come back to you for that!

I'm very new to wine, I know that I like rosé and some sweet whites? The last white that I got that I liked was a pear wine from Olive Garden (I know, I am the Haruka of my relationship.) It was actually the wine that convinced me to not give up on trying new wines! I think I'd only had a few up until then and they were dreadful. I think I don't like dry?

Wine comments from my so: dry, woody, not sweet, not leggy, anything he can taste the tannins in is a no-go so no reds? He favors white but he won't say no to a good rosé. His first wine love was a 5y Sauvignon Blanc he had at a some fancy rich dude's party when he was 17 so he can't recall the name haha. He mentioned New Zealand and Chilean wines were good.

If it comes down to it, I don't mind getting a good bottle heavily favoring his tastes (we're doing this for him) but if you can think of 2 bottles that we'd both separately like, I wouldn't mind that either.

Thank you so much for your help!

First of all, congrats to your mancandy for knowing the difference between tannic and dry. There's a huge misconception that dry means tannic, and they're totally different things. I assume it's because tannins have a sort of dryish feel in the mouth. Anyhow, I DO want to argue the fact that reds are exclusively tannic--there are plenty of low tannin reds--but that's another post, as red wouldn't really go with what you were eating unless we were really trying to make it stretch.

Secondly, all of this assumes that you have no interest whatsoever in sake. I LOVE sake, and it's my always go to for sushi, and my frequent go-to for light fish dishes in general. But it's not super accessible, and some (wrong) people flat do not like it.

Thirdly THANK YOU SO MUCH for just giving me a goddamn number!! My least favorite word on EARTH is "affordable." It's meaningless. Just tell me your number! I may not be able to HELP you, but I won't JUDGE you. For anything you need help finding. So bless you, and it was a MAJOR reason I decided to answer this. Whites tend to be cheaper (unless they are Champagne) for a wide variety of reasons, so I don’t think MUCH on this list will hit about 35-40. 

A note: Unless something is WIDELY available commercially, I just recommend TYPES of wine. I would go into your local wine store and ask for these varietals, depending on which one you choose. They may even be able to help select one to go with fish!

So for him, I DO recommend a Sauvignon Blanc, or another high acid wine. The fish used in sushi is mostly fatty and rich, for fish, and these high acid wines give a real element of freshness and even slightly of salt.

You want to know one of my favorite SBs? It's actually something you can get at the goddamn COSTCO, Kim Crawford SB. I don't know if I would call it an OCCASION wine, depending on how we think of things, but it is special enough to be a Shabbat wine in my family, I think you can get it in most grocery stores, and it never disappoints.

If you want SB, but not though, I'd go with a Fume Blanc, which is one of my favorite wines no one seems to know. Fume Blanc is SB, honestly, but made in the US, and pretty much always highly oaky and dry. I love it, but I love that oak shit. Fume Blanc is hard to find nowadays, because of declining knowledge of the name, winemakers are just labeling stuff " Sauvignon Blanc" which, yeah, it's the same grape, but I like to know which SBs have seen some oak, you know? Anyway, I like the rich oakiness paired with salmon rolls especially!

If you want to go with something TOTALLY different that I think he'd like, I think that a Muscadet is going to have a lot of those same flavors while giving him something different. It's BONE DRY, and the acids from it are going to give a lot of those same pleasant associations as SB. A good Muscadet is probably the most expensive thing on this list. 

My favorite budget sushi wine, period, is Ovum Big Salt. You are not looking for budget wine, but if you ever are like me and eating buy one get one half off rolls while reading a book, I love Big Salt. It's a Riesling-Gewurztraminer (Somehow I doubt I spelt that second one correctly) blend that legitimately has strong salt overtones. It's also great with coconut shrimp. (Come to think of it, dry Riesling would be a good pairing with this, too)

For you!

