90 Minute Thread: White Wine?

[Peacefrog]

I prefer crisp, acidic, refreshing whites so I don’t drink much Chardonnay. If you’re looking for something along those lines, I think New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs are among the best overall and best values. Mohua is my go-to if you can find it, $15-$20. I tend to find French wine to be a poor value personally.

Edit: and for one of the best values on earth, Costco has a Sauvignon Blanc called Ti-Point that is darn good for $7

 

[8893]

I prefer crisp, acidic, refreshing whites so I don’t drink much Chardonnay. If you’re looking for something along those lines, I think New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs are among the best overall and best values. Mohua is my go-to if you can find it, $15-$20. I tend to find French wine to be a poor value personally.

Edit: and for one of the best values on earth, Costco has a Sauvignon Blanc called Ti-Point that is darn good for $7

New Zealand puts out some really nice SB—more grassy to me. Great values. Some decent Pinot Noirs, too.

 

[Ewekon]

Mersault for me.

Hard if not impossible to find a $30 Mersault from anything other than a plonk vintage year, no?
If you have please share info.

 

[UConnfan4ever]

If you like oysters, Sancerre and oysters is a match made in heaven. Any shellfish, actually.

I came to appreciate whites after reds, too. I knew and liked great Chardonnays, but nothing else. Then I got turned on to Italian whites and everything changed. You could—and should—spend the rest of the summer trying different ones and you will be amazed at how varied and inexpensive they are.

Gavi, as I mentioned above, is one of my favorites. I had a Falenghina last night. I could name another half dozen or more to try off the top of my head:

Verdicchio
Vernaccia di San Gimignano
Orvieto
Arneis
Greco di Tufo
Vermentino
Fiano di Avellino

And any Chardonnay from Piedmont is likely to be very good to great. If you see a Gaja, it will be great, but expensive.

You have quite the discerning wine palate. Some excellent suggestions and some I'm not familiar with but will be soon. I have Arneis that I brought back from Piedmont last fall. We did a wine tour with the proprietor of Galarin vineyard. I will probably be opening that this weekend. Thanks for the insights.

 

[Drew]

If you like oysters, Sancerre and oysters is a match made in heaven. Any shellfish, actually.

I came to appreciate whites after reds, too. I knew and liked great Chardonnays, but nothing else. Then I got turned on to Italian whites and everything changed. You could—and should—spend the rest of the summer trying different ones and you will be amazed at how varied and inexpensive they are.

Gavi, as I mentioned above, is one of my favorites. I had a Falenghina last night. I could name another half dozen or more to try off the top of my head:

Verdicchio
Vernaccia di San Gimignano
Orvieto
Arneis
Greco di Tufo
Vermentino
Fiano di Avellino

And any Chardonnay from Piedmont is likely to be very good to great. If you see a Gaja, it will be great, but expensive.

This is incredible. Thanks for sharing and for the recommendations. I’m a big fan of most shellfish but I live in Charlotte (~3 hours inland from the coast) so have to be selective where and when I purchase seafood.

This started as a 90 min thread but would love to keep it going if others have recommendations/pairing suggestions. Again really appreciate it @8893

 

[Jaker]

Hold on, let me go ask the women in the room.

 

[UConnfan4ever]

Hold on, let me go ask the women in the room.

Well that sums up everything I need to know about you.

 

[Caronimo]

They all taste the same. Get Kirkland.

 

[Duncan Idaho]

This is incredible. Thanks for sharing and for the recommendations. I’m a big fan of most shellfish but I live in Charlotte (~3 hours inland from the coast) so have to be selective where and when I purchase seafood.

This started as a 90 min thread but would love to keep it going if others have recommendations/pairing suggestions. Again really appreciate it @8893

Muscadet is also great with oysters. Save the lemon. The better ones come from the Maine River which is a tributary of the Loire. No more than 3 years old. Should have said that earlier. 93 sounds like a great resource as are others.

 

[methodology]

Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio

Alto Adige, Italy- This dry white wine has a straw yellow color. Its clean, intense aroma and bone-dry taste (with an appealing flavor of Golden Delicious apples) make Santa Margherita's Pinot Grigio a wine of great personality and versatility.

www.totalwine.com

 

[8893]

Hard if not impossible to find a $30 Mersault from anything other than a plonk vintage year, no?
If you have please share info.

