Author: lgsjr

Carpentras

There is a town 13 km south of Vacqueyras and 22 km east of Châteauneuf-du-Pape in the south of France, which one might think it would be the center of the local wine trade.  In fact there are some nearby wineries, but they’re only part of the generic Mont Ventoux appellation.  The town is Carpentras and it is famous, but not for wine.  It is the place to go for another French specialty: black truffles.

These delicacies are prized by chefs and home cooks for their exquisite aroma of…what? Some say onions, others cabbage or forest floor.  They are earthy, mushroomy, wild and ultimately indescribable.  Some people like them in everything from salads to sauces; others don’t like them at all.  The people of Carpentras like them because they sell a lot of them, at rather high prices.

The Carpentras truffle market.  Photo courtesy of See Provence.

If you are in Provence on a Friday between late November and early March, you can visit the truffle market and then dine at any of the nearby restaurants all of whom, so it seems, specialize in three course truffle menus.

There are other reasons to visit the town and its surrounding area the rest of the year.  As noted, Carpentras is at the foot of Mont Ventoux (Mount Windy, in English, a name very well earned).  If you ever drive to the top of Mont Ventoux, you will encounter a lot of goats on the road on your way up and on the top of the mountain you’ll see the regional weather station.  One of the best known wines from this appellation is La Vielle Ferme, which has been internationally popular for over 40 years.  From what we’ve tasted, there’s been a great improvement in recent years and Mont Ventoux wines are a good value for the money.  Wine tasting here is very special, with this mammoth mountain hovering over you.

There are quite a few in-town attractions in Carpentras, but they are similar to many other spots in French Wine Country.  There’s a Roman arch, a former hospital (Hôtel Dieu) turned library that has architectural interest.  A cathedral.  Boutiques.  Interestingly, Carpentras was once a center of Jewish population and still hosts France’s oldest synagogue, in use since 1367.

Aside from the truffles, there are year-round markets featuring fruits and flowers.  The town is also known for a hard candy called berlingots, striped hard confections that were once thought to have medicinal value.  Anyplace that’s known for truffles, candy and wine has to be worth a visit!

A typical Carpentras Café.  Photo courtesy of Booking.com.

What sets Carpentras apart, in our opinion, is the lifestyle.  It is what you would expect a Provençal market town to be.  The town seems dedicated to la belle vie, with seemingly innumerable cafes and restaurants.  In good weather, which is most of the year, the terrasses are always full with people having a coffee, a glass of (local) wine, a lunch, a snack, an aperitif, a dinner, a digestif.  In other words, whatever time of year that you are there, you’re welcome to take a seat and feel that you’ve arrived in the heart of Provence.  Because you have.

Return or Not

One of the pleasures of wine tasting trips is discovering new wineries and the wines they make.  At the same time, if there is a winery in the area that you are visiting that you know you love, it’s a pleasure to return and try their wines again.  If you’re travelling to a sector of Wine Country where you’ve never been before, this distinction is lost; every winery is new to you.  But if you’re already familiar with an area, say Napa Valley or Burgundy, you do have to make some decisions.

If you had an infinite amount of time, you wouldn’t have to choose.  But most of us are visiting Wine Country for a limited period for each trip.  So many wineries, so little time!

Photo courtesy of eto.

Here are a few tips for choosing whether to return to favorite wineries or not.

  • Set a theme for your wine tasting trip. If you want to seek out wineries you don’t know, then make reservations accordingly.  The same applies if you just want to go to places where you know you have enjoyed their wines in the past.  Another twist might be to focus on specific grapes, such as Chardonnays or Zinfandels.  If you do, you may choose to return to one or more wineries where you know their Cabernet Sauvignons, but not their Chards or Zins, in order to learn how they do with other grapes.
  • Consider the time commitment. In many locales, the days of bellying up to the bar are over.  If you want to sample a winery’s latest releases (even more so, their reserve and library wines) you will do so at a seated tasting.  These are often accompanied by a tour.  These take more time, usually an hour and a half.  Thus, the number of wineries – new finds and old friends – is limited.
  • New wineries, or new to you? There aren’t many new wineries opening in Bordeaux, but there are plenty in other regions.  For example, we have been tasting the wines of Long Island’s North Fork for more than 30 years.  These days, whenever we take a tasting trip there, we find numerous recently established wineries or old ones that have changed hands. And there are some wineries that have been there for quite a while, but we never got to them.  It’s easy to specialize in new experiences on Long Island.
  • Go back, you might fall in love again. That was the name of one of Power Tasting’s earliest articles, and the advice is worth reinforcing.  Maybe there was a winery where once you didn’t enjoy their wines.  It might prove worthwhile to give them another shot.  Maybe that last time the winery just had a bad year, or your server didn’t know what he was doing, or you were simply in the wrong frame of mind.  Particularly if the winery has a good reputation, it might be worth your while to give them a second chance.

