Reading these lines in Rajat Parr's book The Sommelier's Atlas of Taste made me smile - it perfectly described my first time tasting Sancerre. An easy and likable wine, it just made sense to stick with it:
Sommeliers have a love-hate relationship with Sancerre. They love it because it sells, sells, sells. As one wine director told us, “If we put it by the glass, it’s all anyone orders!” For sommeliers, it’s never bad to have a reliable cash flow. But if you sense a hint of exasperation in the above quote, it’s for the same reason. Sancerre is the knee-jerk selection of people who don’t bother to engage with wine. It’s the same as saying, “I’ll have a Bud” or “Give me a gin and tonic” without bothering to look at a menu.
This is just a notch above asking for the house red or white based on what you are eating. No thinking is involved. You want to enjoy the meal and the company and trust that they who are serving you the food know what they are doing with their house wines.
I got interested in this book based on the provenance of the author and his background. A guy born and raised in Kolkata who had never tasted any wine until age 20 comes to become "one of the most celebrated sommeliers in the world". It got me thinking about the boundless nature of what a person can be no matter where they started and how limited their horizons had once been. Often the inner drive the fuels such stories, brings about luck and opportunity. The book can go to depth in areas I have very little understanding, but it also has wisdom a layperson could use:
The difference between these two wines can be compared to that of a marathoner’s body versus a sprinter’s. Paradis is the long-distance runner, lean, long, and angular; Chambrates is the sprinter, ripped, thicker, and rounder.
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