About 20 years ago I was sitting outside my little winery with a bunch of friends and for some reason I can’t remember now, I offered to run around the winery naked for 25 bucks. Those days are definitely gone. Today, when I think of myself as a naked winemaker it’s more about how I feel about wine than what I don’t have on.

Forty something years ago all we knew about was French wines, and anyone who knew anything about wine knew that French wine was really just about Bordeaux. Burgundies were too inconsistent, and those guys from Bordeaux had it all down, classification of 1856, Premier Cru Chateaux and all that. WE had the intelligence factor down. It was us, baby, we knew what was good and what was not; and we set about telling the world what we knew. Stupid.

Really stupid. I cringe now when I think of how we dressed up in robes and superior conversation and tried to make wine something that only others like us could understand and enjoy. And thereby created the mystique, the mumbo-jumbo and the fear factor that has kept the consumption of wine down while sales of other alcoholic beverages soared.

Forty years later, many generations later, having watched subsequent wine drinkers learn about and embrace a simpler wine culture, I find myself in a completely different frame of mind. I find myself naked. Unencumbered by the old rules and restrictions. My god, I have found that unclassified wines can taste really good. Inconceivably, Burgundy (Pinot Noir) has produced wines of equal quality to Bordeaux (Cabernet and Merlot blends). California wines have shown to not only taste good as young wines but are age-worthy. Argentine Cabs are delicious. And, shockingly, East Coast American vineyards have proven to win in blind tastings against all of the above.

Naked, naked, naked, I am totally exposed and naked. Wrong, wrong, wrong, I was dead wrong about what would taste good. Yesterday’s standards simply do not apply to today’s wines. Not only has my taste expanded but wine regions around the world have become more skilled at winemaking and there are many, many more (very good) options.  And in my new stripped down state, I’m trying to drink them every night!

Having gone through this whole metamorphosis from wine snob to naked winemaker, it is my goal in this column to pass on some bare and simple tips and to share my experiences with some of the great value wines out there today. So, let me start by steering you to two delicious examples I recently discovered while judging Dan Berger’s Riverside International Wine Competition in California.

2008 Pinot Blanc, Peller Estates, Okanagan Valley, Canada,$10.20/750 ml bottle!!! Won the Riverside International Competiton's white sweepstakes award. Worth a trip to pick up a bottle at the winery.

2007 Merlot, Tinchero Family Estates, California, $15.99/1.5Liter bag-in-box. Took a gold and is deffinately the value red of the competition.

About Eric Miller

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