{"id":436,"date":"2016-12-28T17:27:51","date_gmt":"2016-12-28T17:27:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=436"},"modified":"2017-01-01T21:53:24","modified_gmt":"2017-01-01T21:53:24","slug":"heres-to-the-wines-of-yesteryear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=436","title":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s to the Wines of Yesteryear"},"content":{"rendered":"

In our youth, most people we knew who did drink didn\u2019t drink wine.\u00a0 Oh, there would be an occasional bottle on a special occasion, but the alcoholic beverages of choice in those days were whisky and beer.\u00a0 Many of us were the first in our families who took wine seriously, both as an accompaniment to a meal and as a drink that would give unique pleasure on its own.<\/p>\n

So what were we drinking back then?\u00a0 By our current standards, it wasn\u2019t very good.\u00a0 For one thing, we were students and we didn\u2019t have much money.\u00a0 Even if a Mouton Rothschild could be had for around ten dollars, that was a lot for a starving scholar then.\u00a0 Also, there weren\u2019t as many wine stores such as we see today; there were liquor stores with a few bottles of red and a few bottles of white somewhere in the back.\u00a0 (It was a little better if you lived in an area with Italian, French or Spanish immigrants, but not a lot better.)<\/p>\n

\"liquor-store\"<\/em><\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of J. Crew<\/em><\/p>\n

If you were anything like us, the first wine you actually went into a store and bought for yourself was one of these: Lancers, Mateus, Mouton-Cadet or Gallo Hearty Burgundy.\u00a0 All these wines are still available for purchase.\u00a0 (One of the reasons for buying Lancers was that it came in a nice clay bottle that you could use as a vase, so it maybe doesn\u2019t count as a wine, but let\u2019s include it.)<\/p>\n

Lancers was and is a light bodied ros\u00e9 from Portugal.\u00a0 Amazingly, it is produced by the great port house, Fonseca.\u00a0 It was created for American tastes and it succeeded quite well in that regard.\u00a0 Described as \u201cmoderately sweet\u201d on the Fonseca web site, it tastes pretty sweet to us.<\/p>\n

Its competitor for American attention was Mateus, which some of us pronounced mat-OOS and those affecting a European elegance said ma-TAY-us.\u00a0 We don\u2019t think anyone knows to this day.\u00a0 It\u2019s also Portuguese, sweet, comes in a pretty, mandolin-shaped bottle and was impressive to bring on a date.\u00a0 It showed you were too cool for Lancers, which after all had an English name.<\/p>\n

But what could be better than a French name, and that of a French baron no less?\u00a0 Mouton Cadet was originally the name that the French branch of the renowned Rothschild family gave to wines it didn\u2019t think were worthy of being called \u201creal\u201d Mouton.\u00a0 By the time we were buying it, Mouton Cadet had morphed into a thin, acidic, mass produced wine. \u00a0But we liked it. \u00a0Just perfect for anyone who knew nothing about wine\u2026and that was us.\u00a0 By the way, these days it\u2019s not bad for the price.<\/p>\n

Finally, Gallo Hearty Burgundy was, as Gallo calls it today, their \u201coriginal red blend\u201d which of course had nothing to do with Pinot Noir from the east of France.\u00a0 But it tasted pretty good and showed your fraternity brothers that you were above (sneer<\/em>) mere beer.\u00a0 You probably can\u2019t do much better even today for six bucks.<\/p>\n

Other than a nice walk down memory lane, what\u2019s the relevance to today\u2019s wine tasters of even moderately good taste?\u00a0 These wines are where we got our start.\u00a0 Even if they weren\u2019t very serious wines, we took them seriously.\u00a0 If we\u2019re honest with ourselves, we liked them back then although we couldn\u2019t have said why.\u00a0 They brought a little glamor and sophistication into our lives and opened some horizons as to how people lived across the ocean or the continent.<\/p>\n

In short, these wines of yesteryear were the first steps that led us to wineries in Napa Valley, Tuscany, Bordeaux and numerous other outposts in Wine Country.\u00a0 Sure, we can look down our oh, so elegant noses at those bottles we wouldn\u2019t think of buying today.\u00a0 But consider: there\u2019s probably some wine you like today that won\u2019t be as appealing to you in a few years.\u00a0 Our tastes grow and change, and they had to start somewhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In our youth, most people we knew who did drink didn\u2019t drink wine.\u00a0 Oh, there would be an occasional bottle on a special occasion, but the alcoholic beverages of choice in those days were whisky and beer.\u00a0 Many of us were the first in our families who took wine seriously, both as an accompaniment to … Continue reading Here\u2019s to the Wines of Yesteryear<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=436"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":455,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions\/455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}