Drink - Victoria Moore thinks that, when in doubt, red is best
Published 23 September 2002
If colour is the only guide you're offered, stick to red: at least it's got tannin
''White or red?" must be three of the most uninspiring words ever to be uttered. If the wine is so bad that it only qualifies for description as generic alcohol, I'd probably rather not drink it - though, in desperation, for safety, I'd go with the red. I know this is going out on a limb somewhat - others believe white wine to taste less nasty than bad red, perhaps because it comes chilled, so (with luck) you taste less - but this is what my mother taught me and I'm sticking to it. Anyway, I like tannin.
It is most peculiar of us to think that colour might be the most salient determinant of flavour, particularly as a blind taste test by Comic Relief once demonstrated that rather a lot of people couldn't tell what colour they were drinking unless they could see it. But it also says something about how we think of wine when, at drinks parties, people will offer "white or red" rather than "New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc or St Emilion" or "Italian Pinot Grigio or Beaujolais". I've tried asking as the waiter or host hovers but they only goggle, affronted, as if you're dithering over the relative perils of Scylla and Charybdis.
The truth is that colour is even more susceptible to the whims of fashion than grape or country (depressingly, in the broad popular sense, it seems taste comes into it only in so far as people prefer not to taste much). This is why rose has such a hard time of it. And changes are afoot. It used to be that white was the default setting (hence Al Murray's pub landlord, who'd pull a pint for the gentleman and pour "aglassofwhitewineforthelady"). Now things are evening out. Cafe Rouge reports that 70 per cent of the wine it used to sell was white. Now the colour split is virtually 50-50.
This is partly because, in the blandest possible way, sweet, fruity New World reds have become just as accessible as a freezing-cold glass of white that you can't taste. I think it's also to do with the fact that women - there are more female wine drinkers (just) than male ones - take a more robust approach to drinking. Decorum no longer requires one to sip daintily at a glass of something colourless and light-bodied, and so down the hatch go the reds.
But I also like to think that it's because we have developed enough interest in wine to have our fancy tickled one night by the idea of a glass of Chardonnay, another by Cabernet Sauvignon. So isn't it time that manners caught up with us? There's only one occasion on which, faced with a tray of glasses of red and white wine, the optical information alone should be sufficient to inform choice, and that's when you have to go back to work afterwards and don't want to risk stained lips providing evidence.
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