Thirsty Thursday Eve - Santo Moscato d'Asti

I traditionally do not care for wine. This Moscato from Costco, however, may be the exception that has broadened my horizons to include other styles of wine. Even if I typically prefer beer or distilled spirits, I am now at least willing to try wine on occasion.

Wine 101

My first experience with wine was not a positive one. Soon after I turned 21, about the same time I bought that awful bottle of Southern Comfort, I decided to pick up some wine. I had no idea what I liked or disliked, as I had never tried wine before. I went to my local Food Lion (we didn’t have an Ingles nearby), and picked up two bottles at random. If I remember correctly, they were both Yellow Tail, since I didn’t care to spend a lot on something I might not enjoy. I don’t remember one of the styles, but I know the other was Merlot.

If you’ve never had Merlot, it is a moderately dry wine. At the time, I knew nothing about wine, and even now, I don’t know much. I realize now that I hate dry wine. Like the bitter flavor of hops in beer, dry wine is absolutely repulsive to me. It just tastes like rotten grapes. Maybe my palate is unrefined, but I can’t see why people would put themselves through such torture, and pay quite a bit of money to do so in some cases. Regardless, I picked up these two bottles of wine because I had to start somewhere.

Source: https://ilovewine.com/wine-chart/

I brought the wine back to a friend’s house and we uncorked the bottle. Since I was already spending the night (I don’t drink and drive because I’m not an idiot), I figured we could sample a little of everything. We started with the Merlot, and I was immediately turned off by it. Plenty of things have grown on me over time, though, so we set the bottle to the side and proceeded to try other things I had also picked up.

Every few drinks, we went back and tried more of the Merlot. Every single time, it was just as bad as the first sip. His sister was the only one who actually liked it. By the end of the night, I counted it as loss and gave the rest of the bottle to her. I wasn’t going to choke down the rest, and I refused to pour it out of somebody else could make use of it. From that point, I basically wrote off wine for a few years.

Moscato

Fast forward until maybe two years ago. I’ve heard time and again how people love wine. It’s paired with foods to improve the flavor of both, people seek out certain vintages, there’s just this huge complex body of information and culture about wine. I want to like it, I truly do, but I refuse to buy another bottle and waste money on something I’ll hate.

On a Costco run, I notice that they have bottles of Santo Moscato d’Asti on sale. I’m tempted to buy one, because it certainly does LOOK good, even if I expect it will taste terrible. I waver back and forth on whether to buy it for a while. Eventually, I decided to get it. It was sub ten bucks, so I wasn’t really out much even if it was “duh’nasty” (my tongue-in-cheek pronunciation of “d’Asti”).

When I reached the checkout counter, the cashier noted how he really liked that particular wine. Wow, really, he just happened to bring it up when I was on the fence about whether I really wanted to buy it? I mentioned that I haven’t really liked any wine that I’ve tried before, but I was curious about it. He explained that he doesn’t usually like wine either, but that Moscato is pretty sweet, and he really enjoys it. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad decision after all.

I threw the bottle in the fridge when we got home, so we could try it cold sometime later. Within a few days, we cracked it open to see how bad it might be. To my pleasant surprise, it was genuinely very good. Way sweeter than the Merlot that I started my wine journey with, it also had less of a taste of rotten grapes. Still a little funk in there, but I don’t mind a little funk. Blue cheese and horseradish are my jam.

Since then, I have kept a bottle or two on hand at all times. When it goes on sale at Costco (pretty frequently), I’ll pick up a few extra. I still prefer beer or liquor most of the time, but I do get in the mood for wine every now and then. Now that I know I like sweet wine, I’m more inclined to try other sweet wines. I’d probably enjoy a Port or Zinfandel, but not much more than that. Over time, I may grow to appreciate increasingly drier wines. Until then, I’ll stick with the sweet stuff.