 

 

“I Can’t Taste That”

The tasting notes for one of our favorite Pinot Noirs describe what’s in the bottle as:

“Subtle and nuanced, this wine unfolds with layers of perfumed red berries and sweet baking spice. Delicate hints of cinnamon, clove, and cedar, dance from the glass, a nod to the well-integrated oak. The flavors unfurl with juicy red cherry and pomegranate, alongside hints of orange pekoe tea, hibiscus flower, and pink peppercorn.”

Photo courtesy of the Wine & Spirit Education Trust.

We’ve drunk that wine many times, and to be honest, never once gave a thought to baking spice, pomegranate or pink peppercorns.  In fact, we don’t believe we’ve ever thought of pink peppercorn after tasting any wine.

So we suggest that when you’re out winetasting and the server mentions road tar and alfalfa, take it with a bit of…well, salt would be bad idea, but don’t worry if you can’t recognize anything you were told.  Which is not to say that you shouldn’t consider the aromas and tastes that come from your glass.

  • Remember, it’s your mouth. You can’t be wrong.  Actually, you can if you’re tasting some of the flavors only found in red wines when you’re sipping a white, or vice-versa.  So if you think you’re tasting, say, dark fruits or tobacco in a Sauvignon Blanc, you either have a cold or you’re really off base.  But if you close your eyes and let smell and taste memories take over, you’ll be correct, on your own terms.
  • Listen to others. Of course, other people around you have their own memories.  If you’re tasting cherries and someone else says raspberries, they’re both red fruit, so maybe you’ll get a hint of raspberries, too.  But what if he says he can detect green peppers.  That’s often a sign of underripe grapes and you may not have picked up on that taste, but immediately recognize it when it’s pointed out to you.
  • In addition, what you’re tasting is influenced by many factors besides the wine. You will taste different things when you’re pairing a wine with a meal than you do in a tasting room.  Your mood will affect your tasting abilities.  So will your health.  Fatigue, time of day, and the perfume some thoughtless visitor is wearing at the next table all have an effect.
  • Not everyone can taste everything. It’s just a biological fact that some people have taste receptors for certain chemicals in specific wines and others don’t.  It is often written that Syrah has a definite taste of white pepper.  That may be so, but not for us.  It seems that a chemical called rotundone is found in white pepper and in low concentrations in Syrah grapes.  If you don’t have the capability to taste just a bit of rotundone, you won’t find it in your wine glass.
  • Don’t fake it. If the “official” description says a wine tastes of honeysuckle and you can’t find that, but do taste pineapple, stick by your guns.  Maybe honeysuckle was dominant at the time the description was written but it has faded now, with pineapple coming out as the wine aged.  There’s no sense convincing yourself that you taste something you don’t, just to get along by going along.

Odette Estate Winery

It’s not usually important to know who the owners of a winery are before tasting there.  Odette is unusual in that regard, in that it is owned by Gavin Newsom (yes, that Gavin Newsom), Gordon Getty (yes, those Gettys) and John Conover, who actually manages the winery.  If the names Newsom and Getty sound familiar to wine lovers, that’s because they also founded the Plumpjack and Cade wineries, up on Napa’s Howell Mountain.

All this is relevant, because if you like Plumpjack and Cade, you’ll most likely enjoy the wines from Odette as well.  We can say this because we were offered a comparison tasting of Cabernet Sauvignons from the three vineyards, and Odette certainly held its own.

Photo courtesy of The Napa Wine Project.

