I don’t get your comment about our “little women”. It seems your “little man” is in the same position as our “little women”. I would love it if my wife took more interest in wine, but she doesn’t. She enjoys drinking it and appreciates my passion for it, but it is my hobby not hers.
And vice-versa.
My worst casualty was a 98 Beaux Frères Pinot Noir (not for cooking, just drinking). After that I asked her to leave a note telling me what she drank and how it was. We do keep an everyday rack outside the cellar too.
+1. It’s not a gender thing. Different people have different passions. My partner appreciates good wine, but it’s not her passion. She’s more interested in beer than wine (and she brews great beer at home too). I don’t want to accidentally open special beers she’s saving any more than she wants to accidentally open special wines I’m saving. So we have a simple system for making it clear what’s OK to open without the other person and what’s not. At the end of the day it’s more about mutual respect than anything else.
I have the opposite problem. When my wife asks for a bottle of wine to give away to friends or to open at a (non-wine-geek) party she complains if I don’t bring out the cheapest bottle in the cellar… she’s smart enough to know when an audience is not going to appreciate the good stuff.
I am very reluctant about speaking about the prices of the the wines in the cellar.
If my company finds out, I can never hackle her again about the shoppingmania.
I am the really sick one…
So, the part of the cellar for the weine is locked, viewsafe, has only one(!) key and everything in the chambraire or the fridge is there for culling.
And it happens any day, that I use a Keller or a Corton Charlemagne to tune a risotto, just because it is open.
And it works very well. It`s there for fun, so be it.
BY ALL MEANS!
My “little man” the 6 foot 3 guy, loves wine and we discuss each bottle we drink. His learning curve has skyrocketed. He reads about wine, when I have an interesting article or write an article ( I am a wine columnist, university wine educator and former sommeliere).
Regarding my comment: it seems that if all of you BSD’s are so smart, why are your women so clueless? More to the point, aren’t some of you embarassed to admit how clueless they are?
More of my rant: When did wine become the exclusive province of men? More to the point, some of you must be aware that in most of this great booze and beer swilling country of ours, drinkinig wine is conisdered for “pussies.”
End of rant.
Also, if any of you are interested in my pieces in the now defunct Sommelier Journal, soon to resurrected as Somm Journal, please PM me.
About 10 years ago, I came home from work to find my wife making chicken that called for a dose of white wine. The home we owned at the time had a small cellar, and in it I had a place for bottles that people brought as gifts that were bottles we would probably never drink. I also unfortunately had placed a bottle of Domaine Leflaive Le Montrachet to stand up prior to drinking. Sheila saw it, didn’t read the label but looked at the color and used it for the chicken. We still joke about her Montrachet chicken, although it wasn’t quite so funny at the time. The chicken was damn good.
Ha! Love it.
Frequently I try to introduce this concept to my wife, but she doesn’t always get my point. (Did I actually say this?)
Actually she appreciates wine, but in a different way than I do. For her, it’s an adjunct to a meal and social interaction, and when it becomes the center of attention or the object of an event, she loses interest.
This thread makes me increasingly worried my cellarmaster might one day bring the wrong bottle to the chef for cooking. One can only hope the chef will catch the mistake! ![[help.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/4/4030a9a60185376a7393a78002ce3ec0176e975e.gif "help"){kind=small}
Hmm.
Marlene, I think you answer your first two questions, “if all of you BSD’s are so smart, why are your women so clueless?” and “More to the point, aren’t some of you embarassed to admit how clueless they are?” in your next post: "some of you must be aware that in most of this great booze and beer swilling country of ours, drinkinig wine is conisdered for “pussies.”[/quote]
There’s certainly a performative aspect to this long litany of male stories about the little woman screwing up in the Cellar…women drink wine (indiscriminately) while (Real) men Collect it and Understand it. So, no embarrassment necessary in recounting these stories since they collectively work to reclaim wine as a serious (male) pursuit.
Women have no investment in this narrative…hence perhaps the lack of similar stories from female posters.
