I want to become well versed in wines

Wine is the filtered poop and piss of a grape eating fungus. Not much more to know if you start the conversation from this premise.

Kenny_McCormic wrote: The cheapest way to get hammered is box/jug wine, the whites have less sugar, and thus less of a hangover. Though for slightly more money, steel reserve or ~6% ice beer is slightly more stomachable IMO. Is that what we're talking about in here? On a serious note, I'm pretty sure much of "wine tasting" is snobbery and bullE36 M3, drink what you like.

I realize its snobbery and bullE36 M3, I am trying to find interesting things SWMBO and I can enjoy together. She doesnt want to build a car with me or go to the auto x. I have never known anything about wine, I like dessert wines, they taste like grape juice.

Been serving and selling wine since 2004, and have passed the first level sommelier course and am probably taking the CSW (certified specialist in wine) test next summer. Currently work as a on-premise sales rep for a large distributor in Alaska with a route that focuses on wine sales, and am basically a wine steward at the hotel I also work at in the summers.

szeis has the best advice so far. The only way to learn wine is to drink a lot of it and pay a bit of attention to it while you drink it. Most people start drinking sweet wines, and slowly drink drier wines as they grow to like it. See if any local stores do tastings on weekends, or when you go out to eat see if they have wine flights available instead of getting 1 glass.

Generally I've found there are a few basic tiers of wine quality, and it is usually loosely tied to price. Good wine is more expensive, generally, because it's using 'better' grapes, higher quality production methods, and in smaller quantities, than the bulk brands that buy grapes en masse from whereever in whatever amounts are needed to hit the price point they want or need.

Under $5 - don't bother unless you're cooking or looking to get hammered cheap.

$8-15 - some good values in this range, still mass-market but not bottom of the barrel (and by barrel, I mean giant stainless steel thousand(s) gallon tank) swill like the cheap cheap stuff. Good everyday wine.

$15-25 - Generally everything domestic in this range is pretty damn decent. Wines from Spain, South America, and South Africa in this range can be phenomenal. A few good Italians, more good Australians, and still too cheap for good Bordeaux but other French regions aren't as overpriced and can be nice at this price.

$25-50 - Starting to pay for names as much as quality. The bottom end are similar to the lower tier, the higher ends are really really good. Quality is evenly spread across the price range, so you're better off going to a real wine store and paying a couple dollars more per bottle to get advice for the good wines.

$50-100 - most are damn good. Starting to get in to world class wines, even from France. Most of the wines I have in my house are in this range as I don't drink nearly as much as I did in college and only keep good stuff now. Being in the industry helps too...

over $100 - Most are exceptional, some can be disappointing for their price. Paying for exclusivity and names as much as quality, except in France and Italy. Again, go to a good store for wines in this range.

A fun day to test yourself, buy a bottle from each category, from one region and one varietal. Taste them all in order, then try the cheap wine again at the end. Most people can tell the difference in quality, depth of flavor, etc in the better wines over the lesser wines pretty easily.

Most importantly... Enjoy it! I drink more whiskey and rum now than wine, the acid in wine messes with my stomach, but I still enjoy a great Bordeaux when I can get my hands on them.

NOHOME wrote: Wine is the filtered poop and piss of a grape eating fungus. Not much more to know if you start the conversation from this premise.

And beer is moldy grain and boiled yeast poop.

Wine snobbery is at least as bad as craft beer snobbery. And I can't tell you how many times I've accidentally served someone a glass of corked wine and had them tell me how much they loved it.

Tasting notes are bullE36 M3. They're trying to describe something extremely complex in the space of a tweet that'll also help it sell, and it's like trying to describe a forest by telling what types of trees are in it. Cabernet tastes like cabernet, not tobacco and chocolate and green peppers or whatever other BS they come up with, but the bs sells wine and magazines so people keep writing it and buying it.

Uncle Sam sent me to Italy. I prefer the Italian wines over the French. They are (for the most part) a simpler wine. French wines tend to be overly complex.

A friend of mine works for Llano wineries here in TX. They tend to be overly sweet, not my favorite.

