Thursday, July 20, 2006

Are You a Wine Colour Snob?

Why is it that so called serious wine drinkers prefer red wine to white wine, they suggest that white wine is okay for quaffing on a warm summers day or a lunch time tipple but if you are sitting down in the evening for a serious drink it has to be red.

Lets look at the case for taking white wine a lot more seriously than we do currently. To start with white wine comes in a far wider variety of styles than red wine, sparkling wine is normally white, desert wine is normally white, ice wine is produced with white grapes. I know there are exceptions to the rule and some of these styles can be produced with red grapes but in red they are rare.

White grapes are more difficult to produce a quality wine from, they take more looking after and prefer a cooler climate to red grapes, red grapes in the main thrive in a hot climate although some exceptions, such as Pinot Noir do prefer a cooler climate, many white wine variants would simply fail in a very hot climate, exceptions do exist for example Chardonnay of course widely grown in Australia, about as hot climate as you can get, but also champagne, a pretty cool climate.

Of course there is not as much scope for aging, great reds have a much greater cellar life than whites, and the whites are much more fragile whilst in the cellar.
So lets here it for great white wines and lets take them more seriously, lets share more of the quality, white variety of the nectar of the gods.

"Wine is bottled poetry".
Robert Louis Stevenson



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What can I say... I simply like red wine better than white! White wine - most of the time - causes me a headache. Don't ask me why, I've been told by many that it should be the rather the case with red wine because of tannins, but with me it seems to be different.

As I think I told you, there was one notable exception with a Chardonnay that I got to try during a Wine Tasting night, which was excellent in taste, and no headaches the next morning! :)