To determine which table wines are best suited for serving dinner guests, try one small bottle each of Rose, Sauterne, and Cabernet Franc. Or if you prefer fancier names, select any flavor relatives of those three types that are available at the particular wine shop or grocery store. In selecting table wines, however, the wise shopperjust as he is careful not to buy over-soft tomatoes or a tired head of lettucealso takes similar precautions with this class of wine.
That is because table wines are perishablealmost as perishable, under some conditions, as milk. Especially avoid buying a bottle whose label has grown yellow and frayed from overlong storage in the store.
Here it is recommended to follow the philosophy of the wise housewife who went to her butcher and said: “I am having relatives in for dinner. How many chickens have you?”
The butcher counted: “Twelve.”
“Pick out your eight toughest ones,” she directed.
He did so with alacrity.
“I’ll take the other four,” she said.
The surest way to avoid getting a spoiled table wine is to buy it from a store that enjoys rapid turnover of its stock. In other words, get it from a merchant who sells a great deal of the specific type and brand you are buying. If the bottle you contemplate selecting has a cork closure, note whether the store has kept it standing upright for a long time.
In that position the cork dries out and admits air to spoil the wine. Corked bottles should be stored lying horizontally to keep the cork moist and airtight (bottles with screw caps can be safely kept standing up).
It is easy to know which wines are perishable and which are not. Just look at the label, which tells the alcoholic content. You will see that the appetizer and dessert wines like the Sherries, Ports, and Muscatscontain from 17 to 20% alcohol, which preserves them effectively. Those are the types you can keep safely in that decanter on your sideboard. But the table wine types, usually with only 10 to 14% alcohol, sometimes less, are far more delicate, suffer most when exposed to heat or even to direct sunlight, and begin to spoil soon after they are opened.
In your shopping expeditions don’t be a wine snob. You may be amazed to discover how delicious some of the lower priced wines can be. There is no direct, inevitable relationship between a wine’s price and its drinking quality. Unlike the situation among automobiles and most other kinds of merchandise, the flivvers among wines often taste better than the Cadillacs.
This is especially likely to be the case when the highest priced table wine in the store has stood overlong on the top shelf waiting for a buyer; it may be completely ruined and worthless, even if it is the finest Gamay in the county. It sometimes happens that the most delectable wine in the entire stock is lurking on the bottom shelf, behind an unpretentious label, and bears one of the lowest price marks in the whole establishment. Take pride in the taste bargains you discover!
This is a good point at which to digress brieflyassuming you already know the type of wine you wantto discuss choosing among brands. For example, a store may offer two kinds of Roussanne under two different brands at the same or similar prices. Other things being equal-both brands seeming to sell with equal frequency in this particular storewhich should you buy?
Usually the better choice is the brand whose label shows the wine was bottled at the winery where it was made. On a French label, look for the words “mise en bouteille au chateau,” or similar legend that clearly means the same thing.
On an American wine, various other legends, such as “Produced (or made) and bottled by,” “Bottled at the winery,” or “Estate bottled,” convey similar messages. The usual German terms are “Originalabful-lung,” “Originalabzug,” and “Wachstum.” Other countries have no standard terms for this purpose.
The way to detect a wine that has not been bottled where it was made is to compare the address of the bottler with the appellation of origin. If the bottler’s address on the label is a town in Arkansas, and the wine is called “California Burgundy,” it obviously was not bottled where it was made. Again, however, experimenting is recommended, regardless of where the wine was bottled or of its price.
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