Great Wine Made Simple - Andrea Immer [36]
But you don’t have to be a professional to find these deals. You can inquire about these wines when shopping or dining out, especially at smaller stores and restaurants where the buyer is often on the premises. All you need to do is ask. Try something like “What are the best values you’ve uncovered lately?” or “Have you discovered any sleepers recently in the ten-dollar-a-bottle range?” A lot of people are afraid to do this for fear of looking cheap, but trust me, you will have one excited merchant or wine waiter on your hands if you give them a chance to show you something new. One of my favorite wines to sell when I was Cellarmaster at Windows on the World was an obscure twenty-dollar bottle of red Côtes du Rhône (Coat dew ROAN) from France. That wine rocked. It thrilled my guests every time, and I loved that.
The Flavor Map in Action
Now that you understand the basic model, let’s look at how you can put the Flavor Map to work for you in stores and restaurants.
Predicting the fruit flavors of Big Six varietal wines from unfamiliar wineries.
We might as well start with Chardonnay, because in the world of varietal wines, it rules. For wineries everywhere, it is truly the grape of choice, and with good reason. Its adaptability to a wide variety of growing conditions is virtually unequaled in the grape world. From the cool, frost-prone hills of the Chablis region in France to sun-baked South Australia, and practically everywhere in between, Chardonnay grows well and makes good (and sometimes great) wine.
On the buying side, Chardonnay is the wine market’s equivalent of a Blue Chip stock. It virtually sells itself, and buyers confidently ask for it by name, whereas in the 1970s and 1980s, people used to order “chablis” (the generic stuff) or “a glass of dry white wine.” In fact, some wineries joke that Chardonnay is really the accountants’ favorite grape, because, for cash flow, it is practically a sure bet. Without exaggerating, I can say that for the average restaurant diner free-falling in a black hole of self-doubt (translation: looking at the wine list), Chardonnay is manna from heaven. In short, Chardonnay is to wine what steak and vanilla ice cream are to food—a safe haven.
But there is a catch. The truth is, you can only really count on getting the comfort of this quirk-free, plain-vanilla Chardonnay style from big, well-known winery brands, which are deliberately crafted in a crowd-pleasing, middle-of-the-road style to maximize market share. That is helpful information to be sure, but then there are hundreds of other Chardonnays in the shop and on the restaurant wine list. How on earth can you get some idea of what those wines will be like?
I first put the Flavor Map to work to solve exactly this problem. When I started as a sommelier-in-training at New York’s Windows on the World restaurant, our thousand-selection wine list included Chardonnays from regions that spanned the globe. California bottlings and French white Burgundies (all made from Chardonnay) figured prominently, but also represented, in an amazing array of styles, were Argentina, Australia, Italy, New York, New Zealand, Oregon, Spain, South Africa, Texas, Virginia, and Washington State. With Chardonnay accounting for about 60 percent of our sales in the early 1990s, it became clear to me that my waiters and I needed to know how to quickly guide our guests toward a choice that would suit their style preferences and their menu selections. Otherwise, we’d never sell anything but the top ten or so brands, which is boring, both for the sommelier and the guests.
For waiters and guests, and for every Chardonnay lover, the Flavor Map is the perfect tool. Knowing what style to expect from a particular bottle is as simple as looking at the label and knowing a little geography. For example, take two Chardonnays, one from the Burgundy region of