I like Marlene.
To be completely fair about this, I have never viewed wine as a man’s domain at all. Women have been equally if not more so responsible for my ascent/descent (depending on how one views it) into winedom and I have met an equal number of skilled and passionate male and female sommeliers, avid collectors and elated drinkers. So the idea that only (real) men collect and understand wine to me is absolute BS. If that were true, then this admittedly still mostly male run industry wouldn’t be having such a hard time getting younger people into wine which proves to me that many men still don’t actually understand the stuff at all.
In regards to stereotyping, while my sisters are unfortunately living proof of the stereotype of women as being indiscriminate wine drinkers, I should also point out that my brothers are living proof of men being indiscriminate beer drinkers but men are never chastised for this. Unfair double standard. You could literally give a man piss mixed in a bottle of beer and he’d drink it without any problem – I know, I’ve seen it done in my college days at more than one house party as a prank. (I may have even helped pull one off. Shhhh… ![[diablo.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/f/f627e009b8e3ab2f6a76c9424f1156a53afc0e3f.gif "diablo"){kind=small}
)
I also tend to agree that there has been a bit of barrier to wine in North America due to a beer swilling and hooch imbibing cultural norm viewing wine as not being “manly” enough. This has kept garbage beer and liquor in business for years but if you do a Google search on beers that are disappearing, you’ll see that this is changing as well. Studies also show that there is a tendency with higher socio-economic status for both sexes to start gravitating towards wine.
Now this started as a fun thread, so let me add to it – I am 100% percent for the original poster’s and several followup poster’s spouses male or female using high-end wine as a cooking ingredient. You may scoff at the idea of using Chateau Petrus in a boeuf bourguignon, but as somebody who actually DID do that once msyelf at the generous behest of an in-law who basically donated an entire bottle to me after having just one glass himself (I was feeding 40 people at the time at his country cottage, in fairness)…
… it was the greatest boeuf bourguignon I’ve ever made in my entire life. Is this the manner such a wine should be properly appreciated? Of course not. There is a point of economic return where such a high-end cooking ingredient no longer makes sense to use given its high value. But when you consider that the other pot I made next to it was made using a $15 Shiraz and it certainly tasted like I made it with one, sometimes you just gotta have fun and go with the flow. Especially those of you that have cases of the stuff you like.
Lastly, this does remind me of a story a female sommelier told Jay Shampur, Mike Grammer and I about the time her younger sister called to ask her if she could grab a bottle of wine to make Sangria with and she gave her the OK. It was not until she got home and saw that her sister used a bottle of Petrus to make it that she considered that might not have been the best thing to do without instructing her on which bottle she could grab first. ![[oops.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/1/1f129ddad071ffe5db6c99817c3cab666035a70a.gif "oops"){kind=small}
This is by the way the same woman who picked up a basketful of Yquem at Costco for $40 apiece because they couldn’t sell “orange” colored wine. So I don’t really feel too badly for her. 
I hang rubber bands off of bottles that are “safe”. Jeannine still almost invariably calls, because she doens’t want just “safe”, but “safe” that matches her wine mood
This is funny, and I couldn’t agree more. The most expensive wine I’ve cooked with was a Guigal Condrieu La Doriane. I had half a bottle one night and just found it too over-the-top to finish. So I stuck some of the remainder in a pear parsnip soup and the rest in a batch of vinegar that I had fermenting…best soup I ever had. And we’re still enjoying the fabulous vinegar it made months later…
Katrina and Tran, I’ll only believe you if you tried them in blind lineups of pear parsnip soup and boeuf Bourguignon. Otherwise, it’s mostly likely just label bias.
That’s good for you. Why do you push your notion of how things should on me. My wife is far from clueless. She’s just not interested in wine as anything other than a tasty beverage that has alcohol in it. Why would I be embarrassed that my wife doesn’t care to learn a lot about wine? I don’t care about beer or scotch, should I be embarrassed about that? Is your husband embarrassed that you can’t spell embarrassed?