Wine?

[webster]

This should be repeated over and over and over again.

When I first started drinking wine, a friend gave me five pieces of advice which a new wine drinker should live by:

1) Drink what you like and don't drink what you don't. Taste everything and make your own choices. There is no shame in thinking that White Zin is the best wine in the world or that the finest Cabernet tastes like crap.

2) Read up a lot about wines and solicit advice. No one has tasted every wine out there. Get a bunch of opinions and you are more likely to have a pleasant experience. Also, take notes as to what people say and what you like.

3) Where possible, pair food and wines. Again, do a lot of reading on the topic. Me and the Mrs. love cooking at home and pairing a wine to the meal.

4) Be open about what price you are willing to spend.

5) When in doubt, drink it now. Save a few bottles for special occassions, but a huge majority of wines won't improve that much. This may change as your interest in wine increases.

[Chicago1871]

Storied Wine Collection Goes to Auction (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=535&ncid=535&e=9&u=/ap/20041203/ap_on_re_eu/czar_s_wine_cellars)

Hundreds of bottles of wine selected for the pleasure of Czar Nicholas II and preserved on the orders of Josef Stalin were auctioned by Sotheby's in London on Friday — the latest in a slew of Russian collectibles being snapped up at ever-rising prices.

Several dozen Russian and European collectors gathered at Sotheby's showrooms to bid on bottles, some more than 150 years old and valued at several thousand dollars, from the imperial Massandra winery near Yalta on Ukraine's Black Sea coast.

"I think you'll find some very serious people here," said Nick Stevenson, an insurance broker hoping to add to a personal wine collection he valued at about $15,000. "Compared to some of the people here, I'm an amateur."

Wow.

[zverskiy yobar]

posted this in politics...

but its very fitting here also..

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=519&e=3&u=/ap/20041204/ap_on_re_us/wine_shipments

It seems to be restraint of trade, seems to be against a basic tenet of the economy," Swedenburg said. "If we could only buy things made in Virginia, we'd all be eating just peanuts and tomatoes and drinking wine."



http://www.freethegrapes.org/

[arthur d]

Sounds like a single malt.

Smoke, leather, salty sea breeze? That's a Laphroigh. Or a Lagavulin maybe, or an Ardbeg. Great whiskies, all three of them.

[DoctorJones24]

When I first started drinking wine, a friend gave me five pieces of advice which a new wine drinker should live by:

1) Drink what you like and don't drink what you don't. Taste everything and make your own choices. There is no shame in thinking that White Zin is the best wine in the world or that the finest Cabernet tastes like crap.

2) Read up a lot about wines and solicit advice. No one has tasted every wine out there. Get a bunch of opinions and you are more likely to have a pleasant experience. Also, take notes as to what people say and what you like.

3) Where possible, pair food and wines. Again, do a lot of reading on the topic. Me and the Mrs. love cooking at home and pairing a wine to the meal.

4) Be open about what price you are willing to spend.

5) When in doubt, drink it now. Save a few bottles for special occassions, but a huge majority of wines won't improve that much. This may change as your interest in wine increases.
As a novice wine drinker, I like this advice too.

I've just begun drinking a bit more wine (and reading about it) recently, and I've come across similar advice. What I wonder though, is what makes "wine drinking" such a different aesthetic experience from other tastes that people have to continuously repeat this type of advice. I mean, of course it's "true" on the face of it, and yet not at all "true" in a larger sense.

In other words, it's true for beginning readers that "you should read as much as you like, whatever you like, and feel no embarrassment if you love pulpy sci-fi and pot-boiler mysteries and yet hate Dickens." There's no real "shame" in that.

But it's also quite true to suggest that Dickens and Poe and Joyce and Marquez and Rushdie and so on, are "better" than a lot of stuff that's out there, given the aesthetic criteria that readers and writers have settled on over the centuries. Granted, these criteria are always up for revision and renewal, but they tend not to shift too much.



My sense is that this advice is repeated so much mostly because of wine's aura of snobbery that could otherwise intimidate novices. So it's a bit of "stating the obvious," even if only partially true, just to help open up the experience to more people (which is a good thing).

[JayRockers!]

Wine Spectator just released their top 100. Question. When choosing a NV sparkling like their #90-ish Gloria Ferrer Brut Sonoma NV, how can you tell when you go into a store that you are getting something from their recommended year? Non-Vintage Champagnes usually don't have a year on the label, so how can you assure yourself you are not choosing something from a weaker NV bottling?

Thx,

Jay!

[352klr]

Wine Spectator just released their top 100. Question. When choosing a NV sparkling like their #90-ish Gloria Ferrer Brut Sonoma NV, how can you tell when you go into a store that you are getting something from their recommended year? Non-Vintage Champagnes usually don't have a year on the label, so how can you assure yourself you are not choosing something from a weaker NV bottling?

Thx,

Jay!


Look at the amount of dust on the bottle. Well, that really is one way. When the year's NV is released, there is usually a clearance by the distributors on all the previous year's NV they still have in stock, 2-1 things like that to empty out so the new NV can come in. So basically stores are flooded with the previous year's NV. You either have to wait a couple months til the previous NV is completely cleared out to be 100% sure, or you have a liquor store that you completely trust and they tell you whether or not it's the year you're looking for. Not the most ideal way, but from my limited experience of working at a liquor store, that' s my advice. Or you could go on line and order it.

