• It’s OK to drink cheap wine: Not shocking news, I know, but it always makes the Wine Curmudgeon smile when others realize it. The latest affirmation comes from the International Business Times. The piece rambles quite a bit, touching on classical music and science of snobbery, but the point is well made: “When we judge the quality of wine, it’s hard not to imagine that the more expensive something is, the better it must be. But if the price labels are covered, expense doesn’t translate into quality, it turns out.”
• Wine prices and quality: Jancis Robinson, one of the two or three most important wine critics in the world, has a warning for those who buy wine: “In inexperienced markets there is wide and misplaced belief in a correlation between price and quality.” Who knew she and I would have so much in common? The article deals mostly with over-priced wine made for emerging wine markets like China, but the point is consistent with all over-priced wine. Just because something is expensive doesn’t mean it’s worth what it costs.
• The best temperature for wine: This is a common question whenever I talk to consumers, and my pal Dave McIntyre offers a terrific primer in the Washington Post. Too cold white wine, writes Dave, deadens the wine’s fruit flavors, while too warm reds taste flabby. And even those of us who do this for a living have to fight this problem, he notes, describing his own experience with a white that was too cold.
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