My last relationship began and ended with wine. It started at a dimly lit wine bar in the East Village of New York City, where we mused about the wines we were drinking and the books we were reading. We flirted and made eyes and tentative light touches—doing all the things you do when you first fall in love. A few years and a lot of wine later, we had drifted in different directions. After we broke up my wine was the last thing I moved out of her place.
What ended up being our last hurrah as a couple was a trip to the Anderson Valley in the tippy-top corner of California’s wine country. We explored the coast and the redwood groves. We visited vineyards and made friends with some of the local winemakers. We had a romantic dinner that ended by a wood-fired stove in the restauranteur’s private cellar and art studio, long after closing time, drinking with the staff and a few of their friends. We talked and laughed and stayed up late looking at the stars while drinking good wine. A few days later we finally talked about our diverging priorities and parted ways amicably but with no small amount of sadness.
The things we shared, like The Witching Stick “Dowser’s Cuvee” (a beautiful Anderson Valley Pinot Noir), almost mean more to me now than they did while we were together. The Dowser’s Cuvee was already an emotion filled wine, but when I tried it today it conjured bittersweet memories as redolent of my past experiences as of the flavors in the wine: happiness and laughter sit comfortably next to vibrant red fruit, subtle earth, texture, and substance.
This is why I love wine. It can be so many things.
Wine is not a monolith. It isn’t a nebulous or vague concept only fit for debate by specialists. It can be complicated and emotional. It can be a living, breathing object of art that speaks to the nature of human experience. It can be rapturous and transcendent, especially when shared. Every glass is a new chance for discovery. Opening a wine with unexpected depth leaves me smiling for days, but sometimes a wine is flawed. It can be the wrong wine for the moment, or it can leave you puzzled and worse—indifferent. So it’s no wonder people are anxious about wine selection.
“What wine should I buy?” is a common refrain from my friends, and it’s a great question! The hard part is that unless I’m familiar with your local wine shop and what you like to drink, it’s nearly impossible to answer off-hand.
The best way to find great bottles is to learn a little more about wine and your own palate. But how do you start if you don’t know what you like? There’s a lot of wine out there, but there is a shortcut to finding better wine: be curious. As it turns out, laying down at the altar of good wine takes surprisingly little effort, and there are only three things you need to do:
Drink
Talk
Read
Curiosity does not kill the cat; often, it leads to an examined and erudite life. In this case, it could lead to a well-rounded wine palate and a better understanding of the world.
If you’ve shown up here thinking that learning about wine will turn you into a sommelier, I’d highly recommend reading Bianca Bosker’s Cork Dork, an in-depth look at what it actually takes to be a world-class somm. This guide is not for those with aspirations of becoming a sommelier, but for people like me, enthusiasts who don’t even know where to start. There’s a little studying involved, but the good news is that there’s a lot of great wine in your future.
Below are a few tips on how to drink, talk, and read about wine with purpose, so you can get back to the romance and emotion that come along with great wine. I didn’t grow up in a family that enjoyed wine, and didn’t dig into it until I started working in the industry. Every glass of wine is an instrument of experience, you don’t have to be born into a wine loving family to “get it.” Each sip gives you greater context for what a wine can taste like, wine books give you just a little more specificity on what a wine should taste like, and every conversation will illuminate something you might have missed on your own.
Wine is not a monolith. It is not one thing, and there is no “correct” way to approach it. Do what feels natural, and don’t forget to enjoy the ride. This guide is the way that I have approached wine. If it doesn’t work for you that’s okay! Just sit back and enjoy or keep researching other methods of learning about wine.
Regardless, cin cin, cheers, prost, et al., etc.!
This is the first and most important way to learn about wine. Wine is meant to be drunk and enjoyed. So pop open the bottles you've squirreled away for a rainy day. Drinking widely with an open mind will allow you to begin building a framework for evaluating wines. In wine, context is king. The more you know about a style or a grape or a winemaker, the more you can assess what they were trying to do. To even know what a “successful” wine is, means that you need to have experience drinking that wine. So go ahead and pour a glass if you have it.
But what if you don’t have any wine laying around? Then we go back to our original question: What wine should I buy?