Sweeter wines are tougher to pair with sushi than his tastes, but that shouldn't say at all that it's impossible! If you like something labeled pear wine at the Olive Garden (ahahahaha I'm sorry but ahahaha) the wines you like are probably not just sweet in a WINE sense, but probably TRULY sweet.

So I'm going to push you a little bit! These are sweet in the wine category, or if you’re the sort of person who doesn’t eat a lot of sugar, but they aren’t like...fucking moscato or something. A bit more refined, a bit more elegant, and a good way to move into developing your palate, while not being OVERTLY challenging for a newbie. 

My wife is at times (often) a Haruka Lite, just one calorie, and moving her to a better and wider palate, I’ve had a lot of luck with bubbles. I think because they are widely fun in their own right, and give another quality to what might otherwise be a too-straight-on glass of wine, so that’s the direction I went here.

Prosecco, specifically a demi-sec. Demi-sec is the sweetest variety of prosecco, and I confess I give this to you more to try and put you on the path of expanding your wine palate than as a specific pairing--like I said, sweets are hard--and you’ll almost certainly need to go to a wine shop to find a version that is both demi-sec and GOOD, which is doable but not easily accessible*.

Now if you want something I ACTUALLY think goes with sushi, I recommend Cremant. Cremant is champagne, made in France, not made IN Champagne. It’s the same shit. It offers a lot of the complexity and delight of Champagne without the cost (Champagne is ALSO a lovely choice! But I generally recommend that if you’re both drinking the same bottle.) I think it’s one of the greatest secrets of the wine world--it’s not like the French terroir outside of Champagne sucks. You will almost certainly have to get this in a wine shop, as it’s not well known by people casually (which is a goddamn shame) in America--the UK tends to have a wider range of them.

I L O V E Cremant. Love. A favorite bubbly. Maybe my favorite, actually? I mean I love Chapagne but like, I have a baby and a mortgage and a budget.  And Champagne goes great with sushi! Cremant is, I find, a little less intense than Champagne, which I think will be really good for you as a “beginner” and also the price point tends to be SO APPROACHABLE. Anyway on this one I actually DO have a couple brand recs, because this a thing I drink A LOT, and I’m going to break my ruling about not reccing certain brands ahaha. 

J. Laurens Cremant de Limoux --I think this bottle is like 20 bucks locally? It IS more Brut (dry) but I still think it’s really nice, with a citrusy quality that pairs really good with richer fish

Kuentz-Bas Cremant d'Alsace-- I fucking love this bottle. It’s 25, I think, bucks, at my local wine shop. It’s almost...creamy? I know that sounds insane but I can’t think of a better word. I love Alsatian wine in general though. This is a really nice, light wine that I think pairs with TONS of stuff, and would be good with a wide variety of sushi styles. 

I had a really amazing Rosé Cremant years ago that had a quality of sweetness to it, but I bought it in a goddamn Tesco in London and so I DOUBT you can find it here. I have it written down in my travel journal though, I think. 

ANYWAY I HOPE THIS HELPS SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG. 

*This puts me in mind of the One Good Moscato I have ever had, at Alinea (in and of it itself one of the highlights of my life) where it was still too sweet for me personally, but I could recognize the complexity and mastery in the glass. I was shit shocked. Someone remind me to ask @keyofjetwolf what it was, I think she wrote it down, and as I recall it was not a spendy bottle, even. 

[athenas-atlas]

June 6 National Rosé Day 2021

Of course we had some rosé wines.

In the middle of making tacos. The Jacobs Creek was a new try. I've had the white moscato before but not the rosé and moscato. The Gallo was for Kyle. In the back is old faithful. Two Oceans Moscato.

