Thoughts on selecting a wine to buy....

A few weeks ago Diane asked me how I decided what wines to buy when I was browsing through the selections in a store.... I have been thinking about how to answer this question since...

When I first started drinking wine, I didn't know where to start other than what my Dr had suggested as part of a plan to lead a healthier life... a glass of red wine daily with dinner... So I went to the local NH Liquor outlet and wandered around the isles for a while looking at labels, kind of overwhelmed by all the choices.

One of the store employees stopped and asked me if he could help, so I explained how I came to be there looking at the red wines, and that I was totaly new to wine. He then asked me a few questions such as, what kinds of food I liked to eat, how much did I want to spend, did I have wine glasses at home? (What? Wine takes a special glass?)  Our talk was quite an eye opener for me... but because I knew I needed to make a change, I was all in.

So we settled on 2 selections, a Merlot from California which tends to be easy on the palate, and good with pork, beef, and chicken prepared a number of ways.  The other choice was a basic Chianti, good with red sauce pasta, grilled Italian sausages, grilled veggies, pizza, etc... I liked both of the wines, and I have been grateful for the good advice ever since.

So as I began to try different reds, and eventually whites, I wanted to know why I liked some wines and not others. So I checked the library for books on wine, did a lot of reading about wine regions of the world, and how they made the wines there. I bought some books of my own, and over time  through tasting, and writing down my thoughts in a wine log book, a memory bank of smells, tastes, and impressions gradually developed.

What's fun about tasting wine, is that everyone's perception of the same bottle of wine can be completely different.... or somewhat similar. So I would suggest that people make a list of what they like for grape varieties, and try that grape from different parts of the world. You'll know what you like and don't like... and come up with a list of memories that's yours....

As for publications or websites to possibly help you make a choice on a wine, quite a few of them use number scores for rating wines. If this works for you, and you're comfortable with it, use it. My choice is Hugh Johnsons pocket wine book, he uses a non numerical rating system. What I like is the descriptions of wines, and a bit of info about the winery. Over time his style of writing has really made sense to me and I have come to trust it. As any one person can't be everywhere in the world, he has developed a top notch network of people around the world who relay info to him.

 His book is published every year and gets a little bit thicker every year as new wine producing areas come on board, I use past years as a reference library. Each volume has a wealth of information in it, grape varieties, food pairings, vintage reports, his thoughts on when to drink vintages, a section on, if you like this grape, try this one, etc. The cost for his book is around $15.00, a bargain for all the information it contains.

Diane, I hope this answers your question regarding how I make a choice which wine to buy....

For a lot of people, they don't put this much thought into it....some pick a pretty label, some ask a clerk in the store, some rely on a friends recommendation, or a blog like mine. Everyone has a different approach to buying, I hope this helps you...

Cheers,

Ed