Wines fall into three types of sweetness. Desert wines are very sweet. Then there are dryer wines that I prefer. Then there are wines that are tannic. Many people confuse tannic with being dry, but it is different. A tannic wine tends to suck all the moisture out of my mouth. YMMV

The best advice has been drink a lot and drink what you like, damn the snobs!

It can be snobbery and bullE36 M3, but it absolutely doesn't have to be. At its core, knowledge of wine is just another skillset based on objective criteria (with an admittedly subjective component of personal taste thrown in). How you present it is an entirely different question.

It's only snobbery if you are trying to impress someone else.

Nobody knows if I am drinking a $15 or $50 bottle of wine at my home, so I'm going to get the one that I like. And I'm going to pay attention to what I like to find more that is similar.

Reading other people's tasting can come across as snobbery, if you let it. But it can also offer some ideas why wines differe from each other, and why you like them.

IMHO, one also needs to understand what you are doing while you are drinking the wine- by itself on a warm summer afternoon? With cheese? With fish? With roast pork? With a steak? With Duck breast? With pasta? Alcohol is a solvent which is capable of mixing oil and water. So it's able to blend flavors quite a bit- which means what else is in your mouth will matter if you like a wine or not. Wine and food flavors developed for a long time together. Odds are- if a group of people like Chianti + Pasta- you will too.

That being said, you DON'T have to match food and wine- just as long as you realize that the great wine you had with a mondo steak probably will taste a lot different by itself.

If you come into this with the thought of snobbery and that people are tying to be better than you, and you are trying to keep up with them- your mindset is wrong. Don't even bother.

On a more serious note.

Since this is a bonding experience, take the wife unit to a few wine tours. Pay attention to what comes out of the guides mouth; you will be repeating much of it in the future. Also pay attention to what your wife likes in a wine. You will want to become an expert in that variety of wine and learn to skirt around the edges and expand on the repertoire.

Say she likes a Pinot Noir. Do some research into what defines a Pinot Noir and what differentiates a good one from a bad one. Now start looking for Pinot Noirs that you think your wife might like. It's kinda like sex in that you gotta keep trying new stuff and pushing the boundaries and sometimes ya show up with the weed-whacker and a featherduster to see where the boundaries lie, but you keep trying!

As to wine snobbery at a social function, its a matter of "My wine versus Your wine" You use your hard-earned Pinot trivia and knowledge to shoot down his Cabernet expertise. Hint; learn a bit about yeast, fermentation and secondary malolactic fermentation to gain an advantage. Be sure to expound on the merits of wine diamonds in the bottom of the bottle. As with most things in life, the secret to success is sincerity; learn to fake it and you got it made, you need to make it sound like you actually care about this stuff. As long as neither one of you backs down, the conversation can go on for a long time. The bonus is that this dialectic will bring you up to speed on the merits of Cabernets or whatever your opponent is proposing.

Myself, I love good wine. I fish in the 25-50/bottle pond and look for big-full bodied wines with a lot of tanins and some age in a barrel to mellow out the bite. Oak (the ketchup of the wine industry) is also good in that it can bring some nice vanilla tones.

My generic wine snob speech:

"Most wines today are artificially colored and that is a bad thing. Wine should not be purple nor leave a color stain on the glass after you finish. If it is well aged, it will be burgundy with a slight brown tinge." Discuss...

A few things that work for me. I buy most of my wines through a website that discounts the price of good wine to the point I can drink quite well on a modest budget. www.wtso.com

I prefer reds to whites and have a wine chiller to store them in. People will say that reds are to be served at room temperature. Sort of, wine cellar temp is cool, but not refridgerated. It isn't 72 F like most houses these days.

Decent stemware.

Find someone to mentor you. I read a wine writers blog. Google Doug Paulding wine picks and see if you can relate to what he has to say.

Personally, smooth beats harsh every time. French Bordeaux is so much nicer to drink than Australian Cabs.

Now let's discuss bourbons! Any other liquor need not apply.

