The Horror of House Wine Vinegar
Adeline loves food, lots of it and often, both at home and out. Usually, that goes well, but sometimes it doesn’t. In the series Sunday Roast, she shares her observations. This time: the horror of vinegar-like house wine.
A first sip can go one of two ways. Either you can barely stop yourself from sighing with sheer pleasure because the wine tastes so damn good that you want to end up in an intimate embrace with the person serving it, wave them over, take a good photo of the label, and solemnly promise yourself that you’ll drink this wine forever and ever. Or you want to spit the sip straight back into the glass, because how disgusting. I’m a person of extremes, yes.
The disappointment
My evening rises or falls with the wine. This sounds exaggerated, but it isn’t. Since I no longer end up on the bar every weekend, my social life consists of dinner parties. So you shouldn’t confuse such a dinner with a prelude before going completely off the rails; no, this dinner is the evening, the grand finale, and it all depends on grapes and pressing. If you start with sour wine, that’s a disappointment in itself. But above all: so unnecessary.
Warning: I pour plonk
Actually, it’s my own fault that I sometimes drink bad wine, because there are signals—very clear signals—that a hospitality entrepreneur with terrible wine gives off. Take the glass: if you get one of those tiny little crappy glasses, it’s a harbinger of awful wine. I’ll just call it what it is. Someone serving absolutely brilliant wine is not going to pour that divine emulsion into a shabby glass. Someone serving wine in a glass that’s both slightly too thin and too thick is basically saying: warning, I pour plonk. Don’t offer a taste, but fill the glass right to the brim immediately, because then you can’t turn back. Another filthy sign.
A middle finger in a glass
But why? Why would you serve that rundown rubbish when experts write book after book about supermarket wines that are genuinely perfectly drinkable? Why pour the equivalent of stomach acid when you have perfectly decent little gluggable wines? Basically, you’re putting a middle finger on the table in a glass. And only because you make such a nice amount of cash on a bottle, or because it’s automatic upselling anyway—because there’s no way anyone in their right mind would order that vinegar-like house wine again—so bring me the wine list.
Fuck you from a bottle
I dare say that bad wine is really just bad hospitality. Sure, you love Chenin, I love Chardonnay (the kind wine experts spit into), and Truus loves a smooth Sauvignon, but there is a middle ground, and that is not the fuck you from a bottle. Let’s not insult each other and from now on simply serve and drink good wine.
Amen.
Also read:
- Confession: I buy my house based on thuisbezorgd.nl
- When your waiter turns out to be a bukker
- Shaving cheese is a precarious matter