Note that none of the owners are named Odette, nor to our knowledge are their wives.  The name of the winery is sort of an inside joke.  Plumpjack was a nickname in some of Shakespeare’s plays for John Falstaff, the bibulous, rotund rake who nearly leads Henry V to ruin.  His girlfriend was named Odette.  On top of that, Odette is the romantic heroine in the ballet Swan Lake.  And Odette Kahn was one of the judges in the famous Judgement of Paris wine tasting that established California’s winemaking prowess.  This triple meaning is reinforced by  modernistic sculptures in their vineyards, which is reproduced on their labels.

The Odette winery.  Photo courtesy of 7×7.

For the visitor to Odette, there is no grand palace on the premises, just a rather simple white structure with an attractive steeple on top.  The interior won’t blow anyone away, either.  The greatest attraction is the sight of the winery in the midst of a seemingly endless vineyard, nestled below the hills in the Stags Leap sector.  It harkens back to another era in Napa Valley, where the lure was the wine and the scenery, not the massiveness of the architecture.  Visitors are meant to taste wines on a covered patio in view of the vines.

The wines on offer are primarily Napa Valley’s most common varietals: Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.  There’s also a less common Petite Sirah, which they market under the Adaptation label.  These are all quite powerful wines, very much an expression of what Napa Valley is famous for.  As mentioned, we were able to compare all three of their labels.  In advance, we expected to prefer the wine made from mountain fruit, but Odette and Plumpjack, from the valley floor, proved to be our favorites.

Jewelry for sale at Odette.

We don’t often mention shopping in Power Tasting’s reviews, since most of what we find are either overpriced fashion items or the usual collection of refrigerator magnets and coasters, also overpriced.  But Odette has a rather interesting display of handmade jewelry that is a notable exception to the rule and is worth mentioning.  We’re sure that Falstaff’s girlfriend would be pleased to wear some of the pieces for sale.

We’re not certain that the wines from all three properties are offered all the time.  Assuming that they are, a visit to Odette provides an interesting way to enjoy the wines of the Plumpjack group at one sitting.

Carcassonne

The Middle Ages always had an attraction for us when we were kids.  Knights, damsels in distress, jousts and big feasts in castles halls just seemed so wondrous.  Robin Hood, El Cid, and Joan of Arc were our heroes and the Sherriff of Nottingham was the evil villain.  Later in life, Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt (both the Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branaugh versions) thrilled us yet again.  If you were anything like us, you ought to take a trip to Carcassonne when you’re wine tasting in southwest France.

Carcassonne viewed from afar.  Photo courtesy of European Waterways.

As you drive up to the town, you’ll see this magnificent walled city on a hilltop.  There is a modern-day town surrounding the castle, but it’s of no particular interest.  It’s the imagery of battles and courtly love that will rush back into your mind as soon as you see Carcassonne.  And it’s real.

Well, almost real.  There was a walled town there in the Middle Ages and it did figure in some significant battles, particularly in the Albigensian Crusade, that pitted the Papacy versus the Cathars.  (The Pope won.)  But by the early 1800’s, the town and its castle had fallen into disrepair and was going to be torn down.

Then along came Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.  He was a French architect, a visionary and someone who must have had the same childhood fantasies we did.  He set about restoring great medieval buildings, not least of which was the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.  When he turned his attention to Carcassonne, he took what was still a military stronghold and turned it into a Middle Ages wonderland.

The lovingly restored Basilique de St-Nazaire.  Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

For today’s visitor, there’s no reason to concern yourself that Viollet-le-Duc wasn’t exactly archeologically correct in restoring Carcassonne.  If what we see today isn’t exactly as it was, it is what it should have been.  Soaring walls, towers with arrow slits for the archers, tessellated ramparts, inns (well, they’re really restaurants) where you can quaff your ale (or enjoy a glass of wine).  They’re all there in Carcassonne.

Entry to the old town is free, but parking isn’t.  And if you get there at any reasonable hour, you’ll find the nearest empty lots are quite a walk away.  Of course, that gives you the chance to approach the great walls and turrets slowly and take them in at leisure.  Once inside, you’ll find a whole town’s worth of genuine medieval buildings, buffed up and gleaming.  Unfortunately, you’ll also find the usual run of shops selling knickknacks, tee shirts and junk.  But you’ll also encounter bookstores with a considerable collection of material on the Middle Ages and the events that have occurred around Carcassonne.  Many are in French, but enough are translated to keep you interested.

You can walk the walls of Carcassonne.

