Four worth keeping on hand

The four wines I recommend today, two whites and two reds, are very different in style. They don’t represent the full range of wine styles, of course, but a sort of middle range. There’s no sweet wine here, no astringently acidic white, no heavyhitting, high-octane red.

These are the styles of wine that are good bets for many meals, because they’re balanced. They have plenty of flavour and acidity that sit harmoniously together, and they have what strikes me as the right tannic content and alcohol level. In other words, they have enough of everything and not too much of anything, making for that equilibrium we look for in wine.

These would be a good quartet to start with, if you were thinking of starting a reserve of wine. I’m not talking about a cellar here. A cellar is a collection of wines whose purpose is to let wines age until they reach their optimum point. Today’s wines, like most in the LCBO, won’t age. They were made, like the vast majority of wines worldwide, to be drunk as soon as they hit the market.

A reserve of wine isn’t a collection of wines to age, but simply a collection of wines to have on hand — not for emergencies, exactly, but in case you need a bottle of wine for unexpected guests, an impromptu decision to order pizza or Greek food, or because you decide to have wine with dinner every night one week, instead of every now and again.

Although many people buy wine as it’s needed, and pick a bottle up on the way home from work, that’s not what we usually do with food. We keep a reserve of food and ingredients, to make sure we’re not caught empty-handed (or empty-fridged) any evening — although I suppose that’s also what pizza and other takeout food is for.

So why not keep a supply of wine on hand, too? It needn’t involve a big outlay. You can buy today’s wines for a little over $53, or an average $13.40 a bottle. But you can spend even less on some bottles, of course, which enables you to spend a bit more on others and perhaps have some special wines to have ready for special occasions that crop up.

A few years ago, I wrote a column where I put together a case of a dozen wines from the LCBO for $100 — an average of only $8.30 a bottle.

All the wines were good quality, and some were very good — real bargains.

I’m not sure if that’s still possible, as the price structure of wines in the LCBO is shifting upward, but I think it’s still definitely possible to put together a case of good and very good wines for not too much more. I’ll take that assignment on early in the new year, when we’ll all want to save a bit of money.