The World of Wine – April 2010

The World of Wine

By Ceci Rodriguez

The Price Of A Wine

 

How much should you have to pay for a specific wine? It depends on your disposable income and, especially, on what gives you pleasure. It is important to remember that good quality wines exist at all levels. It is not a monopoly of expensive wines; but simple wines have modest ambitions, and should be judged accordingly, by relatively modest standards.

For anything beyond the most basic beverage, wine is made in a very wide range of different styles, with different purposes in mind, and often with considerable effort involved in achieving those aims.

To give a better explanation, I will divide the wines into two categories: Fine wine and Everyday wine. The word “fine” has the capacity to transform the image of a wine from being a humble agricultural product to an artistic endeavor. Additionally, “fine” aims to reflect one or more of the following:

-The climate and soil of the landscape where it is grown.

-The grape- -or grapes—from which it is made.

-The year in which it was made.

In order to achieve any of these qualities, it is essential that the wine is made with care and from the highest-quality grapes.

The term “everyday wine” is used for a wine that is of basic quality, simple but attractive. The quality of these wines has improved dramatically in the last twenty years. Better winemaking methods have made the quality of basic wine better than ever before, and because of the spread of winemaking all over the world it is now more plentiful, and therefore cheaper than ever before.

There are two different types of every day wine. One is “global everyday wine,” which is usually made from well-known grape varieties, such as Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, and tastes very similar wherever it is made. The other is “country-specific every day wine” – most of it made in Europe—that reflects the winemaking culture of the region in which it was produced.