Wine for wimps

Like red wine but find it plays havoc with your constitution? The headache, the dry horrors the morning after, the feeling you've been clobbered during the night by a virtual steamroller? In this part of the world we are used to our reds being "big".

Or "brassy", "voluptuous", "muscular" or "full-bodied".

The combination of flavour components and chemical compounds - naturally occurring, naturally - is complex, but will often comprise tannins, full fruit flavours, and those associated with lying in oak for extended periods (the toasty, vanilla, burnt, leathery etc, "notes").

But almost invariably "bigness" will also be a function of alcohol content.

Once a red table wine with an alcohol content of 14% was unusual; now it is almost obligatory.

Traditionally even the robust Bordeaux clarets were anywhere between 11.5 to 12.5% but now anything much less than 13.5%, for example, and your typical first-string Central Otago pinot noir begins to seem positively miniscule; and all that Aussie shiraz and cabernet.

Some of it gets up to and even over 15%.

Then there's the trend in the US to produce Zinfandels of 16% and beyond.

There's no question the higher alcohol content seems to add to the mouth feel - and go straight to the head a little faster than normal, but to what extent does it also mask a variety of imperfections - including, for instance, traces of alcohols other than the standard ethanol?

And even if it doesn't, does everyone really want to quaff away on something so potentially bruising.

OK so maybe I'm turning into a wimp.

I found myself musing along these lines while enjoying a glass or two of Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, an Italian red wine, in the Italian Cafe in Wellington's Cuba St - one of my favourite little eateries in the capital.

I first went a few months ago to a friend's 50th, but this latest occasion was early last Saturday evening, pre the famous football match.

Most enjoyable it was too, made from the montepulciano grape and proving both aromatic and reasonably fruity, softish in the tannin department, but well mouthy, too.

This wine from the Abruzzo region in east-central Italy sometimes has some of the typical Tuscan sangiovese grape added, too, but only up to about 10%.

It should not, however, be confused with the rather celebrated (and often heavy on the pocket) Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, a Tuscan wine made from sangiovese and other grapes.

Anyway looking at the label after a couple of glasses accompanying the antepasti we were sharing, I noted that it was a mere 12%.

If you had asked me I would have guessed at more like 13.5%-14%.

It was as timely reminder that bigger alcohol content does not automatically mean better wine, an assumption easy enough to make when most of the more "impressive" reds we tend to drink these days are right up there - alcohol wise.

This was confirmed by the cafe's house red, a very drinkable and by no-means straight-forward sangiovese, again weighing in at a sprightly 12%.

A lot of the wines we drink today have crept up in alcoholic content, and this includes the whites.

It is not unusual to encounter chardonnay or pinot gris at 14%, which to my mind is 1%-2% too much.

Mark Henderson, at Munslow's Fine Wines in George St (Dunedin), puts this down to international consumer trends, clone selection, improvements in viticulture, more careful harvesting and monitoring of ripeness and so on.

Premature to call it a backlash, but he also says he has had a few customers come into the shop recently, a little like me suddenly attuned to, and desirous of a slightly lower-alcohol red.

Fortunately he has a few on the shelves, including two or three good-value Italians and the odd Spanish at 12.5%.

And what they give away in alcohol content, they lose very little by way of overall heft.

I had a few of them on a recent trip to Italy and I'll certainly be looking out for them on the shelves here, too.