No, it’s not what you think … I have NOT been influenced by the naysayers with their:
- After Brexit ….
- We can’t travel to Europe
- Planes can’t fly over Britain
- We won’t have low cost flights any more
- We won’t be able to buy French wines
- The cost of my Prosecco will go up
- I’ll have to pay mobile phone roaming charges
- I’ll need a permit to drive in Europe
- The label on my fag packets will have to change!
I have decided to completely switch my wine choices and my Wines 101 List to the New World and wider to include New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, USA, Canada, Argentina, Chile …. But I also want to continue buying and trying wines from Hungary, Greece, and Italy, for curiosity reasons (not political) you understand.
There are two problems to deal with now; firstly, a reduction in the overall wine experience, since unlike Chablis, Pommard, Alsace ….. I can’t hop around each of these countries just to find and experience one or two winemakers; and secondly, finding these wines in supermarkets generally or even specialist wine merchants will be impossible!
My solution is a bit of a cheat …. it’s to use The Wine Society to source wines which are as close as possible to those listed in the Wines 101 book, same country, same region, same grape …. but probably a different producer.
Here’s a few selections I have made today from The Wine Society, all Australian. Next…….. New Zealand, but I will post existential idiosyncratic tasting notes on these 5 from Oz!
Categories: New World, Wine, Wine 101
Wines 101: #8 Cullen, Cabernet Sauvignon-Merlot 
Wines 101 #7: Leeuwin “Prelude” Margaret River Chardonnay 2016 
The Two Doctors 
Happy wine travels! Curious about these existential idiosyncratic tasting notes 😉 I’m working on that list of Italian wines, but it’s difficult to narrow it down to 5.
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How many would YOU choose?
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With 22 regions you could do one or two from each, but some have a longer history of quality wine production than others. My preliminary list is ten, but I’m sorry to say it’s largely based on personal experience 😬
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That is the challenge, and the dilemma especially at my age! I have to tour the world in 101 bottles, I only took 5 from France, and yesterday 5 from Australia. I haven’t taken any from Bordeaux, Champagne, central Burgundy, Rhône….. I have to be brutal! If I survive the 101 I can do another 101, but there are so many wine producing countries and that is the real issue, something representative from each. You might give me a list of 10, but I would probably then cut it down to 5 arbitrarily anyway. It’s not about cost …. it’s time and geography. 🙏
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Ok, I’ll give you 10 because I’m not sure what you’ll be able to find on wine Society, but I’ll put them in order starting with the top 5. You decide!
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Good plan, it’s always about choices and priorities, thank you. Your list will be a really good guide for me and I may have to find substitutes but I will at least follow the grape and appellation.
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Actually I don’t normally write tasting notes at all, most of my articles are about the whole experience of the Vineyard and vigneron or the event. This is idiosyncratic in its own right! Existentialism however asks me to describe the experience, the sensations and my observations of the wine. Sartre would cut out all else, but Heidegger adds “being” so I need to describe more about the environment in which I drink the wine, images and memories it conjures up. Although I am more in tune with Heidegger he was a bloody Nazi!
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Talk about dialectical materialism and join the communist! 😉
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Not a hope 😂😂 Anything that came from Karl Marx and his mates is banned in this house! Anyway, it’s a philosophy wrapped around a world view of politics and society which is “dead”.
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Time, being, existence and essence it is! I thought of materialism because I was thinking how it could be more about the wine as matter. I have mostly a peripheral knowledge of Heidegger, through my performance work, so it should be interesting to see it applied to wine!
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I’m only an amateur compared to yourself remember!
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