The Lemon Fool

About £10 from Lidl. Delightful summer drinking and (suits me) relatively low alcohol at 11%. Not a great wine but light, well balanced and refreshing. Perfect for sitting on the terrace/in the garden and enjoying with nibbles. I’ll be buying more as I only bought one bottle to try.

Best wishes, Steve

Steveam wrote:About £10 from Lidl. Delightful summer drinking and (suits me) relatively low alcohol at 11%. Not a great wine but light, well balanced and refreshing. Perfect for sitting on the terrace/in the garden and enjoying with nibbles. I’ll be buying more as I only bought one bottle to try.

Best wishes, Steve

Your description could be a regular Vinho Verde. Is it anything like that?

UncleEbenezer wrote:

Steveam wrote:About £10 from Lidl. Delightful summer drinking and (suits me) relatively low alcohol at 11%. Not a great wine but light, well balanced and refreshing. Perfect for sitting on the terrace/in the garden and enjoying with nibbles. I’ll be buying more as I only bought one bottle to try.

Best wishes, Steve

Your description could be a regular Vinho Verde. Is it anything like that?

Yes, but lighter and less grassy than most Vinho Verde - very well balanced and despite the descriptor “Dry” it is almost neutral in sweetness. A little bit of acidity. When I saw Tokaji I assumed it would be sweet but then read the report from Peter Bampford (Lidl wine assessor) who gives it 90. There is nothing unpleasant about this wine but it’s not a super classy wine to write home about (a really nice white burgundy would get me writing home - yum, yum).

Best wishes,

Steve

My own experience (especially of whites) is a wine I really like one day can easily taste grim (or just plain mediocre) to my palette on another day when I open a second or third bottle.

I don't often see or hear this aspect of wine discussed. I think perhaps as my palette learns what a specific wine tastes like, it gets more picky.

Mike4 wrote:My own experience (especially of whites) is a wine I really like one day can easily taste grim (or just plain mediocre) to my palette on another day when I open a second or third bottle.

I don't often see or hear this aspect of wine discussed. I think perhaps as my palette learns what a specific wine tastes like, it gets more picky.

Indeed, I find an element of that. Classic case: many a light Pinot Grigio, utterly gorgeous on a hot summer evening, bland and watery in the opposite season. Put it in a blend - e.g. with Chardonnay or Trebbiano - and it becomes much more resilient against the changing seasons.

Can you tell I ate out tonight - and enjoyed a nice tipple? (Sangiovese, as it happens).

Mike4 wrote:My own experience (especially of whites) is a wine I really like one day can easily taste grim (or just plain mediocre) to my palette on another day when I open a second or third bottle.

I don't often see or hear this aspect of wine discussed. I think perhaps as my palette learns what a specific wine tastes like, it gets more picky.

By the time I'm 2 bottles to the wind I'll drink anything, 3 bottles and I'll pour drink down my shirt.

kempiejon wrote:

Mike4 wrote:My own experience (especially of whites) is a wine I really like one day can easily taste grim (or just plain mediocre) to my palette on another day when I open a second or third bottle.

I don't often see or hear this aspect of wine discussed. I think perhaps as my palette learns what a specific wine tastes like, it gets more picky.

By the time I'm 2 bottles to the wind I'll drink anything, 3 bottles and I'll pour drink down my shirt.

Ah yes, the old trope that the wine in the lower half of the bottle always tastes better than the wine in the top half!

Mike4 wrote:

kempiejon wrote:
By the time I'm 2 bottles to the wind I'll drink anything, 3 bottles and I'll pour drink down my shirt.

Ah yes, the old trope that the wine in the lower half of the bottle always tastes better than the wine in the top half!

Yeah yeah that's why we decant it to get that stuff first

Mike4 wrote:My own experience (especially of whites) is a wine I really like one day can easily taste grim (or just plain mediocre) to my palette on another day when I open a second or third bottle.

I don't often see or hear this aspect of wine discussed. I think perhaps as my palette learns what a specific wine tastes like, it gets more picky.