Where do you even start?
If you have a partner or best friend that’s already into wine, congrats! You’ve unlocked a shortcut into wine selection. If you are a regular at a restaurant with a good wine list and a personable sommelier, that’s another great way to get started on your journey. For most, the first step is the wine shop.
People like to paint an intimidating picture of wine shops. There’s always a dreaded “wall of wine” chock full of labels and names you’ve never seen and don’t know how to pronounce, all looking more or less the same but with wildly varying prices. Thankfully today, this fear is obsolete. A quick google search can tell you how to pronounce Châteauneuf-du-Pape or Gewürztraminer correctly. You can look up average pricing on wine-searcher.com to make sure you are paying a fair price, and you can even see what other vintages are going for and if they are still on store shelves (who knows, maybe the wine you want has aging potential)!
If you are afraid of wine snobs, correcting or shaming you, please, for the love of God, don’t be. If someone is condescending because you don’t know how to pronounce a word you‘ve never said out loud before, fuck them. Every sommelier and independent wine shop I know is happy to help you find a wine that’s good and in your price point. Not only is it their job, but most of them do it because they are passionate about sharing good wine. And they’ll probably keep the shaming to a minimum.
Running a boutique shop or a restaurant is not a shortcut to profits. It’s an undertaking driven by people who generally want to share the good stuff. A great wine shop might even have helpful descriptions written out by hand to accompany their favorite selections.
Fun Fact: In the trade, these are known as “shelf talkers.” Big-box shops will feature points from competitions or quotes from critics with professional designs; these can generally be ignored. You want the handwritten notes that aren’t from a marketing department.
Most smaller cities or country towns only have big box wine stores. In this case, you will need to do a little reading (see step 3), try at random, or find another option. If you live in a midsize or large city, there are likely multiple great wine shops nearby. Strike up a conversation with one of the employees, tell them you want to learn and what you are willing to spend (more about pricing shortly). Be honest about your knowledge level and that you want to learn in an organized fashion. Wine is incredibly exciting! There’s so much discovery ahead, and any shop worth its salt would be happy to help you make a plan. Some of these specialty shops even have monthly wine clubs that will focus on specific regions or staff favorites.
Another approach is to tell the clerk what food you want to pair the wine with. Do you eat fish but not red meat? Do you prefer lots of spice, or is black pepper pushing your palate? These clues can help whoever is guiding you to getting better wines for your taste buds. A friend who was formerly a sommelier says that “wine is to food as metaphors are to nerds, you can have one without the other, but where’s the fun in that?”
One avenue for exploration is specifically curated online wine clubs that will ship directly to your house. But before you start down this path it’s important to know that not all wine clubs are created equal. I can personally vouch for SommSelect and Viticole, which are operated by highly educated and passionate master sommeliers. Their choices are interesting and generally come with lots of information about the producers, tasting notes, and reasons they were chosen.
Clubs aren’t always the most cost-effective way to learn about wine, but you don’t have to focus on the selection, which can help at the beginning of the learning process. Once you gain a little insight into what you like, you can re-evaluate your club status.
Wine Finding Tip: Wine importers and distributors typically have a style or philosophy that they enjoy in producers. If you look at the back label and notice a familiar importer or distributor, you might enjoy other selections from that same company. A few of my favorites are Jose Pastor Selections, Kermit Lynch, T. Edwards Wines, and Polaner Selections.
At this juncture, we should talk about price. One man’s bargain is another man’s ripoff. The more you learn about wine, the more exceptions there are, but in the beginning, there are general rules that you can follow regarding price. There are good $10 wines, but (and this is a big but) most $10 wines aren’t meant to be anything more than drinkable. While you can find thoroughly enjoyable and well-made wines on the cheap, the sweet spot I have found for site-specific wines at most retail shops is between $18-$30 per bottle. These are wines that come from a defined place with a classic profile, and this is the price-point where you start to taste terroir. The more specific the place, the higher the price. The price range varies by region, but generally wine from Mendoza, Argentina, will cost less than Champagne, but not always. This is a guideline, and you should either defer to your local shop or to your research (see step three).
