$10-15 Australian is about the sweet spot here. For that you can get some extremely nice reds and whites, from Australia and NZ. I’m bang in the middle of a large cool-climate wine region and some of the local stuff is very nice.
I knew a Navy captain once who gave me a few bottles of Chilean wine (the Chilean Navy had a ‘tall ship’ they used for training officer cadets. Every few years it would sail to Australia for training and the crew would stock up on local wines to trade with the RAN guys). Worth trying if you can find it.
The aforementioned $250 bottle of wine was a 1989 vintage (we drank it in February this year). I think its age is why it was so delicious. No way would we risk dropping 250 on an old bottle of wine, but for charity, we felt it wasn’t really a risk. It ended up being super fun.
As for the “when,” apparently, there is an app for that.
Sorry for the confusion, when I say I don’t know “when” I should drink them I know they’re ready to drink at any time. I just don’t know what occasion deserves me cracking a $100 bottle of wine!
Hey, hey, New York makes some great rieslings and gewurtztraminers, and some other wines made from cold-tolerant grapes.
But I agree that the reds are not so great yet.
I drink mostly box wine, but I have no palate at all. In a restaurant, usually the house wine.
We picked up several bottles once at a sale where it was “buy one, get the second for five cents more”. My dear departed mother-in-law came over for dinner. We opened a bottle and poured her a glass.
She tasted it, looked at me, and said “this must be the one that cost a nickel.”
Personally I know my sense of smell is less acute than average thanks to being allergic to dust. The small differences in taste are just less noticeable to me anyway. I also tend to be a bang for the buck kind of guy in general. Given that I know about the research I can replace “I spent a lot so it must be good” mental happiness triggers with “I got something good cheaper” self congratulations. It’s not like I am probably going to be able to taste the small differences, when they exist, anyway.
Since I’ve been in Indiana local wines haven’t made the cut but I know where I can still get solid budget choices from Michigan wines (mostly Traverse City area wineries than the SW MI wineries.) My grandparents had retired up in the region, and I spent good chunks of my youthful summers up there, so I get the added bonus of ties to happy memories. For styles that aren’t their strength I move outside regional. I still mostly fall in the $5-10 with occasional forays into $10-15.
Like one o’ them rich, wine-making Rothchilds said 150 years ago, when asked if he would ever order a white wine:
“I might, if all the red wine in the world suddenly disappeared.”
I enjoy a glass of Sancerre or Vouvray or Chablis – dry white Burgundies – once in a while with something like raw oysters or grilled shrimp, but if I’m eating most things that would be grossly inappropriate with red wine I usually opt for a brewski.
(Well-chilled Austrian greuner veltleiner is another good choice for a hot day.)
I have to admit that NYS doesn’t make a good fox wine even though it is a huge producer of the Concord. I am tempted to pick up some Concords and take a stab at it myself since all of that particular fox wine I’ve tried is far too sweet, and I absolutely love the taste of Concord grapes. Canada does good with its take on Niagara (the only white wine I like.) Canada also has the only New World Gamay that I’ve liked: heck maybe I should just try more Canadian wine.
For me it depends on how much spending money I have on me at the time… I’m typically in the $15-$20 range but I’m saving for a vacation in a couple weeks so the other day I bought a Bota Box for $20.
On the way out I saw a sale on a Pinot Grigio for $5.99(Fox Brook, Napa) so I grabbed a bottle. Damn fine wine for that price… today is their monthly 20% off all wine so I think i’ll go pick up a case for under $60.
Oh, we do like our wine! We are subscription club members at multiple California wineries. We like to spend a few bucks on wine tasting dinners. You get the picture.
That said, we are quite comfortable shopping at the $6 to $15 dollar a bottle range. We don’t do two-buck chuck any more, because it just seemed to be kinda hinky more and more (Maybe our tastes have changed? Don’t know). I also don’t spend more than maybe $75 for special occasions, because I don’t know enough to choose just the right one.
But I will quite happily try a drink from an expensive bottle if someone is offering! I’ve had plenty of good to really good wines this way. Just once I had something that was described as “over $1000 a bottle”. It was transcendent. I mean, I’ve drank a lot of wine in my life - but this was from a different planet altogether. Mmmmmmmm.
I spend between $5 and $25 normally. I choose new wines based on what I like at tastings. Wegmans supermarket has frequent wine tastings as does the local liquor shop I go to.
Count me as another fan of Chateau Saint Michelle. Everyone I give the Gewürztraminer loves it and buys more…or already has seven bottles and drink it all the time.
We’re cheap.
Ditto New Hampshire. I’d forgotten that you can buy wine anywhere in NH and was shocked when I found quite the aisle in CVS.
You should (try more Canadian wines, that is). I am not far from some of the prime wineries in southern Ontario, primarily the Niagara Escarpment and Twenty Valley, and have become a big fan of many of their products, especially the lovely niche products that never make it out of the winery into the big liquor chains. Canadian (I’m thinking mostly Ontario) wines are going through the same transition to world-class excellence that California wines went through many years ago.
Unfortunately, unlike California where massive production and relatively low liquor levies make the local stuff wonderfully cheap, the better Canadian wines are relatively expensive, but still compete well with many of the best in the world. It’s about a lot more than just the traditional icewine now. Varietals like Cabernet Franc and Pinot Noir are among the classics that thrive in Ontario’s climate, but there are great Cabernets Savs, Merlots, Gamays, Chardonnays, and Reislings. A few years ago one winery produced a stunning vintage of Cabernet Franc that was to die for, sent off to all the stores at the normal price of $17 or so, but easily worth four or five times the price. They never raised the price as its qualities became known, but instead the entire production sold out within weeks. I counted myself lucky to score around ten bottles. Subsequent years produced excellent Cab Francs, but never achieved the magic of that one special vintage.
