Just a thank you..

[Innkeeper]

The posting just above yours is not about rain water, and is positive not negative. Just four days ago there was a postive posting under Blush/Pink Wines titled "A Decent White Zin."

Having said that, there is a nonuniversal sentiment among many board members that chardonnay and oak don't go well together. This doesn't reflect the opinion of the general public since millions of bottles of oaky chard are sold every year. My personal beef is twofold. First we don't drink much white wine period. When we do we want it to taste like wine not like a tree. Since chardonnay is a rather simple wine to begin with, the oak frequently completely overpowers it. Secondly we live on the coast of Maine, and eat a lot of seafood. Most of this is shellfish and lighter finfish such as haddock. Oak and this kind of seafood is like oil and water, they simply don't go together. Oily fish such as bluefish, mackerel, and fresh tuna can handle some oak, but we usually drink red wine with those, such as Beaujolais.

White zinfandel is another story. Sutter Home didn't invent it, but they made zillions on it. Their marketing ploy was to wean people off of soda pop and bottled wine coolers. To do this they had to make an almost noxiously sweet concoction. It was very successful, and it served to introduce millions of new people to wine. Lots of other producers jumped on this train because of Sutter Home's success, and because there was a lot of zin laying around. Cabernet sauvigon had just replaced Big Red Zin as the red wine of choice among Americans.

Most board members would agree that there is a place for rose' wine in the wine world. There are hundreds of delightful roses' produced here and abroad, including some versions of white zin, such as the one Barnsey posted last week. For summertime quaffing and hot dogs and hamburgers these wines are hard to beat. We like a nice grenache rose' with simple preparations of salmon.