[jec1]

is wine really fatening please im skinny and ive been drinking three glasses a day. so wheres that conspiracy theory coming from.

[JayRockers!]

Look at the amount of dust on the bottle. Well, that really is one way.Ha! Exactly what I said last night when we bought a bottle for a gift. "Make sure you dust that off before you wrap it, honey!" Ha!

I also noticed that the M&C White Star isn't as tasty as previous years.

Thx,

Jay!

[352klr]

Ha! Exactly what I said last night when we bought a bottle for a gift. "Make sure you dust that off before you wrap it, honey!" Ha!

I also noticed that the M&C White Star isn't as tasty as previous years.

Thx,

Jay!


I haven't had this year's White Star. To be honest, I'm not much of a champagne drinker. The occaisional wedding toast and that's about it. The last time I actually had some was when Phil sunk his putt on 18 at Augusta and popped upon a bottle of veuve the girlfriend's parents had in the fridge. It was a ten year journey for me and I felt like celebrating, alright? Anyways, I hope that info. was helpful. Good luck on your search.


Jec1-
If you're really that worried about it, there's some new low carb wines out, 1.6 which is a white, and 1.9 which is a red. I refuse to drink them because low-cards are for losers that are too lazy to eat and drink whatever they want and then excercise.

[Chicago1871]

High court to review interstate wine shipping laws (http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/12/06/scotus.wine.shipments/index.html)

But wine-tasting visitors who later may want to order a bottle or two of Millbrook's Tocai Friulano as holiday gifts would find an unexpected legal impediment -- a vestige of Prohibition that will be argued in a Supreme Court case being heard Tuesday.

At issue is the legality of state laws prohibiting wineries from shipping alcohol directly to out-of-state customers.

New York, as well as 23 other states, bans individual consumers from ordering wine from outside the state. In many cases, however, vendors can ship wine to private in-state residents, a common practice thanks to e-commerce.

Two groups of wine connoisseurs and winery owners filed separate suits -- one in Michigan, the other in New York -- saying certain large-production wineries and distributors benefit from the ban, thus violating free trade laws.

[352klr]

High court to review interstate wine shipping laws (http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/12/06/scotus.wine.shipments/index.html)

This is good news for Oklahoma residents if the laws are revised as the distributors have rediculous artificial prices in place and Oklahomans aren't allowed to order wine from out of state(except if you can find a liquor store willing to have it shipped to them-not cheap).

[webster]

This is good news for Oklahoma residents if the laws are revised as the distributors have rediculous artificial prices in place and Oklahomans aren't allowed to order wine from out of state(except if you can find a liquor store willing to have it shipped to them-not cheap).

That is good news -- in NY, we can't take advantage of the better wine shipment websites or smaller wineries.

Also, I thought that I read that NY was going to allow grocery stores to sell wine, which will have a great impact on selection (and hopefully price).

[Mad_Bishop]

My new favorite red under $15 bottle is Chilean -- Baron Philippe de Rothschild Escudo Rojo. It comes in at about $12-$13 a bottle. It's a red blend, but it reminds me of a Cabernet about 3 times the price.

Thier cab sab. is my favorite cab. sab under $30. Very good stuff.

[Chicago1871]

Red, White, and You: Another look at the Supreme Court Getting Drunk (http://slate.msn.com/id/2110771/)

[JayRockers!]

Wine Spectator's Wine of the Week: Dec. 6, 2004

PERALTA Syrah California 2001 (85 points, $8)

A ripe and jammy little red, only moderately complex but it has lots of juicy and soft raspberry and black cherry fruit, laced with spice and a nice smoky aroma. Drink now. 5,030 cases made.

Thx,

Jay!

[JayRockers!]

Wine Spectator's Wine of the Week: Dec. 13, 2004

CONCANNON Petite Sirah Central Coast Selected Vineyards 2002 (88 points, $12)

Ripe and broad-shouldered, a potent wine with excellent depth to the extracted blueberry, raisin and white pepper flavors. Almost viscous fruit texture folds into chewy, solid tannins on the finish. Drink now through 2009. 13,100 cases made. From California.

Thx,

Jay!

[Mad_Bishop]

like a bland, bodiless red?
http://store1.yimg.com/I/randalls_1819_36018648
Red Bicyclette Syrah 2003

this was given to us a few months ago and we tried it last night. Ugh. There was nothing at all to this wine. A very slight tannin on the tip of the tongue, but nothing else.

[webster]

Mad Bishop, $7 bottles are pretty hit or miss. I bought a bottle of that a few months ago and it was awful.

[Mad_Bishop]

Mad Bishop, $7 bottles are pretty hit or miss. I bought a bottle of that a few months ago and it was awful.
I had no idea it was that cheap of a wine. Kinda peeves me now because it was a gift from two people for both my wife's and my birthday. Three months earlier I gave one of those people a very nice bottle of Robert Mondavi Private Selection Cabernet Sauvignon 1999.