So let me suggest a departure: How about boxed wines, especially good ones, like the From the Tank series or the Wineberry Box? Chiantis and other sangiovese-based wines can also be delicious. If you are grilling steaks, haul out the reds, unpretentious cabernet sauvignons or Bordeaux, syrahs or Crozes-Hermitage. Cold fried chicken will be great with a dry chenin blanc or sparkling wine. So will a Sancerre or other sauvignon blanc. A good village Chablis will exalt any sort of seafood preparation. It’s easy to raise the ante without sacrificing the replaceability principle. Which reminds me: Unless you are bringing screw-cap bottles, whatever you do, don’t forget a corkscrew. Are you bringing a cooler for the food? Stick a few bottles in, too. You won’t want to serve these wines warm. Burgers and hot dogs? Rosés would still work, though I may prefer a riesling with the franks and an easygoing red with the burgers: maybe a Loire gamay or Beaujolais or, really, any of hundreds of other choices. What are you eating? Sandwiches? Any number of decent rosés would be just fine. In other words, wines that can easily be replaced. Instead, you want a bottle that will not compel you to throttle the oaf who accidentally kicks it over or invite deep self-loathing when you level a few glasses with an errant Frisbee toss. Save them for where they have the best opportunity to shine. You want to consume them under the best possible circumstances so you can focus on the wine and its meaning rather than worrying whether its complexities can be appreciated in plastic.īottles that may require decanters, or special tools to extract fragile corks, are likewise not recommended. Bottles that are precious, because they are old, expensive, rare or simply of sentimental value, ought to be given the respect they deserve. Replaceability is another matter entirely. If you are bringing the bottle, you have nothing to fear. Why the qualifier? You sometimes have no control over the wine, as on a long airplane flight, and even then I may prefer a mass-market beer or water to the sort of faintly sweet red or artificially oaky white that would make a bad meal worse. You should almost never drink bad wine, no matter what the circumstances. Generally speaking, the farther you are from running water, and the lower the quality of your glassware, the more replaceable your wine should be. A backyard lawn party, with its proximity to creature comforts, poses a different challenge than a picnic or tar-beach gathering. The nature of the wine will, of course, be guided by the informality of the setting and the context of the meal.
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