National White Wine Day!

National White Wine Day is a day for all of us to appreciate wines that see little or no skin contact (red wines get their color and much of their flavor from extended contact with the grape skins, while white wines are generally pressed and then fermented off the skins).  

This might surprise you, but there are a plethora of white wine styles out there, and they go fantastically well with all types of food, even steak.

The trick to figuring out what you like, though, is trying a sampling of some of the more popular styles out there, which will help you be more informed about how to tell your server or wine shop professional what you enjoy, so they can help point you in the right direction as you drink more and more bottles of white in the future.

VinePair suggests that you try the following six wines in order to begin to understand the charms of white wines:
Unoaked Chardonnay
Oaked Chard
Sauvignon Blanc
Pinot Grigio
Dry Riesling
Off-Dry Riesling

I’d add the following to that list: 

Semillon/Sauv Blanc/Muscadelle blends
Pinot Blanc
Portuguese White Blends (especially Arinto, Encruzado)
Albariño
Rhône blends
Any of the Italian wines that have the word “Grec” in them (Greco di Tufo, Grecanico, Grecchetto, etc).