Stuart Pigott on Why _I_ hate most wine...

[stevebody]

I'll probably regret having written this but I think this kind of thing - while I agree with most of it - is why a lot of people don't like - too strong; maybe "lose patience with" - us wine-weenie types. Yeah, wine with a sense of place and less manipulation is better...to us. Not to every wine drinker who loves the grape. I had a whale of a lot of customers at Esquin who were rapturously engrossed in their wine journeys but simply preferred fruit-forward wines.

I was asked last week (and accepted) to write a regular wine column for the King County Journal newspaper chain, here in the Seattle 'burbs, and wrote the first piece on my faves, Amarone and Ripasso. The featured wine was Allegrini "Palazzo della Torre", a wine that shows a whopping character of its terroir and less fruit than most Valpos. I included a warning that it wasn't for everyone and explained that, to people who really know wine, this is what a bottle of good wine is like. I'd just rather keep trying to steer people who are inclined to get outside the box into wines that will nudge them along toward understanding Wine Beyond Fruitiness. While I see Stuart's points, I think that making them publicly seems to set up an Us vs. Them division that can only leave "them" feeling resentful and excluded.