The Humble Gourmand

As I’ve said before, there comes a point in any budding oenophile’s career when one decides to hate Chardonnay and Merlot.

The reasons for this are simple. Although U.S. winemakers have made progress by leaps and bounds in the wine world over the past three decades, the average American palate has not risen to the occasion. Unless you make an effort to learn something about wine, most of the wine to which you’re exposed — house wines at restaurants and bars, airplanes, and cocktail parties — consists of generic and relatively unoffensive Chardonnay and Merlot.

Why? For one, both grapes grow pretty easily in California (well, everywhere, for that matter) and from a marketing standpoint are almost brands in and of themselves. Most people have at least heard of Merlot and Chardonnay, even if they haven’t tried them. Lots of mass-producing wineries can make very easy-to-drink wines that will sell year after year, and they don’t need a lot of street cred from wine snobs to stay in business.

I for one am guilty of drinking MANY of these generic Chards and Merlots over the years. At risk of sounding like the wine snob I guess I am, I just didn’t know any better — until I tasted better.

I’ll never forget the first “good” Chardonnay I had. The year was 2002. I was working as an intern for a dynamic and bustling advertising firm in Portland, Maine, and one of our clients was a prominent distillery. My co-workers were generous enough to bring me along to a client dinner at a swanky seafood restaurant, and the bottle that wound up directly in front of me was an Acacia Chardonnay.

I don’t recall a lot of things from that evening, but I do remember the “wow” that instantly left my lips after the first taste. I’d never experienced so many flavors in a mere sip of wine — vanilla, lemon, caramel, and pear, to name a few — and had never realized what that kind of complexity could add to the food I ate. So THIS is what all the fuss is about, I thought.

After that, I sought more wines that packed the same “wow” punch of that one Chardonnay. Alas, as a 21-year-old student on an intern’s budget, I relegated myself to well-known, safe brand names from mass producers and was consistently disappointed. To this day I often avoid the American Chardonnay and Merlot section of the wine aisle, if only because there are so many other wines and varietals to try, and I know to expect a lot of fluff for every decent bottle that graces those particular shelves.

And yet I’d be going against my own credo — eating my own words — if I refused to allow American Chardonnay or Merlot to pass my lips. It’s rarely the grape, but rather the way the grape is handled, and one should never judge a bottle by its label, or region, for that matter. There are plenty of small wineries in California, Washington, Oregon, Virginia, and upstate New York producing really nice Chardonnays and Merlots — you and I just have to be brave enough to try them.

Thus it was with a reserved sigh that I allowed myself to venture over to “that” section of the wine aisle this month. I picked up a few bottles. While the wines reviewed as a result of those tastings are by no means mind-blowing or life-changing, they’re good, and most importantly, they have character. That, in the end, is all the “wine snob” should really care about.