If you have a well stocked wine cellar stacked with bottles ready for any occasion, you probably have spent years answering this question for yourself. But most of us (and the cellar owner who wants to explore a little) can read on...
If you have a well stocked wine cellar stacked with bottles ready for any occasion, you probably have spent years answering this question for yourself. But most of us (and the cellar owner who wants to explore a little) can read on. You are likely to find yourself standing in a wine shop with some hazy ideas presented by the clerk or your own memory trying to figure out what to buy. (For those of you who are confronted by a long list in a restaurant see the article on restaurant wine shopping.)
The way to whittle down the problem to a doable project is to match what you want to use the wine for. That is: what is your wine style? The first question to answer is whom are you trying to please? If it is just you, you have two choices: get something you already know (if it’s in stock) or do you want to try something new? Please remember that when you find something you really like buy a case (or more) because you will probably not find the exact same wine you really like again. Wines other people like that you like get bought out quickly. You don’t know how many times people like a particular wine and call me for a few bottles more and find my supply is exhausted. I am left to call around the US to find some more and once in a couple dozen times I find it. The rest of the time, I find a new vintage that has the same pedigree (except for the year), I send it to the customer who is dying to find his/her palate pleased, and they report that it’s not the same. No it isn’t. I ask if all the bottles in the last case were the same and they admit some bottles were a little different but they weren’t as different as the last batch. But the new bottles are usually acceptable. Now you know why people build cellars.
Tackling the try something new angle is a little different because it depends on your answer to the question: how different? If you like reds in general, it may be time to try a white. If you like dry you may want to try something that is not quite so dry. Remember most sales clerks cannot answer the question of how dry a wine is it because they have not tried the wine, and even if they have, they don’t have your taste so they will not know how to describe the taste to you. In my 25 years, I have tasted over 8,000 wines. That is over two dozen different wines a month. Seven thousand five hundred I can’t get any more and my memory is sort of slipping with age. Fortunately, I can usually get close in describing a wine to a person but the only way to really get the person to understand what wine tastes like is to let them taste it. I suggest people keep notes on what they try because that is the only way you will be able to remember what you like and come close to finding it again.
