How to Decide Which Wine to Drink This Summer

The world of wine seems to be evolving unpredictably, with new producers on almost every continent, massive markets opening in Asia, novel culinary tendencies and fusion cuisine spreading. We hear about those changes almost daily, and it’s rather confusing.   

             Rose Wines from France                                                                                   

I learned recently, for example that the most expensive champagne ever sold was not a “bland de blanc” or an “extra brut” but a Rosé, and it fetched $84,700. That lucky bottle was a Dom Perignon from 1959, but until relatively recently, Rosé champagne wasn’t part of the myth of champagne as the king of wine. It was really more a fancy than a drink of reference.  In the French region where champagne is produced, the fruity and accessible bouquet of the Rosé was marginalized next to the maturity and complexity of the white. Although Rosé champagne has gained great prestige outside the country, it’s produced only on 4% of the total surface of the Champagne region.

Another recent lesson has to do with Rosé wine. Traditionally, a Rosé wine is light, fruity and easy to please. It’s generally drunk fresh during the summer because it goes bad in one or two years. It’s a cheaper wine and rarely found in any important cellar. But there are more high-quality, cellar-worthy Rosé wines coming to the market and gaining notoriety. The best of them could be stored for two or even three decades. In general, those “full of character” Rosés can be kept for a few years. At the moment,  2006 and 2008 vintages are being released.

But the best lesson I’m learning is that most things related to wine are subjective. As a New Yorker magazine story recently argued: “… it is all about finding sensory differences between different bottles of rotten grape juice.” Even the most respected experts recognize that the differences between similar wines are so slight—and they get even more muddled after a few sips—that “there is often wide disagreement about which wines are best.”

At the renowned American “Princeton tasting” last month, where nine of the most exalted wine authorities blind-tested the best French and American products, both the winning red and white wines were ranked by at least one of the judges as the worst. Even more surprising: Guess which new American region produced wines that performed better than the finest French chateaux, including legends like Château Mouton Rothschild and Château Haut-Brion? Would you believe…New Jersey?

A “good” wine continues to develop in the glass and the open bottle, is affected by temperature, and depends on the individual drinker’s knowledge and taste, where and with whom it’s imbibed and the food, the event or celebration it accompanies.  Today’s final wine lesson: Pay less attention to the experts. What really matters is that you like it.