Serious Eats
Wines That Love
BusinessWeek's Kerry Miller discusses an upcoming lower-priced wine brand that "classifies its wines not by how they're made, but by what foods to pair them with":
The bottle's label doesn't list the wines' primary grape or vintage—details most buyers are accustomed to looking for, even if it doesn't mean much to them. Instead, the back label is a mini wine-pairing lesson in grid form, with simple descriptions explaining the intensity, acidity, tannin, and flavor of the wine. The aim: to win over foodies without alienating newer drinkers who might be scared off by more esoteric tasting-notes.
"Wine That Loves Pizza," for example, reads, "Pizza crust can create a dry mouth feel, so the right wine needs to be low in tannin," and "Because of the tomato sauce, pizza demands a wine that is red-fruit dominant." Gardner says the descriptions were designed to answer the big question most people have when they're buying a bottle of wine—"What is this going to taste like?
The San Francisco-based Amazing Food Wine Company is still looking for distributors for its Wine That Loves brand, but plan to start selling it from their website by the end of the month. Besides pizza, the other foods Wine That Loves loves are Pasta with Tomato Sauce, Roasted Chicken, Grilled Steak and Grilled Salmon; bottles should retail for about $12.