The Wine Curmudgeon

Wine terms: Vin ordinaire

What do Americans call the kind of wine that they drink every day? Oh, that's right -- we don't drink wine every day.

But there is a term for it -- vin ordinaire, a French expression that means cheap wine for everyday use. Or, ordinary wine, as opposed to fine wine from Bordeaux and Burgundy, which is traditionally reserved for special occassions.

The term vin ordinaire has its roots in the French wine classification system. Each French wine region grades the quality of its wines, and wine that isn't from one specific region is labled Vin de Table. Many European countries have a similar classification, and one of the goals of the on-going European Union plan to reform the continent's wine laws is to make this more consistent across the various countries. In this, the Vin de Table wines are being replaced by wines labeled Vin de Pays or IGP. More, after the jump:

Regional wine labels: Is a wine where it says it's from?

When is a wine made by a winery in your state not from your state? More often than you think.

This is the great conundrum of the regional wine business. The best way for local wineries to market their product is to proclaim its local-ness. But, given the way the wine business works, their wine may not be made with local grapes, but with grapes or juice imported from California or even Europe. Confused? It gets worse. Federal law allows wineries to be appropriately vague about whether the wine is made with local grapes.

All in all, regional wine labeling is a maze that consumers (many of whom aren't sure how to read a wine label to begin with) don't know they have to negotiate. After the jump -- how labeling laws work, what to look for on a regional wine label, and why so many wineries take advantage of this gray area.

Wine terms: Terroir

The most controversial term in wine is terroir. A sizeable portion of the wine world -- half, perhaps? -- says it doesn't exist, and that even if it does, it's irrelevant. The rest of us believe truly and deeply in terroir and consider it the key to what makes wine so special. But even we terroirists can't agree on just exactly what terroir is.

That's the reason I've waited 3 1/2 years to write this post. I wanted to make sure I got it exactly right. More, after the jump:

Do consumers trust wine bloggers?

Not much, if a report from the United Kingdom's Wine Intelligence consultancy is to be believed. The catch? The man whose company did the report said the results may be flawed.

Wine Intelligence reported at the end of January that independent bloggers are one of the least trusted wine information sources in the United Kingdom, United States, and France. Its study found that only one in five regular wine drinkers in the U.K. trust what independent bloggers say about a wine, compared with more than 50 percent who trust their wine merchant. In the U.S., the numbers were 20 percent and 80 percent, while only 10 percent of the French trusted bloggers.

Which would seem to point out that this wine blogging thing is a waste of time. But Richard Halstead, Wine Intelligence's chief operating officer, told Harpers Wine & Spirit that the study's methodology had some problems. Which didn't seem to placate wine bloggers here or in Europe, who have spent the past couple of weeks using the cyber-ether to take Wine Intelligence to task, with many high-profile wine blogs on both sides of the Atlantic discrediting the report.

Yet the report, once one gets past the headlines, did offer some insight. What that was, after the jump:

Wine terms: Food friendly

The words "food friendly" crop up on the blog all the time (as well as in many other examples of wine writing. What's most interesting about the term is that it's not really official winespeak -- doesn't show up on a lot of wine tasting terminology lists, for example. But it's still an important way to describe wine.

That's because it's not a winespeak term. You won't see it, for example, on many reviews that include scores, which prefer to stick to their tried and true adjectives like cigar box and leathery. For them, food friendly isn't an accurate description of what the wine tastes like. It's an assessment of the quality of the wine, and they have scores for that.

Which is just fine with me. Food friendly wines complement what you're eating, and that is an important assessment to make. If the wine is going to overpower the food -- think of an inky, 16 1/2 percent alcohol shiraz -- you need to know it before you serve it with a piece of beef that cost an entire week's salary. In this, a food friendly wine is not the star of the meal, but the part that helps to bring out the flavor of the food.

Know, too, that a food friendly wine is versatile, and will pair with a variety of dishes. Think of pinot noir, which goes with salmon, lamb and chicken. The same holds true for red wines from France's Cote du Rhone, which is almost as versatile as pinot noir, or many sauvignon blancs.

So, yes, food friendly wines tend to have softer tannins and more fruit -- but that doesn't mean that food friendly wines are always lighter. It's more about balance. Cabernet sauvignon, which is usually tannic and acidic, can be food friendly if those characteristics are in balance with the fruit. Chardonnay can be incredibly food friendly, but not if it's over-oaked or too high in alcohol. High alcohol, in fact, makes a wine food unfriendly, because a high alcohol wine needs food to soften its characteristics.

Wine I like

The most common question people ask the Wine Curmudgeon is, not surprisingly, "What's your favorite wine?" My answer, also not surprisingly, usually disappoints them. I am, after all, the Wine Curmudgeon.

That's because I don't have a favorite. One of the tenets of the Wine Curmudgeon's faith is that wine should not be about playing favorites, but about looking for new wine to enjoy. What's the point of drinking the same wine over and over when there is so much still left to try?

This doesn't mean that there aren't certain wines that I like. White Burgundy is my guilty (and expensive) pleasure. Sparkling wine always makes me smile. Well-made regional wine, preferably with obscure grapes, is a huge treat. And, of course, any of my $10 wines -- whether I've had it before or I'm tasting it for the first time -- is a reason to open a bottle.

Which raises an important question that I've never really addressed in the blog's three-year history: How do I decide which wines I like? What are my criteria? What makes a well-made wine? This is especially relevant given Monday's release of the 2011 $10 Hall of Fame. It is, as always, an eclectic mix -- grocery store wines, wines made with odd grapes, lots of rose, wines from small producers, and even chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon. What qualities do I find that sets them apart? How I make those decisions, after the jump:

Wine terms: Oak

Winespeak always includes references to oak (even the Wine Curmudgeon is guilty of this), and most of the references always seem to describe the wine as toasty and oaky. This can be quite confusing, since the relationship between wine and oak is not obvious.

How can something made with grapes be toasty and oaky?

That's because some wines are aged in oak barrels. Generally, but not always, these are more expensive wines, and they are more often red wines than white wines.

Oak aging helps temper the acid and tannins in red wine, making it more drinkable. The only white wine that gets much oak is chardonnay, and California has turned this into a unique style -- rich, buttery, oaky, almost caramelly wine. I recently tasted a high-end chardonnay from a major California producer, and the wine was spot on for creme brulee. More, after the jump: