Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics & Wine - My Favourite Wine Myths
After 30 + years in the wine industry, I’ve just about heard it all so having finished a recent promotional trip late last year I thought I’d mention some of my favourites.
“The even years are the best, aren’t they?”
Don’t be embarrassed if you’ve repeated this, I hear it all the time and wish it was true. As a producer, I’d simply take some time off during those years having re-allocated my stock to cover the off-year. The reality is, Mother Nature is as randomly kind as she is cruel and you only need to look at years like 1963, ’71 and ’91 in many of Australia’s wine regions or ’89 and ’05 in France. Wine can err into vague generalisations like anything, much like the idea that all doctors are rich.
“You must open the bottle and let it breathe”
An open bottle of wine might breathe a little bit but in reality, you’re asking 750ml of wine to breathe through a tiny hole exposing a very small percentage of it to air. The idea of breathing a wine is to allow any undesirable volatile compounds to blow off and leave you with a better experience. To expedite this decanting (or pouring) the wine into a decanter, jug, urn (whatever works) will expose a much greater volume of wine to air, therefore speeding up the process. This is especially true of young wines. Old wines, particularly reds? Just open and drink, they’re dead already.
“White wine doesn’t age well”
If you’re talking about a $10/bottle of sauvignon blanc from the local bottlo I’d agree, but it depends on the variety you’re talking about. Previously I have referred you to some amazing Aussie examples of aged white such as Riesling and Semillon, particularly Riesling from Clare and Eden Valley, and Semillon from the Hunter. If your budget extends to Sauterne the French have been making some remarkable dessert wines for centuries.
This brings me to my point – the world of wine is full of discovery, surprises and experiences. For many, it’s an intimidating space so there’s often safety in generalisations but I‘d encourage you to break out – stop and try wine on tasting, order something different from the wine list (get the waiter to choose), have a conversation with the wine guy at the local, put your wine in a paper bag and get your friends to guess what it is… why not? Have fun!
The more you explore the fewer generalisations you’ll end up using and the more you’ll enjoy this amazing industry I love so much
Cheers,
Phil
