Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer's Tour of France (25th Anniversary Edition)

by Kermit Lynch

great wine is about nuance, surprise, subtlety, expression, qualities that keep you coming back for yet another taste. Rejecting a wine because it is not big enough is like rejecting a book because it is not long enough, or a piece of music because it is not loud enough.

When the public taste changes

away from size to aroma and flavor as the most important criteria, we will all be drinking finer wine.

Wine is, above all, pleasure. Those who would make it ponderous make it dull. People talk about the mystery of wine, yet most don’t want anything to do with mystery. They want it all there in one sniff, one taste. If you keep an open mind and take each wine on its own terms, there is a world of magic to discover.

I was struck by the fact that fermentation in barrel produced a wine with more depth, more dimensions to it, than those from stainless-steel

steel tanks where the wine is boxed in tight as a knot.

Vintage charts are the worst kind of generalization; great wine is the contradiction of generalization.

Vouvray—René Loyau,

Père Loyau

Wine can express extra-vinous qualities. Tasters often find black currants, for example, or mint, or eucalyptus, and so forth. The Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet from California’s Heitz Cellars is a dramatic example.

1847. In all the world of wine, Vouvray and Sauternes are the two that age the longest.”

Vouvray and Savennières,

Pineau

“Good wine is not an optical pleasure, it is an inward emotion.”