We recommend that you pay the fee to tour the walls around the city.  It’s not too hard to imagine hordes of English troops approaching from afar and the sturdy Carcassonais defending their fortifications.  By the way, those enemy troops might also have been French, because Carcassonne was part of Spain in medieval times.  You should also see the Basilique de St- Nazaire, begun in the 11th Century.  It’s fine gothic architecture, suitably embellished by Viollet-le-Duc.

If you ever dreamed over Prince Valiant on a Sunday morning, you’ll love Carcassonne.

 

 

Enoteca Nibbi

Enotecas are a distinctly Italian combination of wine bar, wine store and snack bar.  Like wine bars around the world, they’re places to relax, sip some wine, people watch and engage in a little conversation (much easier to talk with others, of course, if you speak Italian).

Some Italian enotecas are raffish and frequented primarily by locals.  Others are in areas where they are sure to have tourists dropping by as well.  Nibbi belongs in the latter category.  It’s located just off the famed Via Veneto, the hillside roadway in Rome that has long been a byword for moneyed elegance.  The area near Nibbi contains posh hotels, excellent restaurants and the American Embassy.  So while the hoi polloi might find their way to Nibbi, you’re more likely to find a more refined crowd.

It’s not that you need to be rich to go there.  There are about 20 wines to choose from, including reds and whites from around Italy, plus rosés and bubblies.  Beer and aperitifs are also served.  The pours are generous and the prices are amazingly inexpensive.  Glasses of most of their wines run between six and nine euros.  We’ve seen prices two to three times that cost back home.

The wines available by the glass are also available by the bottle, to be consumed on-site or taken home.  The wines by the glass may not always be the greatest exemplars of their vintages, but they’re not plonk either.  You can have a great tour of Italian vineyards without leaving your seat.

The food menu runs to potato chips, olives, salads, sandwiches and platters of slices salumi and cheeses.  All seemed very appetizing as they were served to other parties.  We always stopped at Nibbi for a pre-prandial glass or two before proceeding to the local restaurants, so we never tried their food.

The interior of the enoteca is quite nicely appointed, more like the American equivalent of a cocktail lounge than a bar.

But the place to sit is outside, especially in nice weather, which in Rome seems to have at least ten months a year.  There’s always a crowd gathering in front of nearly all enotecas, but Nibbi also offers a glassed “shed” where there always seems something going on.  We’ve seen large parties, with bottles and platters seeming to arrive every ten minutes.  There was a fellow on his PC writing what must have been the Great Italian Novel, made up of equal parts of inspiration, wine and cigarettes.  And there was a woman enjoying a glass of wine by herself without getting hassled (try that in New York!).

The complete name of this enoteca is Bar Enoteca Nibbi dal 1936, meaning that actual fascists and their followers must have drunk there back in the early days.  As with almost everywhere in contemporary Europe, it’s hard – at least for visitors – to conceptualize the destruction and despair of war in these lovely sites.  So, we recommend, don’t do more than give momentary thought to the past, drink up and live for today and tomorrow.  Nibbi certainly provides a pleasant venue for such enjoyment.

Wine Tasting on Vacation

With the Covid-19 pandemic fading away (but not gone) many of us are taking vacations again.  There are some trips for the explicit purpose of wine tasting, in which days are spent visiting wineries, getting to know the different varietals produced and enjoying being around the vineyards.  But sometimes vacationing is just to see friends and family and to take in the sights, in cities rather than in the country.

If your travel plans are leading you to Antarctica or the Sahara, there’s not much local wine to enjoy.  But almost anywhere else in the world, in North America or overseas, there is wine made nearby wherever you go.  You may not have the time to go to wineries, as we did not during our brief stay in Dubrovnik, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn a lot about the wines they make wherever you are going.

Here are some tips to add a wine tasting adventure to any vacation.

  • Do a little planning before you go. A simple Google search on “Best wine bars in…” will give you a head start.  So will a search on “Favorite wines in…”  In the latter case, you should refer to the region, not the specific destination to which you are headed.  “Favorite wines” in France, for example, won’t help.  But if you’re headed to Lyon, for example, a quick look at a map will tell you that Beaujolais and the Northern Rhône are close enough that you’ll know what to look for on wine lists.

