Choosing the perfect white wine is fairly simple if you are merely choosing a wine that suits your taste. How to go about choosing the one that is perfect for you depends on your level of wine knowledge and what your needs are in a white wine. Of course, if the bottle you seek is to be the one that is perfect for a specific activity or special event, your search will require considerably more effort supported by a little research.
If, for instance, you are a social drinker you will more than likely want to choose a palate friendly white wine that is pleasant on its own without the need of cheese, fruit, or other food accompaniment for its enjoyment. On the other hand, if you are a person who mostly drinks wine with dinner you will want a versatile white wine that can accompany many different types of foods.
There are an unbelievable amount of white wine grape varietals in existence. Most people, even if they don’t drink, are aware of the basic white wines that are generally found on restaurant menus such as chardonnay, pinot gris/grigio, sauvignon blanc, riesling, and vinho verde, while avid wine enthusiasts are familiar with the less widely known whites such as viongier, verdelho, torrentes, and albarino.
White wines can be offered in sweet or dry styles, oaked or unoaked and either sparkling or still. The first step in choosing the perfect white wine is to learn just what wines there are in existence for you to choose from. The internet offers a vast number of resources for reading about white wine varietals. Once you have spent some time learning about the different kinds of white wines and their flavor profiles it is time to start tasting.
Wine tasting is the best way to develop one’s palate and learn about individual wines. There are many venues from wine specialty stores and supermarkets to restaurants and wine bars were you can taste wine on a regular basis either for free or at a very small cost. Anyone fortunate enough to live near wine country can also visit the tasting rooms at their local wineries.
Some wine venues offer flights of (usually) three wines that are in some way similar to each other that you can sample side by side. Sampling wines in a lateral tasting such as the same grape varietal produced in three (or more) different regions is a good way to compare wines as the same grape grown in different locales at different altitudes in different soils produces different wines.
Choosing the perfect white wine will come down to your own personal taste preferences. The information from the label on a particular bottle of wine can sometimes be misleading particularly when describing wine as sweet or dry as these are relative terms that mean something different to different people. That information can also be of little help if one of the flavor notes is a fruit you have never tasted or even heard of.
No matter how highly recommended a wine is or how many points a bottle has been awarded, the best way to choose the perfect white wine for you is simply to let your taste buds decide. Just because Robert Parker or the staff at Wine Enthusiast found something to be liquid ecstasy in a glass, it doesn’t mean you will automatically agree. Read about varietals, make a list of the ones that look interesting to you and then set out to try as many different versions of each as you can. Trying wine with and without food will yield different results so it is a good idea to try with a least a bit of cheese whenever you can.