Oh yeah, forgot about Gary Vanerchuk. Crazy guy that had tasted a lot of wines. Here's a link to his free library of wine tastings over the years.

http://tv.winelibrary.com/archive/

There is a Total Wine & More near you just off the 485. They do tastings often and their sommeliers (at least the ones I've dealt with locally) are good and down to earth. They can steer you to varietals based on what you think you'll like in your price point and then you can explore from there. Just remember that when you go to a tasting it is about tasting not drinking. If you don't try just a small amount, spit it out (up to you) and then cleanse your mouth with water and a cracker (or something) between wines then pretty soon you just love all the wines then wonder later why you bought all this crap.

There is SO much wine out there that you could try a bottle every day and never get through it all. Try a varietal and then see if it is grown/bottled in different parts of the world. Compare the US version to the French or Australian or Chilean and see what you prefer.

Don't be turned off by screw caps as it is actually a better way to keep oxygen out of the wine than corks. Also screw cap bottles use less sulfates than corked bottles which helps if they effect you negatively.

Shameless plug, if your wife likes Pinot Noirs I will send you here. This is my uncles winery in Oregon and he is a car guy. Used to race a TR4 in SCCA and has the scars to prove it.

Final note, keep all your wine in the fridge or a wine cooler, red and white. Dark and cold is much better for wines than heat any day. When people say red wine should be served at room temperature that means in France! Ideally store reds around 50-52 degrees and serve around 55-60.

Find a wine fanatic and drink with them. You'll learn a lot quickly and get exposed to a lot.

I like wine. I've been to Napa at a couple different places for tastings. I'll go to the 'fancy' supermarket and buy wine, usually red, from their 75 wall. 75 wines that are under $10. Some are there because of a sale but usually its a good range of wine that periodically get rotated around. My wife picks by the names/labels and we will try new things. I treat it like craft beer. I'm starting to learn that I stay away from IPAs and that I generally like red full body or heavy wines.

Most of us consider ourselves to be car snobs but I don't hold myself above other people because of it. You can be a wine snob and not look down on people. It's a way to enjoy the finer points. Like knowing the difference between direct injection and throttle body injection.

Kenny_McCormic wrote: On a serious note, I'm pretty sure much of "wine tasting" is snobbery and bullE36 M3, drink what you like.

Same could be said of sports car afficianados and handling/feedback, right? Or manual transmission snobbery, or...

There are a lot of differences in wines, like beers or scotches, and learning why you like different things is based a lot on the how's of making it. Which means there's a lot to learn and it's not about snobbery, but about simply being knowledgeable, just like knowing the difference between how a Fiat 124 and MGB drive when pushed to the limits.

Ryanty, after too many years in the restaurant business in Saratoga, Atlanta, NYC, LA, Boston and Greenwich, CT; my son is a Sommelier. I don't speak the language, but I understand there's the basic license, then more levels (6?), he is currently two from the bottom. I've forwarded this thread to Ian and he will hopefully email with some tips or trip ups.

Dan

Leave it to me to be the first person to reference "Sideways:"

I know what i like for liquor (jamisons, bushmills) I know what I like for beer ( guiness, killians) just never been really exposed to wine except the occasional try this. But I know nothing about them. Time to start delving into all the great resources you guys have posted on here.

Appleseed wrote: Leave it to me to be the first person to reference "Sideways:"

And let me say although I usually like T. Haden church, and Paul Giamatti that movie was a complete hot garbage fire

I think.as far as the info I will.probably start with the advice of capt. Slo on his wine adventure

02Pilot wrote: First step is taste. A lot. When you do, pay attention to what you like and what you don't - this will be the easy part. The part that requires careful consideration and that will develop your palette is determining WHY you like or don't like it. The latter is tricky when you first start out. Identifying particular tastes, smells, and other characteristics when they're intermingled is not always easy, but doing so allows you to better understand what's going on in a given vintage.

Quoted as this sounds like the best plan to me. There's no substitute for experience, and let what you like be the deciding factor. And tasting events are great for taking SWMBO to.

Trans_Maro wrote:

Axl Rose approves of that

We have this game and have learned some good stuff from it. Its pretty fun too: Wine Wars: A Trivia Game for Wine Geeks and Wannabes

I learned long ago that I don't care for wine, and decided to become well versed in vodka instead.