A place to learn about Croatian wine.  The Latin at the bottom of the sign means “Not enough wine, not enough of anything”

  • Visit an enoteca. Which is just a wine shop that offers a degustation, which is a fancy word for a tasting.  We found one in Dubrovnik, where the owner was pleased to introduce interested visitors to the history, geography and, of course, the taste of Croatian wines.  Over the years, we’ve done the same thing in Paris, Rome, Sydney, San Francisco and other places.  There’s bound to be a place to try wines anywhere you might go.
  • Take a food tour. This is also something we’ve learned to love in our travels.  A guide – hopefully, a knowledgeable guide – takes you around to places where they serve local food specialties and often the wines that pair well with them.  We were once on such a tour and all that was offered was one small glass.  On a recent food tour in Rome, wine was served in carafes on the table, white and red, for everyone to help themselves.  When we ordered another, our guide said that only the first glass was included.  We assured her that we had bought ourselves some wine many times before and had no problem to do so again that day.
  • Take advantage of where you are. We don’t suggest wine for breakfast, but a glass (maybe two) at lunch, aperitif, dinner and even for a nightcap isn’t a bad idea.  Hey, you’re on vacation, so you’ll probably want to indulge a bit anyway.  We’re just suggesting that focus on learning about the local wines.  Never order the same wine twice, so that you get as broad an exposure to local wines as possible in a short time.  If there are two of you, share tastes and double your learning.  Of course, be careful about how much you drink if you’re going to get behind the wheel of a car.

Dubrovnik

Due east of Rome and across the Adriatic Sea you will find the small, historic city of Dubrovnik.  In its long-past commercial heyday, it was a colony of the Venetian empire.  There are still many Italian influences in its architecture and cuisine, while the language is most definitely of Slavic origin.  It was a popular tourist destination in the 19th and early 20th centuries, welcoming travelers such as Lord Byron and Agatha Christie.  War and ethnic rivalry kept visitors away until after the Second World War, and even then a trip to Tito’s Yugoslavia wasn’t everyone’s idea of a good time.  With the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the early 1990’s, Dubrovnik suffered terribly from Serbian attacks.  It was only with peace that the “Pearl of the Adriatic” was (re)discovered.

The main square of Dubrovnik

Most visitors are attracted to Dubrovnik’s Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage site.  This was where the Venetians reigned and it still has vestiges of Venice, without the canals.  There are a few squares, some grand and some petite.  Most of the Old Town is in a narrow valley between a small hill on one side and a really steep one on the other.  The streets are narrow and packed with tourists following guides with their ubiquitous flags and umbrellas held high.  We understand that the streets are impassible in the summer.  Even in cooler weather, there are many visitors.

Dubrovnik’s harbor, with a portion of the walls.

The most renowned monuments in Dubrovnik is the first that you see when you approach the Old Town, the medieval walls around it.  These are as much as 25 meters (around 82 feet) high and more than a mile around the town.  Visitors can tour the walls but be prepared to climb 25 meters of stairs to get there.  Still, there are many pleasant sights and vistas all around the town.

Of course, where there are walls there must be gates, and there are two into the Old Town.  You get to cross an actual drawbridge and consider how difficult it must have been for attackers to breach the city before artillery and airpower.  Once inside, there are more than enough shops and restaurants to keep visitors occupied for days, though there is a limit to how much octopus, squid and Plavac Mali wine anyone can take.  Many of the restaurants are on narrow streets on the hillsides.  It can feel cozy or claustrophobic, depending on your outlook.  We particularly enjoyed the ones that had a view of the harbor.

A view of the coast of Dubrovnik.

There is another aspect of Dubrovnik that should not be overlooked.  It is a coastal city with excellent beaches and paved promenades that run along the cliffsides.  Many Europeans consider it more of a resort town; they have enough history where they come from.

The promenades are not made for dedicated hikers.  They are well paved and lit at night.  But they are for those who enjoy seeing natural beauty.  It is possible to go down rather vertical stairways to sit on the rocks on the sea.  We preferred to stop at wine bars along the way and look at the sea from above.

Continue reading Dubrovnik

About Croatian Wines

We were only in Croatia for a few days, as part of a longer trip.  We did not have the time nor the means of transportation to visit wineries, which we would certainly have done if the purpose of our visit was wine tasting.  As it was, we were simply tourists in Dubrovnik, but we did want to take advantage of being there to learn as much as we could about Croatian wines.

