Gateway Wines

These days there are too many wine choices for most wine drinkers. If you're new to wine, the choices are overwhelming. Sure, you can usually choose between red and white, if those are your only two options. But what do you choose past that?

There has always been a strong focus in the wine business to give new wine drinkers a way to inexpensively jump into wine without drowning in decision making. I like to call this sector of wines "gateway" wines. Easy to drink, entry level and cheap! Wines that will keep you're curiosity for wine up without sending you back to the beer cooler for a forty!

These types of wine have been around forever. However, new styles of "gateways" come about every decade or so. They target the nouveau wine taster of the time.

The 70's had Mateus Rosé, a slightly fizzy pink wine. The bottle often ended up as the base for a lamp!

In the 80's the wine cooler appeared. Some will argue this point with me. Is a wine cooler really a wine? Actually, until 1991 is was. Very cheap wine was used until higher taxes were placed on the wine, causing the industry to move to a "malted" beverage style. For the 80's, it was the "gateway". It spawned a whole generation's thinking that notion of wine was fun. White Zinfandel soon followed. That fanciful and fun pink wine could be found on any restaurant menu by the glass.

The 90's brought Chardonnay. This wine was being made in a variety of ways that appealed to many. You were hard pressed to find a big-haired beauty in a bar without a glass of Chardonnay in her hand!

The new millennium really brought change and choices to the new wine drinker. More than ever, world-wide wine choices flooded the marketplace. Fanciful names and labels featuring animals, modes of transportation and even smut saturated wine aisles.

Now, we have the "desserts". There are an assortment of labels featuring delectable delights like cakes, pies, sweet fruits in grocery and big box stores everywhere.

What almost all of them have in common is their "sweetness". What we in the wine business refer to as RS – residual sugar. RS is the sugar that is left, or added, after fermentation stops. The level of RS determines the sweetness of the wine. This is opposed to a "dry" wine which would have lower amounts of RS post-fermentation.

Wines with a higher RS often are more appealing to the common palate. They are easy to drink and inexpensive. They are often made with good quality grapes and many are quite nice. Well-worth a try and well-worth the money, with most being priced under $15.

I call these wines "gateways" because they offer an easy-to-drink option for new wine drinkers. Eventually, your palate starts to evolve and you become more curious about what other wine options are out there. For me, it was White Zinfandel, easy on the eyes and lips, followed by Chardonnay, Merlot, Cabernet, Syrah and now red blends that feature Rhones. Like a lot of things in life, your tastes develop and change.

Fads come and go. What I wore I high school is NOT what I'd be caught dead in today! It's the same for my wine. Your wine and palate evolution is yours to explore and create. Heck, maybe White Zinfandel is your "Wayfarers" of wine and I'm missing out!