Much has been made of our relationships with good wine across the ages. Even Shakespeare once wrote that good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used.
Unfortunately, he left out how to find good wine in the first place. Through the years, the quest of the grapes has spanned far more centuries and occupied far more books than the war of the roses — and probably cost more money.
But whether you’re a connoisseur or a beginner, here’s a little practical advice that goes a long way to find wines that are right (and rightly priced) for you.
1. Find wine-drinking friends
New Orleans, with its French heritage, is a bastion of bottle culture. Just off of the tree-lined Esplanade is Swirl, a little one-room wine shop that, like many of its kind across the country, hosts Friday soirees during which distributors offer complimentary wine while the owners help customers try bottles they might enjoy, and encourage groups of friends in attendance to find wines and cork their bottles together. The end result is a friendly atmosphere in which curious attendees casually experiment with a variety of new tastes.
“For us, when we created the store, we wanted to make an environment that we would want to go to,” co-owner Kerry Tully said. “We think about ‘Where would we like to go out and have a drink?’ — in terms of hanging out someplace that’s homey, and there’s no snobbery about wine. I think people recognize that this is an extension of our living room. You come get the gossip and get some wine and learn about wine, but in a very informal environment that makes it fun.”
2. Attend a wine tasting
If you’re ready to accumulate a little more formal knowledge of wine, attend a tasting. Wineries, bars, and wine shops frequently host tastings — as do many restaurants and hospitality establishments, like bed and breakfasts. Typically, the host will profer a variety of wines (red, white, dry, and sweet) at different qualities and costs. If you’re not quite sure where to find a wine tasting, try MeetUp.com, where about 251,000 members belong to about 1,000 wine-devoted groups, making it very likely there’s one not far from you.
3. Find a half-off wine bottle night
Many restaurants regularly feature a regular special on wines. In fact, it’s pretty common for restaurants to offer half-off a bottle of wine on certain nights, or during a happy hour. Though a bottle at half-off in a restaurant will still likely cost more than a bottle from a store, it’s a good deal for those who like to drink away from home, and it comes with a waiter or waitress to offer suggestions.
4. Find wine and food pairings
You might not know what wine you want, but odds are that you do have a favorite food. That means you’re just a little research away from finding a wine that goes with it. Erik Johnson, wine director at L’Espalier, a fine Boston eatery reknowned for the depth of its cellar, says there are no hard and fast rules for pairing wines (so forget old saws about reds only pairing with red meats).
“Match the weight of the wine to the weight and hardiness of the food, lighter wines with lighter foods and fuller wines with heavier dishes,” Johnson says. “If a dish is particularly complex and has many ingredients and nuances of flavor the best pairings come about by serving wines that are more straightforward in their flavor and structure. Similarly, simple preparations benefit from being paired with more complex flavors.”
5. Shop wholesale clubs
Some of the biggest — and least expensive — places to find wine are Costco and Sam’s Club. According to The Wall Street Journal, Costco sold about 75 million bottles of wine in 2008, and ten percent of America’s wine dollars are spent at Sam’s Club. There are a few good reasons to shop wholesale clubs for wine. Sam’s boasts savings of 20 to 30 percent under most traditional wine retailers’ prices. What’s more, the selection at a wholesale club is typically enormous, including a wide range of qualities. Lastly, whereas a wine novice might detect hints of pretension at a wine shop, unknowingly wheeling an unfashionable bottle out of a wholesale club is unlikely to draw the disdain of those shopping 32-roll packs of toilet paper and 64-ounce bags of chips.