The Best Ways to Find the Wines You Love!

The majority of wine producers and importers who happen to read this article are likely to disapprove of its blunt language. It is an earnest attempt to help you select wines that will fit your taste, purse, and purpose.

No industry, except perhaps the makers of photographic supplies, makes it harder for the uninformed consumer to buy its merchandise than the vintners do, with their flowery advertisements which exhort without informing, and their mysterious labels which few storekeepers and restaurateurs—let alone the puzzled public—can understand.

Thousands of people are continually asking those of us who are supposed to know: "What wine shall I buy?" Sometimes the questioner adds, with a note of despair: "Never mind giving me a lecture; just tell me the name of the wine and where I can get it." This is not an easy question either.

Wines, unlike most other processed foods and beverages, are constantly changing, as the weather in the vineyards changes from season to season, almost the way apples and other fresh fruits do. Few vintners are able to continue putting into their bottles, month in and month out, exactly the same blends under each of their type labels. It would be unlikely to be able to buy a duplicate of any wine in my own cellar.

Certainly no store in your city can sell you the identical wine which won a gold medal in any of the recent annual quality competitions. Even the wine in an individual bottle continues aging and changing while it is being shipped and while it stands in the store; and, too often, it may even have spoiled before you buy it. Besides, wineries change hands, while the founding dates on their labels do not.

These are some of the reasons wines are always an interesting topic of conversation; they are, in fact, part of its charm. They are also reasons why some secrets known to hardened wine shoppers, may make your wine buying easier.

If you are not now a wine buyer, and are about to get your feet wet for the first time, it is pertinent to note that nobody ever learned to swim from a textbook. The only way to decide whether you will like or dislike rutabaga, endive, water cress, or other unfamiliar vegetables is to taste them. Likewise, to find which wine flavors please you, you have to taste enough Nebbiolo and Mourvedre to find out.

Don't give up too easily, because it has been proved conclusively, by scientific taste tests administered to thousands of people that somewhere in the wonderfully wide flavor spectrum of wines there are always one or more nectars to delight each individual's palate.

The best and least expensive way to sample different wines (and this is a handy method for experienced wine shoppers, too) is to visit one of the wineries which offer free tasting for their visitors. There are scores of such wineries in California and all over the nation. You might also get yourself invited to one of the wine-tasting parties at which vintners supply free wines, which they do frequently in a number of American cities whose state laws permit it.

If you are not fortunate enough to live in or visit one of these favored localities, perhaps some kind friend will serve you a wine which you discover you like (in which case be sure to copy the label and learn exactly where he bought it). Otherwise you will have to pay your way in the tasting department.

Ordinarily, this means investing a few dollars in pure shopping adventure. It involves buying different types and brands more or less at random, taking them home and sampling them. Why not invite a few friends to share the expense and the fun of a do-it-yourself wine tasting? Hide the labels, number the bottles, and keep score of the wines best liked. Then unveil the labels to identify your choices. The wines you don't happen to like, whether they are Viognier or Tempranillo, can be given to someone else to whom their flavor is appealing.

If you don't tire in the process, you will eventually be rewarded. For, as that renowned wine judge, Dr. Charles Pierre Mathe, always says: "Wine is like American business. When it's good, it's very good; when it's bad, it's still pretty good!"