Choosing the right wine

Hi all,

When you walk into a wine-shop, have you ever had the problem of choosing the right kind of wine from the shelves of hundreds of bottles which you probably have never seen or tasted in your life? How do you go about selecting the right bottle of wine with the reasonable price to the quality of wine in that bottle?

David Zee

I ask the salesperson.

I ask the salesperson.

Unless it is an exceptionally good store, trusting the salesperson is a crap shoot. You are better off with the owner, usually an enthusiast. In chains, of course, he/she is not likely to be there.

If all the wines or their producers are really unfamiliar, either by personal experience or repute, it's hard to know, though, what else to suggest.

If it were me, I would be influenced by the bottle (no body-builders or fantasy bottles), the label design (I like sober labels) and what is written on the back label (with some practice in aiming off and interpretation, I find these useful but not if they are in Georgian or Greek only).

Unless it is an exceptionally good store, trusting the salesperson is a crap shoot..

I don't think he said 'trust' the salesperson, he said 'ask' the salesperson. I only ask people what is good and trust their opinion if I already know their palate from interacting over time. But even in a new shop you can ask about style and other structural descriptors for wines that you are not familiar with. Often throwing out some benchmark wines to let the salesperson know what 'oaky' 'ripe' and 'acidic' mean to me.

Of course sometimes there are incompetent people who can't even get these basic things straight. But for the most part, asking the right questions should get something that suits my stylistic needs.

As a side note, this is always my big advice to wine newbies/casual drinkers. Rather than trying to remember details of producers/cuvees/vintages etc, I encourage them to be clear about their palate preferences and then just communicate those to shop clerks/sommeliers/etc.

[David M. Bueker]

If the shop has zero or no good help you can always whip out your iPhone or other mobile device and check the web for tasting notes. Sites like this or especially CellarTracker (oodles of notes) have lots of good info.

If the shop has zero or no good help you can always whip out your iPhone or other mobile device and check the web for tasting notes. Sites like this or especially CellarTracker (oodles of notes) have lots of good info.

David - I was just typing up the same advice!

There is never any harm in asking for advice. Whether you take the advice is another matter. I find I have a pretty good bullshit detector that I rely on in such situations.

The way I did it, many many years ago, was to go into the shop and pick a couple of bottles in my price range, and red or white depending on what I wanted that day. Then I went back and did the same again with a couple more bottles, and again, until I had an idea what brands and types I liked and didn't like.
Of course my price range then (and mostly now) eliminated practically everything I'd ever heard of or read about.
As I got older and my memory either failed or got cluttered with stuff I didn't want to remember, I started taking notes. Now I have a multi-megabyte spreadsheet.
And what do I do now, when I walk into a wine shop? I look around and generally pick a couple of bottles that I've never heard of, mostly because I've never heard of them.
Mostly, I find that bottles I don't know about from personal experience are ok, but nothing to write home about. It's about even odds whether a bottle will be good enough, or bad enough, to remember.
Many, many years ago, my price range was aiming for $5, but I'd stretch to $10 if I felt wealthy. Nowadays, I aim for $10-15 for whites and around $20 for reds. But I'll still go for a cheapie once in a while and splurge on rare occasions (such as for my 70th birthday, recently).

John

I would try to determine if the shop has an interest in a specific wine or region. In many cases this reflects the owners preference and those wines are often of better quality than the wines he feels he has to carry to be a complete wine shop. For instance if the shop has an large section on greek wines and the shop is not located in the greek section of town, it would be a reasonable assumption that those wines would offer better value than any of the limited selctions that it also carries.

If the shop has zero or no good help......

.....you should probably find a different shop!

[David M. Bueker]

If the shop has zero or no good help......

.....you should probably find a different shop!

Perhaps, but even really good shops have hours when the people I would want to talk to are not working - most Sundays for example.

David
I can remember a time when 99% of the wines on the shelves meant little to me. Now I guess I know broadly what to expect from a good high proportion. Much of that is tasting, but reading also helps to a great degree. The good part of this is the journey is a good one

For me it worked best to focus on specific regions/countries and build some confidence up there before branching out, but it's a personal thing that may work differently for others.

The reading can offer good ideas to try (and still works for me), but your palate and own tasting experience will be the thing that sends you back to the store for more.

regards

Ian