Wine - Roger Scruton offers cures for Yankee blues
Published 17 October 2005
Cheap American wine can cheer you even through local radio host shows
Many of our readers are likely to spend some time in America, in a place of sprawling suburbs and downtown skyscrapers, where just a few beaten-up old streets bear witness to the long-since vanished city. Such places raise urgent questions in the visitor, such as how to meet whom, where to eat what and - most of all - what to drink now. You may be lucky and find yourself in Manhattan, where wine from the European market is offloaded in the big stores around Washington Square. Or you may find yourself in a place that has been visited and blessed by Total Wine, which sells European wines at American prices. More likely, however, is your incarceration in Hanksville, Ohio or Edge City, Michigan, where wine is available only from a supermarket 20 miles away in some godforsaken plaza amid a sea of dragon-toothed cars. Getting through your three-month stint as visiting professor, military adviser, artist in residence or IT consultant is going to be hard, even if you have brought your loved ones with you. My advice is to go native. Visit that supermarket once a fortnight, and say goodbye to the wines of France.
American wine is, in fact, extremely cheap. You can drink well for $7 or $8 a bottle, and not much better if you spend ten times as much. Like everything in America, from cornflakes to Christmas and pop stars to presidents, wine is sold as a brand. There are single-vineyard wines and much-trumpeted special cuvees: but these are snob products, designed to exploit the bottomless American capacity for ignorant wonder. Get to know the brands, and you will be astonished to discover that their taste from bottle to bottle and year to year is as invariant as that of HP Sauce.
Of course, this takes some of the adventure out of drinking. But it gets you through those long quiet evenings, when you are alone with your loved ones or - worse still - with your thoughts. Here is my solution: first, ignore all states except California. There is good wine produced in Oregon and New York State, but you pay for the difficulty of making it. Second, stick to Chardonnay for the white, and beware of the fleshy, over-oaked varieties. Among cheaper brands, Fetzer takes some beating at $7 a bottle; add another $3 and you can graduate to the nuttier white Burgundy imitation by Wente. Both are vintage wines, with an attempt at locality, and both are well balanced and fruity, with enough acidity to serve as an aperitif.
For the reds, I would pay special attention to Beringer and Ravenswood, always remembering that the Pinot Noir grows particularly well in California, achieving an ampleness of fruit that will cheer you through the most excruciatingly intimate of those local radio host shows.
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
