Matters of Taste
Different routes to searching for bargain red wine
Anyone on the hunt for great value red wines would do well to scour the Italy and Portugal shelves at the liquor store. Here you’ll find a host of well-priced, well-made-wines-made from native grapes that don’t have the name-recognition of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot or Pinot Noir.
Often these bottles just carry the name of the village or region where they are produced, which can be a deterrent for those who are lee ry of leaving their vinous comfort zone. After all, being familiar with how certain grape varieties taste is one of the easiest ways to anticipate whether or not you’ll enjoy different styles of wine.
But grapes aren’t the only route to identifying wine flavours.
Knowing where a wine comes from can be the key to identifying typical flavours for specific countries or regions.
The wine styles of Italy are dramatically diverse, but a good number of its red wines offer tart red fruit and bright acidity that make them enjoyable companions with a meal.
Likewise, Portugal has a deeply established passion for wine that yields a dramatic array of styles from north to south. Red wines from hot spots like the Douro Valley and Dão, however, can often be counted on to deliver robust reds with intense ripe fruit and naturally complex flavours.
When I first started to discover wine, I used to buy different inexpensive wines each week and taste them together over the course of three or four days. I hope to connect what made each sample different and see how the tasted evolved. What’s truly remarkable is how some of the value priced wines I admired more than 20 years ago continue to impress as bargain selections today.
Your smartphone can help you identify the grape varieties of these strangely labelled European selections as well as provide you with different facts and figures of where
they come from and how they were made. The only thing that really matters to you in the end is what a wine tastes like and whether or not it appeals to you .