Normally, we wouldn’t write about wine tasting in a region without actually seeing the vineyards and speaking with the people who make the wine.  But as there is hardly any wine exported from Croatia, we thought it would be a good idea to share what we learned with Power Tasting readers.

Croatian wine regions.  Map courtesy of Vineyards.com.

A few notable facts:

  • Wine has been produced in Croatia for thousands of years, going back to the time when the eastern Adriatic coast was settled by ancient Greek settlers. The mountainous geography and the Mediterranean climate has long made Croatia an ideal place to grow grapes.
  • Wine is made all over the country, from the Dalmatian coast in the south, Istria in the west, to the eastern highlands and the region along the Danube.
  • The Croatians make wine from grapes we’ve never heard of. And they taste unlike any wines we’ve ever sipped.

The dominant red wine grape is Plavac Mali, pronounced “Plavass Molly”.  It produces a dark, intense wine, which we would categorize with Merlot.  It can be a little rough around the edges, but that may have more to do with the limited production facilities in Croatia.  There are no large producers, just small vineyards making wine for their neighbors and fellow countrymen.  So what we call “rough” they might term “honest”.  And to be fair, we did taste a number of Plavac Mali that went down smoothly.

We tasted two white wines from a variety of producers.  They were called almost the same thing, but what a difference a single letter can make.  Malvazia, with a z, (also sometimes spelled Malvazija) comes from Istria, the Croatian province not very far from the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of Italy, which is best known for Soave.  But the Istrian wine is much fruitier, with hints of honey and honeysuckle.  From what we saw of restaurants and wine bars in Dubrovnik, it’s the most popular white wine there.

In the south, quite near to Dubrovnik, they grow Malvasia, with an s.  This is the same grape used to make Malmsey Madeira, a luscious dessert wine.  But the Croatian version is quite different.  These white wines are austere (in the same vein as Chablis), acidic and distinctively perfumed.  They go well with shellfish, much like a Sancerre, but are not especially good wines for sipping on a pleasant sunny afternoon along the beachfront.

 

Sadly, with rare exception, you won’t find Croatian wines in the United States, which is a shame.  There are a few stores in New York that carry a few bottles, but that’s about it.  The production at individual vineyards is too small to attract many American importers and the wines are too unknown to make a large place on wine store shelves.  These are wines worth getting to know and we recommend that travelers to Croatia make time for them.

 

How to Go Wine Tasting with Limited Time

When we are on a wine tasting trip, we are pretty serious about it.  We chose in advance the wineries we want to visit, make appointments, pay attention to what we’re tasting and take notes.  But then there are times when we are travelling just for the sake of travel.  Sometimes we find ourselves in previously unknown parts, foreign or domestic, where we know that wine is produced.  We want to try the local wines but we don’t have time to go to vineyards, talk with the servers and generally educate ourselves.

So we do the best we can with the time we have.  Here are some tips on getting a rapid introduction to what the locals are drinking.  In our most recent travels we were in Italy, so we’ll use Italian examples.

  • Take a chance. We have often been delightedly surprised in Italy to find very reasonably priced wine lists, much more so than back home, and even less expensive bottles in stores.  So if most of the wines available in restaurants are priced in the range of 20 euros or so, why not let Lady Luck be our sommelier?  A Falanghina may sound like the name of a luxury sports car, but it’s actually a white grape mostly found in the Campania.  We first found it by this go-ahead-and-try-it method; we loved it and have been looking for it ever since.
  • Ask the waiter. If we are sitting down to a good meal, we’ll naturally ask for the wine list.  Sometimes we are told that the “list” is either red or white, so we know we are not about to learn anything.  In other cases, though, we are presented with a list of labels that provide a lot of data but no information.  We’re not familiar with the region, the grapes or the wineries.  So we ask the waiter, “What Pugliese white goes with the meal we are ordering”?  An honest waiter will think about it and recommend something that he, at least, thinks is representative of what the region has to offer.  (A dishonest waiter will just point you to the most expensive wine.  Ignore him.)
  • Find a wine shop. Native English speakers have a great advantage in traveling around the world.  Especially where tourists are plentiful many people, including shopkeepers, speak English.  So when we enter a wine shop, we can generally communicate fairly well. We ask for whatever is made locally and often come up with a wine that is either quite good for the price or simply quite good, period.  Of course, we always travel with a cork screw for just such occasions.  We take the bottle to our hotel room and have our own tasting.