Wine & Words

This month we are pleased to have Phillip Edwards, Southeastern Regional Sales Manager for Ex Cellars Wine Agency, as a “guest wine guy.”

A few months ago I found a site on the Internet called YumYuk.com. It’s about the fact that different people have different numbers of taste buds and therefore prefer different kinds of tastes. They’ve applied this notion to wine tasting, dividing people into four groups, according to the types of taste they will probably like in wine.

It's hot. No two ways about it. We're entering the Dog Days of summer. We reduce our activity level. Eat a little lighter. But we still enjoy the finer accompaniments to a lazy afternoon or a summer picnic. We've selected our Featured wines this month to go with sunshine & shade, salads & seafood, surf & sand. These are the wines we love in the good old summertime.

We Americans are largely responsible for the rage for "single varietals" in wine. People come into the store and ask for "a Cab" or "a Chard" or "a Pinot" (and I always have to ask "Noir or Grigio"). Those who are more wine-savvy may ask for one of the classic European blends like "Rhone" or "Bordeaux" or "Chianti." They know that the grapes in these blends and the proportions of each are set by long tradition and in many cases by law. It is the Australians, I think, who are mostly responsible for introducing proprietary blends that…well, just taste good. Blending grapes of different varieties and from different vineyards allows the winemaker to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. That’s one reason the year of the vintage is not as important as it once was. Blended wines are not "made in the vineyard" but are, rather, a result of the blender’s art. This month we will feature some of our favorite blends. We hope they’ll become yours, as well.