Why am I not recommending any grocery store wines? Occasionally a grocery store has decent options, but the vast majority is “bulk wine.” A fun fact about the wine industry is that it’s agriculture! Many of the people who grow grapes are not winemakers. It’s their crop. Crop yields are affected by the weather and other mitigating factors. In good years excess grapes are used to make extra wine (ergo bulk wine), which is sold to companies to bottle under their own labels. This practice is commonplace in the UK and is growing steadily in the US. Some are good, some are bad, and (rarely) some are great. It all depends on the sourcing, which is often obfuscated by non-disclosure agreements used to protect the reputation and the price points of the original grower or winery that made the juice. So, it’s likely that your $8 bottle of wine only costs $2.50 to produce and is a Frankenstein blend from industrial vineyards across huge regions like “Australia.”
Learning how to find value takes even more work and will only emerge with time and patience.
Value Wine Tip: If you are in a restaurant, the Sommelier is there to help you. Telling them what you are willing to spend on a bottle will only help them find the best bottle for you. They want you to drink well.
Whew…okay, you’ve finally found a wine. Let’s talk about drinking it.
Drinking wine critically is different than throwing back a glass. It’s an intentional act. I keep a notebook where I record my initial thoughts on every wine I try with the date. If I am thinking about it later, I can flip back and see my original ideas. Good glassware is a luxury, but it is so, so helpful. I’m in love with my Zaltos, but they aren’t necessary to start tasting. Just make sure to get a decent universal wine glass with a stem. I promise it’s worth it. I also like to have a clean half-bottle (375 ml) for storing a final glass and a half or so to taste over the next day or two. The way that oxygen interacts with wine is fascinating, and I love to taste the same wine over two or three days to see what changes.
Putting words to flavors and textures is extremely difficult, and having a template to follow can help. The systematic tasting system prescribed by the WSET (Wine & Spirits Education Trust - a wonderful organization that kickstarted my education) is helpful. I’ll outline it and link it here along with the UC Davis Wine Aroma Wheel here.
First, look at the appearance. What color is it, and how vibrant is the color? Color can tell you a lot about the age or type of grape you are tasting. Different grapes produce different hues and opacities. Is it purple or a dull brick color? In older wine vibrant colors fade to a dull brown. If it’s watery around the rim and darker at the center, this is another clue that it could be an old wine.
Smell the wine. Breathe in deeply through the nose, hold it, and exhale again through the nose. How intense are the aromas? Check the wheel. Can you pick out any of the notes listed there? Flavors will generally present themselves in the nose, but occasionally the nose and tounge pick up different things.
Finally, take a sip. Does it match the nose, or is there something else going on? What’s the structure like? Is it sweet, are there tannins, etc.? Not sure what some of these terms mean exactly? Check out the Reading section below for useful resources.
Building taste memory takes time, so be patient, taste widely, and keep notes.
Recently, I’ve been more interested in writing about the actual feeling the wine creates for me, not just sensory tasting notes. I am struggling my way through the process of developing a non-masturbatory wine writing style. I think I still have quite a way to go.
Here’s a note that I wrote a few months back for the 2016 Domaine Hauvette Alpilles Blanc “Jaspe.” This 100% Roussanne (a white variety) comes from limestone soils nestled into the hills of Provence. My notes were as follows:
18 May 2020: “A strange wine, tight lemons & herbs with a bit of brine. The texture is light but has an all-encompassing bitterness and savory quality that rides out the long finish. A fascinating wine...it tastes like a rainstorm on a farm by the sea. It’s a vivid emotion. I think I’m in love.”
I kept thinking about this wine long after I drank it. It had an emotional tension to it. I started reading about the region and learned that the vineyard is close to the site that Van Gogh painted his Wheat Field series and Starry Night, it’s 30 miles from the Mediterranean, and the area is full of Roman ruins buffeted by the mistral. It’s wonderfully evocative stuff, and my note felt even more accurate after I read about where the wine came from and the winemaker’s philosophy.
