Dancing Spoon

Falling in Love with Wine

Veritas In Vino

by Jonathon Alsop

We begin every wine class at the Boston Wine School with introductions. Students talk about what their wine lives are like, what they want to learn in class, and how they came to be wine lovers. About a third of the people say they don't know how they got into wine, that it just happened somehow. A third credit their parents with passing along the wine legacy to them. The final third fall in love with wine after they fall in love with a wine lover.

It's a story that keeps repeating itself as if it had never happened before.  “I got introduced to wine by...” then there's a pause as they think how to say it without revealing too much “... a friend of mine.” I get nosy right away and ask, “A work friend? College friend?  Childhood friend?” and they fess up that it was, in fact, a love interest who set them on the wine road.

Wine: Buy the Numbers

Veritas In Vino

by Jonathon Alsop

Sometimes, wine is a math game.
It's hard to believe that before super-critic Robert Parker came up with his 100-point wine scale way back in the 1980s, no one in the previous 8,000 year history of wine had thought to do it. Since then, the world of wine — from consumers trying to buy good wine to salespeople trying to sell it — have adhered to scores with the kind of affection accountants must have for numbers in their figurative world.

In a way, sadly, we've all dug ourselves a hole that I'm not sure we know how to get out of. Wine retailers complain that if a wine doesn't score in the 90s, they can't sell it, but then if it does, they can't even get it. You and I are as suspicious of mainstream wines with unimpressive scores as we are of outrageous wines with irrationally positive numbers. When we go for 90+ point wines, they either become very literally hard to find or their prices are off the wall, another style of unavailability.

Supertuscans, or super Tuscans?

Veritas In Vino

by Jonathon Alsop

Wine lovers are a little confused about the Supertuscan category. The name itself is seemingly unequivocal. Even if you don't know what a Tuscan is, you intuitively understand that a super version is going to be bigger, better, and probably dosed with more Tuscan.

In fact, the Supertuscans are a class of wines that deviate profoundly from the rules that traditional wines from Tuscany must follow. The class was born from the desire to blend Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and other popular (and profitable) new world grapes with Sangiovese, the traditional grape of Tuscany.  In practically no time, of course, it occurred to wine makers, why use Sangiovese at all?

Gris with Envy

Veritas In Vino

by Jonathon Alsop

America's taste in wine has trended remarkably red in the last few years. One of the long-term effects of this red wine focus is that when wine lovers return to white wines, they find their taste has been changed.

After experiencing the size, presence, and personalities of the reds they've been drinking, they want more distinct, more present, and much drier white wines that are frankly more like red wines. Pinot Gris is the perfect grape for this type of post-modern wine lover.  It has genetic relatives firmly in the white wine world — Pinot Blanc (which the Italians call Pinot Bianco) — and a super famous red wine relation in Pinot Noir (Pinot Nero).

Wine in Winter

Veritas In Vino

by Jonathon Alsop

I don't know where you are on the planet right now, but here at the Boston Wine School the thermometer just popped above freezing, and hard as it is to believe, it feels practically balmy compared with the single-digit temperatures we've had the last couple of nights. In this weather, I could no more knock back a crisp glass of Pinot Grigio than I could a big iced tea. So many things in our lives change with the seasons — how we dress, the sports we watch, our ability to fall frivolously and temporarily in love — that it's no surprise we start gravitating toward brawny room-temperature red wines come winter.

Guidelines for winter reds are pretty simple: the best are big, dense, opaque, full of radiant sunny fruit, and frankly a little higher in alcohol than is totally sensible. My favorite winter wines tend to change every 36 hours or so, but they almost always come from some hot and sunny part of the world. California Zinfandel invariably does the trick. Every one is like opening up a bottle of summer.

Jonathon Alsop

Contributors Our

Jonathon Alsop is a wine writer covering wine, food and travel since 1988. He is author of the wine column In Vino Veritas as well as many articles for the Associated Press, Frequent Flyer, La Vie Claire, Beverage Business Magazine, Mobil Travel Guides, Fodor's Travel Guides, Boston Globe, and others. In addition to writing about wine, Jonathon founded the Boston Wine School (BostonWineSchool.com) in 2000 where he teaches wine and food classes.

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