I drink a 'bad' wine ... and learn a good lesson.

White Zinfandel

(Image from the Bacchanalians at Beringer)

A couple of weeks ago, my wife bought some Beringer White Zinfandel to surprise me ... and it did.

As longtime readers know, I like a dry wine, and red zinfandel is definitely a dry one. I therefore expected the 'white' -- actually, rather pink, what used to be called "rosé" but is now often called 'blush' -- to have the dry quality as well.

Unfortunately, for my tastes, this white zinfandel was sweet and undrinkable ... which didn't stop me from actually drinking it. After all, I'm striving for expertise, so even a bad wine can do good service as a bad example.

Anyway, curious about this discrepancy between the red and the white zinfandels, I finally emailed my old drinking buddy and current wine expert Bruce Cochran and asked him about it yesterday:

[M]y wife recently bought some Beringer Zinfandel (rosé), and I was surprised to find it sweet and ... well ... bad. Surprised because the deep red zinfandels are usually fairly dry. Is this sweetness normal for a rosé zinfandel? Or is Beringer trying to get in on the unsophisticated Asian market, which still likes sweet wines?

This morning, I heard from Bruce:

As for the Beringer White Zinfandel, it's always been sweet. Some people in the trade call it a "bridge wine", meaning it's made from grapes (unlike Boone's Farm, etc.), but is sweet enough to appeal to those who haven't yet begun to enjoy dry wines. Most people begin with sweet wines and gradually move toward drier wines. I tell my wine class students that one mark of experience with wines is to know that zinfandel is a dry red and white zinfandel is a sweet blush. Congratulations, Jeff, you've reached a certain level of wine maturity! I'm sure, also, that you are correct about sweet wine being sent to Asia.

Interesting that Bruce refers to Boone's Farm wine, for it's some of the wretched stuff that he and I used to drink together back in our Honky Cat days. Beringer's White Zinfandel is at least not as bad as any of the Boone's Farm selection ... though not appreciably better, either, from where I now stand.

My ignorance about white zinfandels, however, implies that I haven't yet progressed very far along to path of wine experience, and thus don't yet stand where I should, so Bruce is just being kind and decent in congratulating me on a level of wine maturity that I should have reached years ago.

Which perhaps explains why we're still friends after all these years...