Tasting shouldn’t be about the notes. It’s important to get the gist, but the emotions behind it and the images it can conjure are so much more important. Occasionally your company is the notable factor, like my Anderson Valley wines. Sometimes it just tastes good. And that’s okay too.
When I first started working in the wine industry, I had almost no experience evaluating wine. I had a glass from time to time, and there were a few bottles that piqued my interest (an unexpected Georgian wine on the beach in Greece, a zippy white from Alto Adige, and lots and lots of sparkling wine), but I didn’t know how to talk about it.
I found myself sharing wine with coworkers: two former sommeliers and a Master of Wine, as well as their friends who have decades of experience drinking good wine. They knew I was curious, but it was intimidating to give my comparatively rudimentary notes, and “I just know what I like” wasn’t going to cut it. Thankfully, they were nothing but encouraging because they wanted to help me learn and talk about what I was tasting.
One day, early on, I was handed a glass of wine. I looked at it; it was lightish, maybe medium red...it could have been almost anything. But the smell, oh the smell. I was transported back to my grandfather’s garage. I would sit on the lawnmower seat, swinging my legs while he worked. His pipe tobacco smell clung to his clothes, the smell of dirt came from his gardening tools, and in my mouth, there was a fresh piece of bubblegum from the bucket he picked at when he was trying to quit smoking. What was this wine? It's Beaujolais, they explained, and it’s made from the Gamay grape with techniques that can leave it with a hint (and sometimes more) of bubblegum. The benefit of talking about wine with other wine lovers was slowly coming into focus.
The neurology behind how we taste and smell is incredibly complex. A friend might smell something different than you do, or perhaps they may describe it in a way that makes more sense and opens up more layers in the wine. The more you try, the more context you have to place the wines you are drinking. So, gather some friends or loved ones interested in learning and start drinking wine together on a regular basis.
You don’t have to have a dedicated group, but it will really, really help. There’s a reason that the people studying for the Master of Wine or Master Sommelier certifications meet up in groups to taste together.
Your tastings don’t have to look anything like this, but these parameters have helped my friends. Here are a few tips from a recent Loire Valley Cabernet Franc night as an example:
-I like to have a few wines on hand that showcase different price points or age. Depending on the tasting theme, this can grow or shrink, but it was four Cabernet Francs from the Loire Valley. We had a cheaper example ($15*) that was still region-specific, two examples from similar terroir but different producers (~$25/$65), and an older example from 2003** that a friend had accidentally cellared for longer than anticipated. This kind of breadth will teach you about the difference in quality at different price points, and hopefully about what aged wine can taste like.
-When selecting wines, it can be helpful to have a human guide; this is where your local wine shop or a subscription service can be useful.
-To ease the burden of hosting switch locations. We like to order pizza to show up at the end of the tasting portion so that no one spends time showing off their cooking skills. The evening is about wine, and we don’t want to get competitive about the hosting portion!
-Having palate cleansers on hand (white bread, crackers, etc.) will help prepare you between wines. I like to have charcuterie, olives, and tinned fish on hand for a second pass with food. Some wines are best with food, and the best way to learn about pairings is to taste widely.
-More than one wine glass per wine per person is mandatory. Smelling and tasting wines side by side will help you dig into the differences. If you finish a glass of wine and then pour another, it’s much harder to discern what’s going on. Having a few glasses per person will yield the best results.
-Have fun; you’re drinking wine for god’s sake.
-It’s helpful for the most bookishly inclined person in the group to research the wines ahead of time. You can find information on wineries from their website (if they have one), the importers website, wine-searcher notes, pro reviews, their instagrams, and blog posts. Referencing books about the grape or region can also be a useful resource, which leads us to the next section.
*Not all old wine is good. It’s a different game altogether and most wine is meant to be enjoyed relatively young, but old bottles can be magic.
**The Loire Valley is a more affordable area than many although some great Loire Cab Francs can go in to the multip hundreds of dollars, so before you jump into a Burgundy, Bordeaux, or Champagne night make sure everyone is on the same page with the costs associated.
