I much prefer “the grain”, as you put it, but I do buy wines by the case, mainly for serving at dinner parties.
Any domestic claret will do. Cabernet is the most selective I’d recommend. After that, you’re paying for the label, not the flavor.
well… I only know Austrian wine so far…
and a few Italian…
That s it.
Here they are not so tough about underage drinking.
Harsh as it may sound: If a 10 year old tries to buy a bottle, nobody will look at the kid in a strange way (any kind of alcohol… from beer to whiskey). All it needs to do is tell em it is for his mommy or daddie… well… if they happen to ask at all.
Practically you dont really need to look at the label - just at the year. Or that s what my sis says… in Amsterdam we bought the cheapest wines ever but as she knew which years were good we mostly were surprised at the good quality.
dodgy
Huh? Cabernets are just one broad category of wine. There are plenty of blends and varietals that taste great and don’t cost much. I’m w/ mattk on not having the kind of palate that can justify big bucks for wine, but there still are appreciable differences even in inexpensive wines.
The labels are just the same as w/ micro-brews. You figure out which ones consistently produce a quality product.
Just remembered another one to recommend: Rosenblum zinfandels ('98, IRC); very smooth, very soft and costs about $10 per bottle.
Veb
forgot somethihng…
I got no idea how to say this in English…
but maybe it is called the same over there:
stay away from sulphurized wines…
Wine nothing like a good bottle of red to go with my diner (or was it supper).
Just bought me a Rothschild 1996 for new years’s eve.
I think i like the Bordeaux wines best, especially with a good diner.
For desert however i prefer Muscat white (well amber actually)wine.
If you ever need a wine for a romantic evening just go ahead and pop the corck on a Coullioure red wine.(south of France near Andorra). Pure ambrosia.
BornDodgy, I think the English word you’re looking for is sulfites. 
Recently had dinner with a Doctor my mother works with. I’ve never been a fan of Wine, especially white. However, this evening, he brought along a couple of bottles of a New Zealand imported wine under the label of “Cloudy Bay.” can’t remember the exact vintage, but coming from a non-wine drinker, this one was superb!!
Holy Crap,pl I as just going to suggest the same one!
I think it’s around $12.
If you like that that one, I’ll bet you will also like my other suggestion: 1996 Beringer North Coast Zinfandel.(NOT a White Zinfandel) It’s a little pricier, but a very mellow wine.
Oncle Bière
… Any domestic claret will do…
? Claret is what the English have traditionally called the wines from Burgundy, as that area was all a part of England as its viniculture was being built up, so I’m not sure what a domestic claret is?
The Germans have some top-drawer stuff if you like whites, the Rieslings along the Weinstrasse in the Pfalz or the Saarland are honestly amongst the best in the world and don’t need to cost an arm and a leg. Just remember, dry dry dry. In particular anything from Buerklin Wolf, Knipser, Basserman-Jordan or Forst will be a very nice drinking wine.
For the reds you can’t beat the Rieba del Duerro (sp) or Pesquatera in Spain for good value, the Rioja for quality at a price. If you really want to splurge have a look at the wines from the Cote D’or in France, Beaume, Pommard, Nuits St George, Montrachet, Vosignee etc, very nice indeed and all grown within 20 miles of each other, but not exactly a bargain.
I lean more towards reds than whites. Although, there are some whites I like. That being said…
For my money you can’t go wrong with a Louis-Jadot Pinot Noir. I like the Ravenswood Zinfandel very much. Just about any Multipulciano you’re likely to come across is good. As far as Chardonnays go, I’m into the Clos Du Bois. If you’re in the mood for something different and can find it, an Italian wine called Prosecco is worth a shot.
Stay away from White Zinfandel. It’s Kool-aid.
Personally I find Rhieslings too sweet for me.
Just my $0.02 worth.
There’s nothing quite like the cloying aftertaste of a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 to accentuate the flavor of the vomit that is sure to accompany it shortly after consumption.
frannie - we enjoyed a few bottles of Rodney Strong over the holidays. Not a bad bottle among them. Believe we still have a pinot noir at home. Well now I’m thirsty!
R.H. Phillips has a chardonnay called Toasted Head that I really like. I have also grown very fond of Francis Ford Coppola’s Diamond series chard. If you can find any Gavi, a nice light Italian white, you should try a bottle of it.
If you’re looking for reds, try Christian Moueix’s merlot. He’s the wine maker for Petrus, and seems to know what he’s doing. The best bit is the wine tends to go for about 6-8 bucks a bottle. Heavy on the fruit, light on tanins; this seems to be prefered by the newer wine drinker.
I’ve liked everything I’ve tried from Penfolds. Basically, find the “bin XX” that fits your price range. Boots, another aussie wine, is also pretty good.
Columbia Crest (from Washington state) used to be an unbelievably value ( 7 bucks for a cab that could age for a few years), but the fame let them up the price. Its still pretty good for the price; I think it is in the $15 range now.
In the $10~20 range, try Freestone. It is the second label of von Strasser, my single favourite wine. I think it is a little on the light side, but newer drinkers love it.
Gallo puts out lots of good wines. I’ve never been a big fan of KJ, but the vintner’s reserve isn’t bad.
