wine is just different ...

I know the tendency – we all want to just drink it, not think about it, quaff it down – I get it, I really do

but ...

sometimes it's a wintry night and a prime is roasting in the oven

and, sometimes it's a sunny afternoon on the porch in early April

and, another time you're celebrating your daughter's wedding day

and, once in your lifetime it's your fiftieth birthday

that's when ... wine is just different

the big California Cab you've been hiding in the back of the wine fridge is uncorked!

you crack open the first Vinho Verde of the year!

the Champagne you bought for her the year she was born pops!

you order a really expensive bottle of Barbaresco while dining in the town of Barbaresco!

see, wine is just different - but not ALL wine is just different ...

it honestly matters what wines you drink!

I get it, I really do – Menage a Trois tastes pretty good – Kendall Jackson Chard is consistent, you know what you are going to get from bottle to bottle – in other words a Big Mac in Paris tastes like a Big Mac in Minot – but ... a Marselan from Jean-Luc and Marie-Lise Dorthe from the Cote du Rhone in Southern France doesn't taste like anything else in the world – in fact, it doesn't taste the same in '08 as it did in '07 and that's the beauty of it. Those two wake up every morning and tend lovingly to the vines – deal with whatever nature throws at them, wouldn't dream of using pesticides since they have to live on the land they'd be spraying - and then at harvest time, well lets just use their own words:"We do three passes in the vineyard, for hand selection of the healthiest grapes. Marselan is de-stemmed entirely, an additional hand selection in the cellar to ferment only mature and healthy grapes. Fermentation in concrete to transmit the essence of the grape and soil" (this bottle of wine sells in my store for $10 by the way)

or ...

you can drink wines made from grapes that come from no specific place – grown on huge corporate farms all across a region, pesticides used to keep everything as “perfect” as possible – grapes being picked when the spectrometer says the sugar is optimal for the “insert winery name here” taste the consumers expect. They are then thrown into huge vats where commercial yeasts are added to guarantee “their taste” - oak chips are added to give that “aged in oak” taste some prefer without spending all the money on real oak barrels – a “winemaker” filters and fines the juice before bottling to make sure the wine is perfectly clear – you all get it – even focus groups are used to make sure the so called “wine” is what their consumers expect.

winesbywednesday's goal is to end the tyranny of grocery store wines in Great Falls! For too many years now the “big guys” have been choosing what wines we drink in our little town. Every restaurant has the same wines on their list – every grocery store is chock full of the same wines, every party I go to etc. - I swear, if I hear the words “I'd like a glass of La Crema” one more time ... well, I guess I just believe it's time for a change!

I work hard at finding family farmers, growing their own grapes and making really good, natural wines for my store and I have found LOTS OF THEM! I do not want to sell the big guys wines, period! The Kendall Jackson winery makes 24 million bottles of Chardonnay every year – 24 million! You can't even find out how many Folie a Duex bottles of their Menage A Trois lines of wine every year – assume it's similar numbers! – do you think they have a sense of place or time? Jean Luc and Marie make, on a good year around 20,000 bottles from 6 different grapes. I have their e-mail, their phone number, their address. You can write, call or visit them and tell them what you think – ask them what the weather was like in late September of '07, ask them to carve out a little time next August when you visit or simply congratulate them on this years Viognier!

so you see ... I believe some wine is just different!

Mark Tronson

Wine Cellar (get it?)

October 17^th, 2010