It looks fancy in a wine glass. Let's be honest though, I usually use a coffee mug 🤷🏼‍♀️

Funny story on that glass too. I intended to buy Kyle some FANCY glasses. Hand made from Mexico. They supported the creator and everything. It was about 4 months after the original order and it still hadn't shipped. I messaged and asked whats up. They said corona. I gave it another month to no avail and cancelled my order. Now I don't typically do that. Especially if the money goes to some sort of charitable cause. This was next level though. So I cancelled and we decided to just buy some cheapos for the time being. On a random Walmart trip I grabbed a white wine glass and a red. For $1 each lol they are crystal. Like the kind you use to make music. Couldn't believe it. So now we have cheap, music quality crystal wine glasses haha

We will reorder later on and get those fancy fancy glasses. But for now, dollar cups. Or coffee mugs.

[facultyloungecosplay]

the brand that made the white merlot that I found is 'Beringer Main & Vine'. (would it be anything in favor of white merlot, that someone whose pallet is vastly unrefined (inexperienced?) tried it, and didn't immediately want to spit it out? because I've only been legally allowed to drink for a year, and my first experience with merlot (I think it was merlot) was with a bottle that I'm pretty sure had been opened and then left to sit for at least two decades.)

point being, I hate merlot because I started badly with it, but not this. As to whether white merlot is like white zinfandel or rosé, I honestly have no idea. Best I can do there is tell you what brand I got and hope you can find a bottle from there.             

Apologies for the delay on this ask; I’ve been ill and haven’t been able to spend long on a computer to answer properly.

I honestly only know Beringer for being a bottom shelf wine (not necessarily bad but inexpensive; I haven’t tried it myself, so I have no informed opinion), so I imagine it’s something like a White Zin.

My joking elitism aside, there really isn’t a wrong way to enjoy wine. I may jest about proper glassware and the horror of ice in wine, but wine is meant to be enjoyed, and if you enjoy it in a non-traditional manner, then do you.

I am so sorry your first introduction to wine was a bad Merlot; the phenols in wine are susceptible to oxidation into acetic acid, which is what gives bad wine that distinctive vinegar smell and taste. As a rule, if a bottle ever smells “off” in a way that indicates acid or rotting fruit, it’s best just to err in safety and assume it’s gone bad.

If you are interested in learning to enjoy wine “traditionally”, I have some unsolicited advice.

Lesson 1: Start with what sounds good.

Trivial, perhaps, but some people need an easing into wine rather than tipping back more obscure varietals. Most start with whites, because they offer a range of flavors that tend to be more drinkable for inexperienced pallets. A brief breakdown of the most common readily available whites:

Chardonnay: the wine everyone knows by name. Tends to be oaky and buttery, not too fruity or tart.

Sauvingnon Blanc: one of my favorite whites, it tends toward tart, citrus flavors that can really bite back.

Pinot Grigio: very light, usually fruit-forward without being tart.

Riesling/Gewurztraminer/Moscato: Tossing all three of these together as the sweeter whites (Moscato is much sweeter than the other two, for reference). If you like sweet drinks, these are good starting points. Riesling and Gewurztraminer aren’t too sweet, they’re easy to drink, and most supermarket brands are pretty decent.

Lesson 2: Chill whites, keep reds cool but not cold.

Whiskey stones can be helpful if your wine isn’t quite cold enough. As a general rule, keep wine out of direct sunlight.

Lesson 3: Aerate your wine.

This is more important in reds than whites, but opening your wine and letting it “breathe” is important. It softens the tannins in reds and brings out more flavor. You can buy aerators for bottles that quicken this process. Even giving your wine a good swirl in its glass can help (the shape of specific glasses are meant to help specific wines).

Lesson 4: Enjoy.

There is a huge variety of wines, and you probably won’t like every one. I personally have found very few wines I don’t like, but I definitely have my stronger preferences. Branching out to new varietals is great and expands your pallet, but having a few personal favorites is a good way to enjoy wine for its own sake.

(I could add in something about food pairing, which isn’t as rigid as people make it seem, but it can enhance or damage the flavor of wine; I would recommend finding a decent food pairing list and using that as a loose guide.)

I’m by no means an expert, but if you have any questions or would like a specific brand recommendation, I’m happy to help. Happy drinking!