Agreed. That was not a suggestion for the OP, but a reply to @August_West 's white Burgundy preferences. I love Mersault but I've never found an inexpensive one.

Best values I've found in Burgundy generally have been from Joseph Drouhin, but they're still not cheap.

That's why I like the Italian whites, Gruner Veltliner and Albarino--much better values imo.

 

[8893]

Hold on, let me go ask the women in the room.

Hold on to your hat, because I actually drink more rosé wine than anything else at this point.

Yes. A man. Drinking pink wine.

 

[Deepster]

That's just so untrue. The leap in quality from a $10 bottle to a $20 ish dollar bottle is pretty large. I mainly drink reds, but at the $20 price point there is no shortage of really good options.

Nonsense. Go read any of the thousand articles where experts struggle to tell the difference and the untrained pallette of Joe Lunchpail has no idea on how to pick out the nuances of more expensive wines.

This one took me 3 clicks.....

"In particular, Robin Goldstein and a team from the American Association of Wine Economists wrote a paper about the issue called “Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better? Evidence from a Large Sample of Blind Tastings.”

The experiment was conducted in 2007 and 2008 and led to the findings in the paper I mentioned, as well as a book by Goldstein titled The Wine Trials: 100 Everyday Wines Under $15 that Beat $50 to $150 Wines in Brown-Bag Blind Tastings. Goldstein now also writes for the Freakonomics blog.

Over 500 people tasted wine flights composed from 523 different wines ranging in price from $1.65 to $150. They then answered the question “Overall, how do you find the wine?”

The bottom line is that in blind tastings of regular people, there is no correlation between the wines they like and the price of the wine. In fact, the paper found a slightly negative correlation, suggesting that regular people actually prefer cheaper wines."

 

[Peacefrog]

If you like oysters, Sancerre and oysters is a match made in heaven. Any shellfish, actually.

I came to appreciate whites after reds, too. I knew and liked great Chardonnays, but nothing else. Then I got turned on to Italian whites and everything changed. You could—and should—spend the rest of the summer trying different ones and you will be amazed at how varied and inexpensive they are.

Gavi, as I mentioned above, is one of my favorites. I had a Falenghina last night. I could name another half dozen or more to try off the top of my head:

Verdicchio
Vernaccia di San Gimignano
Orvieto
Arneis
Greco di Tufo
Vermentino
Fiano di Avellino

And any Chardonnay from Piedmont is likely to be very good to great. If you see a Gaja, it will be great, but expensive.

Great rundown here. I spent three years in Italy and would say that Gavi di Gavi and Vernaccia di San Gimignano are two of the more consistently good Italian whites. They can be challenging to find stateside. I like Vermentino as well and recently had an excellent one from Texas. Yup, Texas.

 

[Duncan Idaho]

Hold on to your hat, because I actually drink more rosé wine than anything else at this point.

Yes. A man. Drinking pink wine.

I am a recovering. An ex smoker, an ex of many things. I have heard pink is becoming a thing?

 

[Huskybass]

Nonsense. Go read any of the thousand articles where experts struggle to tell the difference and the untrained pallette of Joe Lunchpail has no idea on how to pick out the nuances of more expensive wines.

This one took me 3 clicks.....

"In particular, Robin Goldstein and a team from the American Association of Wine Economists wrote a paper about the issue called “Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better? Evidence from a Large Sample of Blind Tastings.”

The experiment was conducted in 2007 and 2008 and led to the findings in the paper I mentioned, as well as a book by Goldstein titled The Wine Trials: 100 Everyday Wines Under $15 that Beat $50 to $150 Wines in Brown-Bag Blind Tastings. Goldstein now also writes for the Freakonomics blog.

Over 500 people tasted wine flights composed from 523 different wines ranging in price from $1.65 to $150. They then answered the question “Overall, how do you find the wine?”

The bottom line is that in blind tastings of regular people, there is no correlation between the wines they like and the price of the wine. In fact, the paper found a slightly negative correlation, suggesting that regular people actually prefer cheaper wines."

As usual, you are full of bs. Put a nice bottle of $20 to $30 Cabernet in front of me and I will instantly know the difference between it and a $10 bottle of poularly priced swill.

