Wine Shopping Made Easy

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By Adrienne Asher-Gepford
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Living in St. Helena, in the heart of Napa Valley's wine country, I sometimes find the wine choices at even the most ordinary grocery stores overwhelming. Where do you start? How can you make this easy and enjoyable? Here are some pointers:

Save money with the big boys

Have you been keeping notes on wines that you've liked? Do you have favorite varietals and wineries? If you already know a fair amount about wine and know exactly what you want to buy, a larger discount beverage chain can generally save you money.

But if your wine knowledge is spotty, large discount stores can become discouraging. Because these stores have such a huge selection, the staff may not be well educated about all their offerings and, therefore, may be unable to help you pick out something new. Also, the big warehouses may carry dozens of wines at good prices, but sometimes clerks are in very short supply.

Then there's the issue of wine storage temperature. The large discount houses (as opposed to smaller shops) may not have temperature-controlled storage, and too much heat can damage wines.

Create a club

By joining with like-minded friends and trying out many different bottles of, say, Chardonnay, you can find out which producers make the kinds of wine you like without having to buy and drink all those wines yourself.

Decide on a monthly theme (Chardonnay, Merlot, Cabernet), make up a list of who's bringing what (to avoid duplications), and then have each person bring a bottle and a chunk of cheese. (Hint: Cantal, Cheddar, Double Gloucester, Gouda (mature), Grana Padano, Gruyere, Manchego, Parmesan-Reggiano, Red Leicester, and Ricotta Salata are good with almost any wine.) A couple of good crusty breads will round out a fun, delicious, and enlightening event.

Make a friend

Once you've found a producer that you like, visit a local wine shop with knowledgeable staff and tell the clerk what you've previously tasted and liked. Get to know that person; he or she will be able to scout out other wines with similar characteristics that you can try. Although the wines here might possibly be more expensive than at the large chain stores, the helpfulness, knowledge, and cellaring temperatures will probably be better.

Keep a sense of humor

Everything is new to everyone at some point. Which is to say that even well-known wine gurus had a time when they didn't know Chardonnay from Chenin Blanc. Think of wine buying as fun and it will be. Keep a sense of humor toward people that try to be intimidating, don't allow your internal critic any air time, and think of this in the same way that you used to think of ice cream stores when you were a kid.

Remember all those flavors and all those wonderful choices? Keep that state of mind: wide-eyed wonder and gustatory greed!

Be adventuresome

After you've tried some of the suggestions from those friendly neighborhood wine clerks, ask them for some of their favorites — something different, maybe something from another country or in a completely different style. Break out of your shell and become a wine detective, searching for clues to new and interesting wines. Read about wines and try some that sound good. If you find that you agree with a particular reviewer's taste, sample some of that reviewer's other recommendations.
So this weekend, fire up the grill, put on some music, invite some friends over, and begin the adventure. It will be fun, and that's what food and wine is all about.


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What does this have to do with the "culture" forum

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Thanks for reading... didnt know where else to post it.

Originally Posted by Arinze

What does this have to do with the "culture" forum

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By Matthew Amster-Burton
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Are you the type of person who can only get to sleep on your side, in a room with the proper temperature and lighting? Well, your wine has similar needs. Here are some wine-storage ideas for every collection size and every budget.

First, remember that most wines are made to drink immediately and won't improve with age. Don't buy an expensive wine-storage solution and stock it with Beaujolais Nouveau.

When you have wine that deserves to be stored, here's how to keep it happy:

Constant temperature
Between 50 and 60 degrees F is ideal, with as little fluctuation as possible.

High humidity
A dry room leads to desiccated corks, which means leaky, oxidized bottles, which means sad wine drinkers. This is also why wine should be stored on its side: to keep the cork wet.

Darkness
Light is energy, and energy makes chemical reactions happen faster — too fast for delicate wine in repose.

Wine in fine places

Here are four places to store wine:

Closet. If you live in a temperate climate with a small wine collection that doesn't require long aging, a closet or basement is fine. I keep my wine in my daughter's closet, an arrangement I plan to stick with until she's old enough to work a corkscrew.

Wine cave. Also known as a wine fridge (or, confusingly, a wine cellar), a wine cave is a refrigerator built with wine in mind. They're available standalone or built into a kitchen counter, and many models feature a special cold section for chilling white wine to serving temperature. Wine caves come in sizes from six bottles to over 500 and are priced from under $150 (for a modest six-bottle cave) to over $5,000 (for a snazzy 500-bottle wardrobe). A popular brand is Vinotemp.
Some wine caves double as cigar humidors. Of course, if you're the kind of person who can say with a straight face, "My wine cave doubles as a cigar humidor," you already have one of these.

