There’s Good Wine, and Then There’s Table Wine

A cheap, standard, red table wine is a necessary evil for simple, easy dishes like pasta, pizza, or anything else starchy and matched with a tomato base. But the great downfalls of a table wine is the incessant acidity that seems to grapple with digestion instead of aiding it, and the fact that if you drink too much of it, you will wake up with an incredible, numbing head-ache.

One can immediately label themselves a beginner when it comes to enjoying wine by declaring that they enjoy a “nice” wine from certain areas. For, you see, there are certain areas of the globe where a “table wine” is not actually a table wine, but something to be aged and enjoyed. In a cheap French convenience store, for example, a unique, robust, and beautiful wine can be found for less than five dollars. But there are other areas where a “fine” wine is nothing more than an over-priced table wine. I know this reveals my inherent bias and gross ability for the over-arching generalization. However, a word of caution: do not be “that guy” or “that gal” who says that they love a good Cabernet or Merlot from Chile or a good Shiraz from Australia. In my experience, those grapes do not enjoy that environment.

Sure, those grapes grow in abundance in those respective areas. But they do so grudgingly. Their flesh takes on the bitterness of their demeanor, and the juice produced harbors little sweetness, rendering the alcohol too powerful to the tongue and stomach. A certain smokiness bites the back of the throat, and it is called a specific “taste”. It is a common characteristic found in many poorly located wines. South Africa, Chile, Australia, and California all seem to want to force certain grapes to come from their areas – grapes that do not want to be there – and in doing so, create a wine that is angry at the drinker. And yet, most beginner wine-tasters feel comfortable with these types of wine.

My theory is that these grapes, taken out of their native soil, exposed to unfamiliar environs of all sorts, rebel in a standard way. The wine they create tastes the same, regardless of the region. And a beginner, feeling comfortable with the standardized taste, feels comfortable with the familiar – and declare with fervidity that they enjoy these wines the most.

I am not saying that all grape varieties from these places are plain and standard. Far from it! However, I think the places previously mentioned are young at the art of wine as a region, and still have a knack for mass-producing wines that should have never existed in the first place. This being said, that familiar standard taste of the “forced vino” is convenient if found at a cheap price for hot, spiced wine in the winter, a socializer at parties, and, of course, as a cheap accompaniment to a simple, warm, meaty, tomato-based dish of food.

photo; pizza with VEO Grande from Chile