By your logic, a delicious microbrew would be no more desirable than Bud Light, which is also simply untrue. The chart below will help you see the general distinctions between wines at various price points.

 

[Deepster]

As usual, you are full of bs. Put a nice bottle of $20 to $30 Cabernet in front of me and I will instantly know the difference between it and a $10 bottle of poularly priced swill.

By your logic, a delicious microbrew would be no more desirable than Bud Light, which is also simply untrue. The chart below will help you see the general distinctions between wines at various price points.
View attachment 56060

I'm not full of BS. Robin Goldstein and a team from the American Association of Wine Economists are the ones you need to take it up with.

 

[dvegas]

a nice Cortese di Gavi from Italy. Great summer wines.

Good call. If you want to go a bit more inexpensive for a light, dry white, try a bottle of Frascati ($10-$15) Grapes grown right outside Rome near the Pope's summer retreat. Make sure it's a 2019 vintage, and dream about the porchetta you can get at a roadside stand there but not anything close in the US

 

[Zissou]

90% of our buys are bottles $25 and less. This has been a frequent topic around our table.

We always enjoy the house wines in Italy. Good values, so we have gravitated in the Tuscan red direction over the years at home. We still enjoy everything though.

A professional wine friend (commercial winemaker, winemaking professor, wine selector) told me “drink what you like - you can have a full selection of really great wines at $20 and under”.

Try NY whites! Rkats, Gruner, Dry Riesling, Gewurtz... I mentioned Dr Frank earlier - that’s a good place to start.

 

[Duncan Idaho]

Use to buy alot of young reds like Napa cabs for $20 and hold til they were 5-6 years old. Kept them at my grandfather's house 90 minutes away.

 

[Waquoit]

Gewurtz...

Nobody actually enjoys drinking that, do they? I thought people just bought it (usually around TG) because they read somewhere it pairs with turkey.

 

[Zissou]

Nobody actually enjoys drinking that, do they? I thought people just bought it (usually around TG) because they read somewhere it pairs with turkey.

It’s not my favorite, but it’s popular

 

[Zissou]

Beware of wine snobs. They are likely just amateurs that have gained some knowledge and experience but have an oversized impression of themselves.

Enjoy what you like! You like an ice cube in your white wine? Go for it.

 

[Waquoit]

Beware of wine snobs.

I agree but I wasn't running into to many lately, if any (pre-COVID). Not like 25 years ago, anyway.

 

[8893]

Great rundown here. I spent three years in Italy and would say that Gavi di Gavi and Vernaccia di San Gimignano are two of the more consistently good Italian whites. They can be challenging to find stateside. I like Vermentino as well and recently had an excellent one from Texas. Yup, Texas.

Yeah, I get most of my wine from Mt. Carmel Wine & Spirits in Hamden, which has a great relationship with the distributors and is the place they go to get rid of their closeouts at serious discounts. They have an outstanding selection and are very helpful and knowledgeable, and they send a blast e-mail every Friday afternoon with new closeouts. Otherwise, the balance comes from flash sales on Last Bottle or purchases from Coastal Wine and Spirits in Branford, which has an amazing selection, decent prices and very knowledgeable and helpful wine guy (the guy with the long white ponytail and white beard).

Gavi is probably the one I have the easiest time finding, including on an increasing number of restaurant wine lists. If they have an Italian white other than Pinot Grigio, it's most likely to be Gavi.

I am a recovering. An ex smoker, an ex of many things. I have heard pink is becoming a thing?

Like Chablis, rose wine suffered for a few decades from a bad reputation earned by California's bastardization of it, in this case with "White Zinfandel" and "blush" wines. Beringer and Sutter Home alone killed it with their White Zinfandel, which was cloyingly sweet and ubiquitous for decades.

But they have been making great roses in Europe forever, and they are great food wines, very varied and almost never sweet. The ones from Provence have been sold widely here for decades, but in recent years it has become a lot more popular here and we are finally getting some good and interesting ones from Italy, Austria, Spain, Portugal and South Africa, as well as ones from other regions in France.

Like my taste in whites, I tend towards the Italian roses ("rosato") as well, and you can increasingly find them made from some very interesting grapes with really distinct flavor profiles. Sancerre also produces some really nice ones, usually made from pinot noir grapes.