Cellar with cooling unit. If you want to store a lot of wine at home, you can add a cooling unit (a specialized air conditioner) to your basement or another room. They're sold on the basis of cubic feet of cooling capacity, and run $500 and up.
Of course, you can also have the whole cellar professionally designed and built. That's the approach David Dearie took. Dearie, president of Brown-Forman Wines (best known for the Fetzer brand), built a lavish cellar at his Louisville, Ky., home. The killer feature? A window in the floor of the upstairs wet bar that provides a view into the cellar.
"I'm a great believer that wine is for drinking," says Dearie. "So the idea is that people see the wines and then we go down and drink them. It's not a trophy cellar. It's a cellar for having fun."
Do women in skirts hesitate to stay upstairs? "Being a Scotsman, it's all part of the plan," Dearie laughs. "No one's too worrried, but we haven't quite had a party in the wine cellar yet."

Offsite storage. The final option is not to store your wine at home at all. Many wine shops offer professional wine storage: For a monthly fee, you can sit in your easy chair with a glass of merlot and let someone else worry about the humidity.
Offsite storage is relatively inexpensive. At Esquin Wine Merchants in Seattle, a nine-case unit (storage for over a hundred bottles) is $19 per month. Esquin keeps their units at a constant 55 degrees and 50 percent to 75 percent humidity. "We have quite a range of people that store here, anybody from people that enjoy wine and now are starting to spend more money, up to the people who have cellars at home and have just run out of room," says store manager Alisha Gosline.
Some people who could certainly afford to store their wine at home prefer to keep it at Esquin. "We have walk-in lockers that hold about 225 cases, and we have somebody who has two or three of those lockers," says Gosline.

Finally, we'd all do well to heed this advice from The Oxford Companion to Wine: "It is also important that there are no strong, persistent smells in a long-term wine storage area." In other words, while wine and stinky cheese are perfect partners at dinner, don't keep them in the same cellar.

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Staggering sums for legendary names
by Alice Feiring, ForbesTraveler.com

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People invest in expensive wine for various reasons -- some gustatory, others strictly financial. You can't drink a Picasso. It is, however, very possible to ingest a $135,000 1947 Cheval Blanc over the course of a lazy afternoon.

We consulted auction houses, wine experts, and seasoned collectors to assemble a list of the ten most expensive bottles of wine ever sold. The figures are staggering, but every bottle has a different story.

The wine auction market has not only recovered from the burst bubble of 2000, but according to Peter D. Meltzer, who watches the auction market for The Wine Spectator, it's on a roll.

"You can make an analogy to what's going on with impressionists and modern art," he says. "For the last two years, it's been a seller's market--in fact it's at the highest point ever."

He attributes success partly to the incredible property on the market, which he qualifies as wines that are rare, in good to perfect condition with pristine provenance, and directly from a celebrated collector or chateau. Christie's recently auctioned off a case of 1945 Château Mouton-Rothschild for roughly $29,000 per 750 ml. bottle.

See our slideshow of the 10 most expensive bottles of wine ever sold >>

Meltzer also cites new blood as a reason for why the market is on fire. "There's a whole new body of high net worth operators who see owning the wine as chic; drinking it is a way to impress. Some do buy for investment, hoping to flip down the road for considerable prices."

Which, of course, can be done. Consider the lucky souls who bought a bottle of 1982 Château Lafite or Mouton-Rothschild: At vintage they sold for about $400, and now they fetch up to $10,000.

The bottles that bring in the truly big bucks are well-known names. After all, there's a reason oenophiles call these wines "the blue chips." The lion's share come from the top growths of Bordeaux: Lafite, Margaux, Mouton-Rothschild, Latour, Haut Brion, Petrus, Cheval Blanc and the sweet wine, d'Yquem.

Other top sellers on our list belong to iconic wineries whose storied names no longer exist; the 1941 Inglenook Cabernet Sauvignon fits into this niche. A case of these sold at an auction in Los Angeles for roughly $25,000 a bottle.

Francis Ford Coppola bought two bottles of it in 2004. Coppola's Rubicon Estate Winery is located on a portion of the property first acquired in 1879 by Finnish Sea Captain Gustave Niebaum, founder of the Inglenook Winery.

Another wine brimming with history--at least for those Down Under--is the 1951 Penfolds Grange ($40,000). That was a priceless first vintage made by the godfather of Australian wine, Max Schubert.

Read on to learn the stories behind the 10 most expensive bottles of wine ever sold. Chin Chin!
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back to retirement

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