The wine world is so big. Yes, there are styles of wines I don't like. Orange wine, natural wines and low-alcohol wines. Truth is on my side, and history will prove I am right.
I like California wine, I really like wines from Washington state. I love wines from Spain and Italy. I don't know about French wines at all.
The first wine I drank, a Chateau Haut-Brion, I was 22, it was my first glass of wine, and I discovered voluptuousness. From there, I started tasting French wines, then Spanish wines, then Italian wines.
There are many great wine producers from all over the world making fantastic wines. Italian wines especially are making an enormous comeback after sometimes being labeled as inexpensive jug wines.
It's nearly impossible to believe just how provincial the wine world was in 1978, the year I launched my journal, 'The Wine Advocate.' There were no wines exported from New Zealand and virtually none from Australia (including Penfolds Grange, one of the greatest wines in existence).
What's important in a cellar is having wines that have a broad range of drinkability, which California Cabernet does. Wines with a broad range of drinkability give you a lot of flexibility; they are the sort of wines that make me feel secure. I think of my wine cellar as security - if the apocalypse comes, I can just go down to the cellar.
In the wine world, crusaders would have wine consumers believe that the only wines of merit are something completely indefinable but which they call 'authentic' or 'natural.'
Man's nature is not a bit the same as wines. He loses flavour as his life declines. We drink the oldest wine that comes our way. Old men get nasty, old wines make us gay.
What makes these special Beaujolais attractive is the same thing that has always made Beaujolais attractive: the price. Given the insane prices of so many wines right now, Beaujolais and the delicious wines pouring in from southern Italy and Sicily keep many wine drinkers from switching to iced tea.
From a wine critic's perspective, there are far too many innocuous, over-oaked, over-acidified, or over-cropped wines emerging from California. While those sins would not be a problem if the wines sold for under $20, many are in fact $75-$150. That's appalling.
Wine is the most noble and beneficial of alcoholic drinks. Wine is for the sedentary whose work is thinking. Natural wines have been used without drunkenness by the millions of human beings for ages. They supply with iron, tannin and vitamins.
Generally speaking, when Australian winemakers try to make delicate, European-styled wines of finesse and lightness, the wines often come across as pale imitations of the originals. One exception is Australian Riesling, delicious, dry wines meant to be consumed in their first two years of life.
I like to drink young wines, wines which are robust and have a lot of forward fruit to them.
Burgundy was the winiest wine, the central, essential, and typical wine, the soul and greatest common measure of all the kindly wines of the earth.
I like to pour my wines for people. I watch their eyes, I can see what they'll like. Most people say they don't like dry wine because they haven't had a dry wine that's clean and fruity, instead of a big, oaky thing.
Italian wines are my favorites. I like a big, booming red wine that blows your taste buds away.
I want to make wines that harmonize with food - wines that almost hug your tongue with gentleness.