SC - Cooking Wine

[Kornelis Sietsma]

Hmm, haven't seen the original post yet, so I'll reply to the reply...

>Ras writes:
>> One should never cook with anything that they would not drink.

There can be financial constraints however.  Usually, I only cook in wine
that is drinkable - but for feasts, this can be rather expensive.  For
example our feast last week consumed 20 liters of wine (about 27 bottles
for the non-metric).   We bought this entirely in casks, for a total cost
of $40.

If we had wanted to use drinking wine, we would have been paying at least
twice that for casks, and even more for bottles.  I guess it depends what
you mean by 'drinkable' - what we had would not be something I'd serve with
dinner, but it tasted fine when heated and spiced.

I wonder how this varies from place to place?  In Australia we are blessed
with good wines for reasonable prices - you can get a reasonable bottle of
wine for $10, and cask wine varies from $2.50 a liter for cheap stuff to $5
a liter for adequate table wine.   Is this more or less than you pay
overseas?

>> One of my main irritations as a liquor store employee
>> is a customer who comes in and asks for a "cooking" wine....
>> ....  If a
>> cook is willing to use a four dollar generic Burgundy in a recipe that calls
>> for "claret" instead of a far superior Bordeaux or Beaujolais, it would be a
>> kindness for their guests if they ordered in pizza instead.

Hmm - as a liquor store customer, I've had exactly the opposite experience.
I was looking at wine for cooking, and foolishly mentioned this fact to the
callow youth who was at the counter.  He immediately tried to sell me the
cheapest wine they had, and was aghast that I was 'wasting' good wine on
cooking.  :-}

- -Korny
- -- 
William Bekwith MKA Kornelis Sietsma | http://zikzak.net/~korny
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