As wine quickly edges out beer as the top alcoholic beverage of choice by Americans, depending on your source, it seemed only natural to add a wine column into our mix of other food and drink related topics. Every other Wednesday, to mirror Eating In, we will bring you information on wine trends, news, events in the area, and any other pertinent information to your ever-increasing wine consumption. For our first installment we want to keep it simple with an introduction to who we are, and four of our affordable picks for summer that you can find in the area. There’s nothing worse than reading about a wine that sounds good and not being able to find it anywhere nearby.
We know the last thing you need is another wine snob telling you things like “taste the terroir” and boasting about over-priced, big name wines. So we’ll just say now that here at DCist we are not wine snobs, only wine lovers. As for credentials, Ben is a wine consultant at Schneider’s of Capitol Hill and Amanda is the General Manager of Best Cellars in Clarendon; prior to coming to Washington, we both trained at the Culinary Institute of America, where we learned about wine in between being yelled at for broken hollandaise sauces.
Without further ado, we bring you four picks that fall under the reasonably-priced, sit outside on a hot day, no food necessary refreshing summer wines category. First up is Tohu Mugwi Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand ($22). This wine will be your best bet for pleasing multiple people at the same time. It has some tropical fruit notes without being too fruity (which is good for Chardonnay drinkers) and is balanced with a clean acidity (for those who prefer Pinot Grigio).
If a wine with more weight and less fruit is your preference, check out Hunold Vourberg Grand Cru Pinot Gris from Alsace ($25). This wine has more body–how the wine feels in your mouth, to put it succinctly–to it than Sauvignon Blancs and Pinot Grigios. It’s less on the fruit-forward side, and has more mineral and floral notes. This one’s more interesting than your average Chard.
Photo of Ardeo’s wine rack by Kyle Gustafson.