As for “paying for the label”; well, we held a blind tasting recently, and the '87 Jordan went awfully quickly. So did the '84 Duckhorn. They may not be worth the money to you, but trust me when I say that people can tell the difference.
Hey Euty,
I second the recommendation to find a wine tasting or a store with a friendly staff. You could try Town Wine and Spirits in East Providence. The owner’s name is Elliot (I think) and he’s got lots of good suggestions. Also, they have a wine-of-the-month club. You choose either red or white and they’ll send a bottle to your house each month for six months (or whatever). I gave this to my father last year for Christmas and he loved it.
It seemed really strange to me that everywhere I travelled - if I was given wine with a meal it seemed to be Australian.
Not that I was complaining mind you but as a member of a wine club here in Oz it would have been nice to be fed some local wines.
Jacobs Creek is a great wine to drink (red especially) for the price
Brown Brothers is usually welcome at any dinner table.
Four Sisters has a good name
ummm - really it is a matter of personal taste - and that changes as time goes by anyway. I am still a novice red wine drinker but even in a short time my tastes have changed on what I like.
Wine is so cool.
Anyway, Euty, I can recommend some wine, if you’d like, but it’s better to know what you like first. Red or white? Heavy on tannins or not? What types of fruits? Complex or no? There are a lot of things to consider; of course, you could just wander into a wine store and start sampling. You can definitely teach yourself that way.
Fow cheap wines, I just found a pretty nice, mild, well-rounded red. It’s a Delas Freres from the Languedoc (on the coast of the Rhone) region of France. I think I picked it up for about $7 and it was great.
I have to disagree with a couple things said in this thread, though. One is that Beaujoulais Nouveau is “the worst wine ever.” True, it’s bottled and shipped right away, but that’s the point (hence the “Nouveau”). It’s a cute holiday wine for people who are just starting their vino experience.
Also, mattk said:
Uh…you kind of miss out on a lot of wines, then, especially those from France. Many countries categorize wines by the region, instead of the grape. And even those that don’t, occasionally produce wines without the type in it. I certainly wouldn’t refuse a bottle of Opus One, even though it doesn’t say “California Cabernet” on it.
I will second katie’s recommendation of Toasted Head. I was suprised, actually, because in my experience RH Phillips isn’t a fantastic winery.
I’ve been getting interested in wines too, not being a beer drinker.
Since we don’t really drink wine with dinner (mostly because we’re too busy for me to make any kind of regular meal) unless we go out, I stick with the sweeter whites (German, generally) for a nice glass when I get home.
I don’t know much but these are the ones I think I like. I say think because I don’t know if I’m identifying an actual type of wine or just its region! But, here goes:
- Gurwertzintrammener (sp!)
- Piersporter
- Rhiesling
- Lambrusco (red)
No particular order. http://www.wine.com has a wine-of-the-month club that hubby and I are going to join. 2 bottles of wine: white, red or red and white each month for $30 or so, along with tasting instructions and etc. You can choose more expensive packages (Wines of California, Wines of the World, Fine Vintages, etc). Looking forward too it.
EUTY, if you like Chardonnays, I’ll second the vote for Kendall-Jackson Vitner’s Reserve; IMO one of the best (and consistently good) table whites in the less-than-20-bucks category. I also like Clos du Bois and Stag’s Leap, which are both Napa Chardonnays.
If you’re just getting into reds and don’t like the tannic taste, I think a nice Shiraz is a great place to start. The Australians do 'em pretty well, as many have noted above. I wouldn’t bother with an Australian white as the California whites are almost always better for the money, but I haven’t yet found a reasonably-priced American Shiraz that’s worth drinking. If you like Merlot, Mondavi does a nice one, also for less than $20.
When I started drinking wine seriously (to the extent that’s an exercise worth of the word “serious,” which, let’s face it, it ain’t), I took $120 to the local wine seller and asked him to pick out two or three reasonably-priced good whites and the same in reds for an unsophisticated palate. Having a baseline of what I liked, I could then go back and ask for “something like” whatever I had most enjoyed. And, knowing my own tastes better (oaky, not fruity, Chardonnays; no sweet wines in general), I can better ask for recommendations for other wines to try. Have fun! And don’t listen to the wine snobs who’ll tell you something is, in the words of Dave Barry, “Episcopalian in its predictability.” If you like it, drink it; if you don’t, don’t.
That’s actually the whole point of Beaujolais Nouveau - that it is young and unaged. Bottled, sold and drunk in the year it was produced.
It is young, fruity, generally lacking in complexity, but utterly drinkable.
Its season begins the third Thursday in November. If you have a bottle of 2000, drink it soon. If you have a bottle of 1999 or earlier, dump it out. They don’t age well. That is the point of selling and drinking them young. It is not a wine meant to be taken seriously, which is probably one of the reasons your wine steward looked down his nose at it. Wines made with the gamay grape have long gotten no respect. But the wine steward seemed to imply that there was something shady about it being bottled and sold young. Quite the contrary - it is bottled and sold young because that is the essence of Beaujolais Nouveau.
Try it. If you enjoy it, drink it. The French have been doing it for several hundred years.