When I want to learn more about a wine, a region, the industry, or anything tangential to wine, there are a few resources that I find absolutely indispensable. If you don’t know where to start, I would highly recommend these three sources as your first purchases:
The Oxford Companion to Wine 4th Ed. - Jancis Robinson
Written by the queen of wine herself, Jancis Robinson MW. The Oxford Companion To Wine is a book that can tell you about almost anything you’d like to know. I use it so often that I own the physical book and the kindle version for quick reference when I’m traveling.
Grapes & Wine - Oz Clarke
Jancis Robinson also has a very thorough book on wine grapes, but I love the levity that Oz Clarke brings to his wine writing. He really revels in the senses that wine can impart. Grapes & Wine does a fantastic job breaking down what makes a grape interesting, why it grows where it does, and what it can taste like. It is a great foil to the regional breakdowns in most wine books.
The World Atlas of Wine 8th ed. - Hugh Johnson feat. Jancis Robinson
This is one for everyone who likes staring at maps. As a kid, I spent hours staring at the maps in The Hobbit, imagining what life was like in the margins, and today I do the same with wine maps. “Ahh, Corsica, etc.” Geography is such an essential part of wine that this book can be massively helpful in understanding what makes a wine region tick. It’s gorgeous and highlights notable regions all over the world.
If these are helpful for you and you travel a lot Jancis Robinson offers an online portal behind a subscription paywall for £85 per year that includes The World Atlas, The Oxford Companion, wine journalism, and wine reviews. A deal.
These books are a bit more specific, so if any spark your interest, you can add them to your wine library knowing that they are worth your time.
The Sommeliers Atlas of Taste - Rajat Parr and Jordan Mackay
This is a book where we start to get into the weeds. If you are interested in drinking fine European wines, this is a must-have guide, and really, I’d call this book wine pornography.
The New California Wine - Jon Bonné
Bonné is an amazing writer who has graced all of my favorite print and online publications writing thoughtful and relevant pieces about what wine is and can be. This book reframed my perspective on domestic wine and gave me a look into some things that I had missed in my euro-centric drinking.
Dan Keeling’s magazine is a shrine to the vine, a bastion of free-thinking, good taste, and good wine. Issues are published every four months (or so), but you can purchase many of the back issues. Next year they will be releasing a book that I am stoked about.
Punch Magazine (Online)
Punch is a fantastic website with a mix of journalism on all different facets of the drinks industry.
Foodandwineaesthetics.com - Dwight Furrow
Interested in aesthetic theory and also in wine? Is wine art? Can we really discuss wine objectively? Does objectivity actually exist? These are the questions that Professor Dwight Furrow explores on his blog and in his weekly column at 3quarksdaily.com.
Lewis Perdue Daily Blast - email
If you get so sucked into wine that you want to start learning about the nuts and bolts of the industry, Lewis compiles an amazing weekday email and puts it in a helpful comprehensive blast. I’ve been exposed to so much that I would have missed entirely if not for this email.
Drops of God - Tadashi Age (Yuko and Shin Kibayashi)
A tale as old as time: when Shizuku Kanzaki goes to claim his inheritance after the passing of his famous wine critic father, he learns that he must correctly identify 12 amazing wines (the “Drops of God”) and beat out the formidable critic and newly adopted brother Issei Tomine in a winner-takes-all inheritance competition. The only problem? Shizuku has never even tried wine. These comics are so dramatic, but honestly, a blast to read. The Kibayashi’s love of wine is evident. Available through Kodansha and also on Amazon’s Comixology service.
The most confounding book on this list. Is it necessary? No. Does it make sense? No. Is it amazing? Yes. Want to read about “Wines of Frivolity” and “Wines of Light”? This book is for you.
——
There you have it. My quick guide to wine knowledge.
To quote the Kibayshi’s: great wine is the result of Heaven, Earth, & Man working in harmony. Drinking, talking, and reading will work in the same way, reinforcing the others until you are more than a sum of your wine parts.
To feel at all is a stupendous thing, and when you encounter a wine that carries emotional weight, well, buckle up, because you are going on a journey. Sometimes a wine can taste even sweeter with a hint of melancholy. Wines of emotion are the wines that will stick with you long after the bottle is empty or a relationship is over.
Cheers.
-w.c.f.
