You’re No Dummie, or How to Stay Afloat in an Ocean of Wine

Perhaps the subtitle should be, “After all, you should have far better things to do with your time than rigorously study wine.” But at the same time, people are drinking wine like never before. We are perhaps a generation or two from being as comfortable with wine as an everyday beverage as our European brethren are, but the day will come. After all, the United States is the world’s No. 1 consumer at 33 million hectoliters annually. That’s about 871,000,000 gallons!

So, it stands to reason that if you are more than an occasional sipper, it makes sense to at least feel confident enough to make some wine choices knowingly rather than showing blind faith in someone else’s opinions or just grabbing anything that’s within your price range at that moment. Of course, if that’s the level of your interest, then by all means, you should just grab and go. But not all grape juice is created equal, so I would argue that you’re way better off being at least a little forearmed.

The problem is that even if you do want to indulge in some study, the subject matter is so hopelessly riddled with exceptions to rules, caveats, inconsistencies, etc., that you might very well think it’s an utter waste of your time to even try.

You’d be right and wrong. It truly is possible to learn enough—you only need a few common-sense tools—to be able to impress and/or bore your friends, family, co-workers, Facebook and Insta “friends” and even that random person you meet in a wine store who looks more puzzled than you.

And that’s where this series comes in.

In subsequent postings, I will provide some order and logic to what is often presented in a very cluttered manner. You won’t know everything, or nearly everything. Ever. But you will know enough to, at minimum, ask the right questions when you’re faced with making a choice among unfamiliar wines.

These posts aren’t intended to be mini-treatises on wine. Instead, they will hopefully simply provide you with the means to get to the ends—a mouthful of a wine that you picked because you wanted to try it, not a wine that you got by default.

You are encouraged to email me with questions because there really are no stupid ones. Seriously.

Part 1 will deal with reading a label. It’s harder and easier than it seems.