I won’t
buy a wine without tasting it, and why should you? (That thumping sound
you hear is the sound of other wine merchants collapsing on the floor.)
One of the things that I’m the most proud of with Red White &
Bubbly is that my customers so often tell me that every wine they buy
from me tastes good!
Wine is an agricultural product: the quality of the wine is determined
in the vineyard by grapes that respond to the differences in weather from
one year to another. The winemaker, especially a good one, respects this
and doesn’t try to force the grapes to produce something that they
haven’t grown into. Just because a wine has pleased one or two “critics”
does not mean anything… other than it has pleased one or two critics.
A wine that tasted very good last year might miss the mark this year.
How to tell? Taste!
When I taste wines, I’m also looking for value. There are plenty
of wines on the market that I think are overpriced, and I simply won’t
buy them. Some of these are very well-know wines whose advertising budgets
have driven up their price so much that what was once a good, affordable
everyday wine is now over $20. Instead of playing into this game, I find
a better tasting wine from the same grape, grown in the same area, and
will cost you less money. It takes time to find them, and some wine shop
owners have told me that it’s too much work to do this, but I believe
that I owe it to you. It’s an important part of my job.
From the first week that we opened over five years ago, we have invited
our customers to taste wines with us. Every Friday from 5 until 8, and
every Saturday and Sunday from 2 until 6 we have a winemaker, an importer,
or one of their representatives here to offer tastes of as many as six
wines (during last year’s Rosé Festival, we offered 8. Join
us on Saturday May 20th for this year’s Rosé Festival… I
can promise that you’ll be happily surprised!). By having someone
on hand who knows the wines well, we offer more than just a taste: we
can give an informed answer to your questions, as well as advice on buying,
storing and serving wine.
One thing I can’t understand about some stores that do offer tastings:
how do they expect you to taste from one of those ridiculous, tiny plastic
cups? You know the ones I’m talking about: they’re half the
size of a shot glass. I taste wines almost every day, and I can’t
smell the aromas of a wine poured (dribbled?) into one of those, so I
would never expect you to! At Red White and Bubbly we proudly serve your
tastes in a crystal INAO tasting glass, the same glass used in every winery
I have ever visited, and used by judges in wine competitions all over
the world. We have a commercial quality Hobart glass washer that can wash,
rinse and sanitize three dozen glasses in just three minutes! It’s
the same machine that’s used in restaurants to insure that your glass
is sparkling clean: I wouldn’t think of offering anything less to
my customers.
