Your 2015 wine (or spirits) positives and regrets

[David M. Bueker]

Thinking about the end of another year, and figured rather than yet another list of top 5 or top 10 bottles we could look at our pluses and minuses for the year.

Mine...

Positives: lots of interesting and delicious wines from small producers, including Enfield, Dirty & Rowdy and Idlewild; continuing to learn about Bourbon and Scotch; more fun dinners with good friends either at home or on the road

Regrets: still buying too much wine; still buying too much wine; still buying too much wine

Plusses: The wine scene here in Detroit continues to grow in a most organic, non-industrial fashion. There are now a number of bars, restaurants and wine shops that feature "natural" style wines...wines that you'd be delighted to find in Manhattan or San Francisco, but here they are available at retail or with your meal, and at very modest prices. (Examples? Oh, Clos Roche Blanche Pif '14, various Occhipinti and Cos, Gang of Four Beaujolais, etc.) Even some of the new upscale restaurants are eschewing the Chardonnay/Cabernet axiom in favor of varieties that many are unfamiliar with. I believe this is a phenomenon that can happen in a coming-back town like Detroit, but would be less likely in an upscale market.

Minuses: Realizing that I've left some bottles in the cellar too long, and consumed others too early. Ah well...

[David M. Bueker]

That's great news about the Detroit wine scene.

As for the timing of bottles-it's a guessing game, and the wine will always have the last word.

Despite limited availablity, I am always looking out for wines from Jura, Finger Lakes, Georgia, Pic St Loup. German Rieslings are always a big draw and one store in particular has a terrific selection, some from the mid-90s onwards.
Still buying way more than I will ever consume .

I've never had much of a problem with buying too much wine (although my wife might think differently), but I do see how it's a common thing among those with our interests.

My big development wine-wise over the past year or so has been to dramatically cut down on the number of producers/wines that I buy, in an effort to get deeper knowledge. In general I'm pretty happy with the move as I have gotten to know the producers/wines better.

But, the combination of my painfully-young 'cellar' and my fairly limited weekly drinking (most weeks it's just a bottle on Friday and a bottle on Saturday), means that at times it has gotten a bit frustrating to not have more diversity and be limited to recent release wines from a handful of producers.

That said, I've also gotten frustrated at not having enough exposure even to this limited number of wines, because even drinking one bottle every few months leaves so many variables open that you still don't quite know what is going on.

But, that lack of knowledge is also the beauty of things.

And, in the grand scheme of things, I'm not really going to up my weekly consumption and will be content to add in a few different wines here and there for the sake of diversity. Hard to complain about any of this!