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Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Simple advice for wine newbies

It's pretty daunting, huh? Grape names, winery label jargon, and wine terms you can't pronounce. All the wine buzz words that you don't have a clue as to what they mean. Then there are the tasting descriptors like, "a foxy blend of dried eastern spices and lush currant with a backbone for aging."  Huh?

The basic mantra to always remember is:

Drink what you like

This means you don't have to like what friends do, what the wine magazines do, or the wine judges. Drink what you will enjoy. You like oaky Chardonnay and cheap Merlots even though the "experts" say you shouldn't? It's your money and your palate.

Some other basic rules:

Drink what you can afford

You don't need to spend fifty bucks on a bottle of wine. There are plenty of good ones in the twenty dollar range and some good one for ten. If you have the disposable income fine--buy all the Napa cult wines you want and save the reasonably priced ones for the rest of us.

Maybe this wine blog is for you: Good wines under $20

Find a good wine shop

If you plan on getting more than the ten dollar grocery store stuff then find a retailer you can trust to be honest when you ask, "We're having glazed pork chops tonight and I'd like a red wine for about thirty dollars to go with that." Heck you can even say, "My in-laws will be over Sunday afternoon. We'll be on the back patio chatting and my mother-in-law loves oaky Chardonnays, but I don't want to spend more than twelve bucks on her."

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