I want to become well versed in wines

I want to become well versed in wines

This is the first I've seen this thread. Is this "The Official GRM - I'm about to get trashed thread"?

ryanty22 wrote:

mndsm wrote: First step is to not drink wine and learn beer. Beer is better.

Learning wine would give me something in common with SWMBO and her senior level white collar coworkers

My advice would be to sit back and let them spout off about wines. Then you can baffle them with your knowledge of cars.

NOHOME wrote: On a more serious note. Since this is a bonding experience, take the wife unit to a few wine tours. Pay attention to what comes out of the guides mouth; you will be repeating much of it in the future. Also pay attention to what your wife likes in a wine. You will want to become an expert in that variety of wine and learn to skirt around the edges and expand on the repertoire. Say she likes a Pinot Noir. Do some research into what defines a Pinot Noir and what differentiates a good one from a bad one. Now start looking for Pinot Noirs that you think your wife might like. It's kinda like sex in that you gotta keep trying new stuff and pushing the boundaries and sometimes ya show up with the weed-whacker and a featherduster to see where the boundaries lie, but you keep trying! As to wine snobbery at a social function, its a matter of "My wine versus Your wine" You use your hard-earned Pinot trivia and knowledge to shoot down his Cabernet expertise. Hint; learn a bit about yeast, fermentation and secondary malolactic fermentation to gain an advantage. Be sure to expound on the merits of wine diamonds in the bottom of the bottle. As with most things in life, the secret to success is sincerity; learn to fake it and you got it made, you need to make it sound like you actually care about this stuff. As long as neither one of you backs down, the conversation can go on for a long time. The bonus is that this dialectic will bring you up to speed on the merits of Cabernets or whatever your opponent is proposing. Myself, I love good wine. I fish in the 25-50/bottle pond and look for big-full bodied wines with a lot of tanins and some age in a barrel to mellow out the bite. Oak (the ketchup of the wine industry) is also good in that it can bring some nice vanilla tones. My generic wine snob speech: "Most wines today are artificially colored and that is a bad thing. Wine should not be purple nor leave a color stain on the glass after you finish. If it is well aged, it will be burgundy with a slight brown tinge." Discuss...

What I saw in this was get wife drunk on wine and have sex with her.

That's the point in the end isn't it?

James May on Champagne: "Pop, fizz, drink, bang!"

skierd wrote: That's the point in the end isn't it?

spitfirebill wrote:

NOHOME wrote: On a more serious note. Since this is a bonding experience, take the wife unit to a few wine tours. Pay attention to what comes out of the guides mouth; you will be repeating much of it in the future. Also pay attention to what your wife likes in a wine. You will want to become an expert in that variety of wine and learn to skirt around the edges and expand on the repertoire. Say she likes a Pinot Noir. Do some research into what defines a Pinot Noir and what differentiates a good one from a bad one. Now start looking for Pinot Noirs that you think your wife might like. It's kinda like sex in that you gotta keep trying new stuff and pushing the boundaries and sometimes ya show up with the weed-whacker and a featherduster to see where the boundaries lie, but you keep trying! As to wine snobbery at a social function, its a matter of "My wine versus Your wine" You use your hard-earned Pinot trivia and knowledge to shoot down his Cabernet expertise. Hint; learn a bit about yeast, fermentation and secondary malolactic fermentation to gain an advantage. Be sure to expound on the merits of wine diamonds in the bottom of the bottle. As with most things in life, the secret to success is sincerity; learn to fake it and you got it made, you need to make it sound like you actually care about this stuff. As long as neither one of you backs down, the conversation can go on for a long time. The bonus is that this dialectic will bring you up to speed on the merits of Cabernets or whatever your opponent is proposing. Myself, I love good wine. I fish in the 25-50/bottle pond and look for big-full bodied wines with a lot of tanins and some age in a barrel to mellow out the bite. Oak (the ketchup of the wine industry) is also good in that it can bring some nice vanilla tones. My generic wine snob speech: "Most wines today are artificially colored and that is a bad thing. Wine should not be purple nor leave a color stain on the glass after you finish. If it is well aged, it will be burgundy with a slight brown tinge." Discuss...

What I saw in this was get wife drunk on wine and have sex with her.

You Sir are an astute reader.

For wine tours, try the Shenendoah (sic) valley in Virginia. Wine tastings and tours, even learned a few things.

For the price of one bottle of one of these wines, you can buy cases and cases of the other wine. Easy decision.

This is the easily the most helpful wine resource on the web: http://www.bumwine.com/

Everything you could want to know. I like Night Train because it works and it has a cool picture of a steam locomotive on the label.

Lot's of references to wine snobbery. Yes, there are a few, but most people who love wine are not snobs. There's a guy in ON who makes some of the best wines I've tasted anywhere. He's got a pizza oven at the winery as well. Wine people are good people.

02Pilot wrote: First step is taste. A lot. When you do, pay attention to what you like and what you don't - this will be the easy part. The part that requires careful consideration and that will develop your palette is determining WHY you like or don't like it. The latter is tricky when you first start out. Identifying particular tastes, smells, and other characteristics when they're intermingled is not always easy, but doing so allows you to better understand what's going on in a given vintage.

This is sort of what I've done.

About 6 years ago, the ex- and I started going to the Watkins Glen Vintage Festival. We had dabbled in wine a bit - mainly sweet dessert wines from a nearby winery in NJ. Then as something else to do while there, I went along with some friends (who are big wine drinkers) to a few of the wineries around Lake Seneca (there are dozens). At first, the ex- was convinced she wouldn't like any, but after a year she was finally convinced there are other wineries besides her local place the make the sweet wines she liked. That first year we were there, we came home with 4 cases of wine.

Fast forward a few years and going to wineries became a part of the trip we looked forward to almost more than the event (actually true for her) and we both started venturing out and trying more "adult wines" as we called them - drier wines rather than the sometimes very sweet wines we had been buying (I have one wine that's literally like alcoholic grape juice - over ice it goes down dangerously fast...).

More recently, I've started liking merlot wines, preferably with a bit of oak flavor to them. I'm still not fond of very dry wines much in the same way I don't care for hoppy beers with high IBU ratings.

Some wineries are better for tasting than others. One winery on Lake Seneca was particularly good - at least for a novice like me - and even after 6 years or so, I still consider myself very much a novice when it comes to wine. They started out on the dry end of their range and went to the sweet side, explaining what gave each wine its flavor. I believe it was Chateau Lafayette, but I might be mistaken.

Taste often and don't be afraid to come back to something you may not have liked before. Personally, I don't care much about what makes a wine one way or another. I just like what I like. I have rarely bought wines at stores and prefer to buy them at wineries where I can try them first. Fortunately in NJ and eastern PA, I have a number of wineries to chose from when my NY stock starts getting low.

Lastly, wine around the Finger Lakes is much cheaper than in PA or NJ...