or: My wine experiment

I like wine though I know very little about it except that it’s usually made from grapes.

Armed with this level of knowledge, it can be difficult for me to choose a bottle so I’ve been running an experiment for the past two or so years.

Prior to this, I mainly drank wines from Australia and New Zealand simply because that was what I was most familiar with. It broadened to wines from  Chile and Argentina since it turns out, they are fairly reasonably priced in Hong Kong after the wine tax was removed. As an aside, prices of wine didn’t drop as significantly as we all expected otherwise perhaps my tastes would have broadened further.

I then tried various Italian wines as the area I moved to in HK had a local Italian store and I was going there to buy my cheese so it removed having to go to another store.

Yes, I chose some wines based on being lazy. 

No regrets.

Every now and again, I’d mix it up with a South African wine or two as well.

Then I started traveling a bit more in Europe and had a few more French wines than I’d had previously.

Going to Mauritius on a regular basis added to this.

The trouble is, I still didn’t know which were the better ones to buy in my price range. Obviously I have my favourites but I like to try something a bit different and broaden my experiences.

And that’s when I hit on my experiment.

It began in HK and I decided I would only buy French wines with a Chateau on the front. 

Every time I did this, the wine was great. It didn’t matter if it was red or white, they were all good.

When I branched out and tried French wines with no Chateau, I was invariably disappointed.

This experiment has been very useful as I am yet to have an unenjoyable Chateau wine.

From France.

This week I was shopping and couldn’t find any French Chateau wines at the store as I was in for the price I was prepared to pay. This meant I’d either have to spend more or buy a non-Chateau French wine.

As we looked down the aisles, there was a South African Chateau wine.

I figured that I may as well try this and see if the experiment holds true across countries.

Now, I’ve been to various wine areas in South Africa a couple of times now and like any time I’ve gone to vineyards, there are wines I enjoy and wines I don’t.

I can also say that I have never seen what I would describe as a Chateau in South Africa. 

That should have been a sign.

 

Thanks to UB40 for the title to this post. 

 

Note – the photo is a French Chateau wine not the South African one