 

[NJHusky]

Gruner Veltliner is my go-to. Great food wine and tremendous value.

Albariño from Spain also.

This! Gruner is my first choice...but Albarinos are great...I would also consider a Sancerre

 

[NJHusky]

Great rundown here. I spent three years in Italy and would say that Gavi di Gavi and Vernaccia di San Gimignano are two of the more consistently good Italian whites. They can be challenging to find stateside. I like Vermentino as well and recently had an excellent one from Texas. Yup, Texas.

care to share which one? A good wine from Texas? As in USA Texas? I know there is an Italy, Texas, is there a Texas in Italy?

 

[NJHusky]

Yeah, I get most of my wine from Mt. Carmel Wine & Spirits in Hamden, which has a great relationship with the distributors and is the place they go to get rid of their closeouts at serious discounts. They have an outstanding selection and are very helpful and knowledgeable, and they send a blast e-mail every Friday afternoon with new closeouts. Otherwise, the balance comes from flash sales on Last Bottle or purchases from Coastal Wine and Spirits in Branford, which has an amazing selection, decent prices and very knowledgeable and helpful wine guy (the guy with the long white ponytail and white beard).

Gavi is probably the one I have the easiest time finding, including on an increasing number of restaurant wine lists. If they have an Italian white other than Pinot Grigio, it's most likely to be Gavi.


Like Chablis, rose wine suffered for a few decades from a bad reputation earned by California's bastardization of it, in this case with "White Zinfandel" and "blush" wines. Beringer and Sutter Home alone killed it with their White Zinfandel, which was cloyingly sweet and ubiquitous for decades.

But they have been making great roses in Europe forever, and they are great food wines, very varied and almost never sweet. The ones from Provence have been sold widely here for decades, but in recent years it has become a lot more popular here and we are finally getting some good and interesting ones from Italy, Austria, Spain, Portugal and South Africa, as well as ones from other regions in France.

Like my taste in whites, I tend towards the Italian roses ("rosato") as well, and you can increasingly find them made from some very interesting grapes with really distinct flavor profiles. Sancerre also produces some really nice ones, usually made from pinot noir grapes.

Since I agree with almost everything you wrote in this thread...care to share some of your Rose choices. My wife loves then hanging by the pool. I usually just pick one from Provence since I have no idea

 

[8893]

Since I agree with almost everything you wrote in this thread...care to share some of your Rose choices. My wife loves then hanging by the pool. I usually just pick one from Provence since I have no idea

Sticking with the Rosatos:

The two I always get a case of from Last Bottle are Bertani's Bertarose, which is from Veneto and made from 75% Molinara and 25% Merlot; and Massimo Rivetti's Viarivetti22, which is from the Langhe (Piedmont) and made from pinot noir grapes. I think I pay $11 a bottle for the Bertarose and $10 for the Rivetti, each of which is around a 50% discount from the regular price.

Last year I also found one from the Langhe that was made from Nebbiolo grapes and it was excellent and also around $10 a bottle or less on a closeout from Mt. Carmel. I can't remember the producer, but if you see any Rosato from Piedmont I don't think you will be disappointed.

Probably one of the easier ones to find, which is also delicious, is Pasqua's 11 Minutes Rose, from Verona and made with Corvina, Trebbiano, Syrah and Carmenere. I've seen this in several package stores, usually around $15, and people seem to like the bottle because it looks little different:

My practice in general is to try any Italian rosato that I haven't tried before. I have yet to be disappointed, so I would recommend buying any you can find if you don't see any of these.

As for France, Provence makes some of the best, and they also make some of the crappiest, so it is easy to go wrong there imo unless you know the maker or have a recommendation from someone. Sancerre roses, on the other hand, have never disappointed me, but you have to watch the price because I've seen some of them in the $20s and I won't spend that on a rose. Whenever I see a deal on Sancerre roses at Last Bottle or Mt. Carmel, I get a case.

A lot of people only drink roses in the warm weather, but I drink them all year round.

Sparkling roses and rosatos are also very nice, and people love them when I bring them to parties and dinners, etc. Bottle looks pretty and everyone loves the taste.

 

[August_West]

Nobody actually enjoys drinking that, do they? I thought people just bought it (usually around TG) because they read somewhere it pairs with turkey.

The better examples are really good.