Agreed! And temperature makes such a difference. Different white wines need different temperatures. Straight from a cold refrigerator is a no no and kills the nose and deadens the wine. A short time later in the glass and some wines open up amazingly.

Best wishes, Steve

kempiejon wrote:

Mike4 wrote:My own experience (especially of whites) is a wine I really like one day can easily taste grim (or just plain mediocre) to my palette on another day when I open a second or third bottle.

I don't often see or hear this aspect of wine discussed. I think perhaps as my palette learns what a specific wine tastes like, it gets more picky.

By the time I'm 2 bottles to the wind I'll drink anything, 3 bottles and I'll pour drink down my shirt.

Dorothy Parker put that sentiment so much more eloquently, even if her subject was martini.

UncleEbenezer wrote:

kempiejon wrote:By the time I'm 2 bottles to the wind I'll drink anything, 3 bottles and I'll pour drink down my shirt.

Dorothy Parker put that sentiment so much more eloquently, even if her subject was martini.

You beat me to it! For those who don't know it, it's worth the googling.

BJ

bungeejumper wrote:

UncleEbenezer wrote:Dorothy Parker put that sentiment so much more eloquently, even if her subject was martini.

You beat me to it! For those who don't know it, it's worth the googling.

BJ

Indeed it is, and it's not what I was expecting!

I was imagining it was to be the acerbic observation that "One martini before dinner is just right. Two is too many, and three is not enough."

The problem with OP's Carpinus Tokaji Harslevelu is trying to pronounce it when ordering the (hic!) second bottle

kempiejon wrote:

Mike4 wrote:My own experience (especially of whites) is a wine I really like one day can easily taste grim (or just plain mediocre) to my palette on another day when I open a second or third bottle.

I don't often see or hear this aspect of wine discussed. I think perhaps as my palette learns what a specific wine tastes like, it gets more picky.

By the time I'm 2 bottles to the wind I'll drink anything, 3 bottles and I'll pour drink down my shirt.

Mike's error is in drinking the three bottles on different days.

But yes, start with your best wine and then go downhill. You can buy a bottle of wine for $2 (£1.60) in the US, the duty being lower. The local winos call it "two buck chuck".

Mike4 wrote:

bungeejumper wrote:You beat me to it! For those who don't know it, it's worth the googling.

Indeed it is, and it's not what I was expecting!

I was imagining it was to be the acerbic observation that "One martini before dinner is just right. Two is too many, and three is not enough."

Is it not that Parkerism? The only other one I know is "Let me get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini". As my wife often says that as she gets home; she is a big DP fan.

Mike4 wrote:My own experience (especially of whites) is a wine I really like one day can easily taste grim (or just plain mediocre) to my palette on another day when I open a second or third bottle.

I don't often see or hear this aspect of wine discussed. I think perhaps as my palette learns what a specific wine tastes like, it gets more picky.

It's a complicated one - some of it is just natural variation between bottles, some of it is psychological and depends on your mood etc - but the big one for supermarket wine is just how it's been kept. White wine is more sensitive to being subjected to heat etc in transit and on the shelves, and eg is more likely to be in a clear bottle, which opens up the possibility of light damage.

Lootman wrote:You can buy a bottle of wine for $2 (£1.60) in the US, the duty being lower. The local winos call it "two buck chuck".

It's been a while since you could get Charles Shaw for $2 - it's $3.49 even in California these days, with us it's $3.99. I must try it some time, to see if it's as bad as people make out.

Hallucigenia wrote:

Lootman wrote:You can buy a bottle of wine for $2 (£1.60) in the US, the duty being lower. The local winos call it "two buck chuck".

It's been a while since you could get Charles Shaw for $2 - it's $3.49 even in California these days, with us it's $3.99. I must try it some time, to see if it's as bad as people make out.

Ah OK, it was a few years ago I saw it for $2 in a Trader Joes which, for those who do not know, is an American Aldi.

More on the history of two buck chuck here:

https://www.rd.com/article/trader-joes- ... %20reports.