Badenoch

My go to choice to befuddle the wine snobs is Bulgarian wine.

Doc Savage

Whine connoisseurs, yes.


The other kind, probably not so much. I'm sure there are some wine experts, but there seem to be a lot of dilettantes who believe it to be trendy to mention how much wines cost, etc. I find it humorous at times.

Me? I enjoy sampling local wines or those recommended by trusted friends, but could never see spending the money it takes to get "into" the loftier realms.

gobluetwo

A lot of people drink enough wine and care enough about it to know the vineyards, vintages, characteristics of this and that, etc. It's like any other serious hobby, whether it's working on cars, mountain biking, computers/tech, frequent flyering, word maker-upping, philately, etc. You're going to research it and know a lot about it.

I know enough about wines to taste something and decide whether or not I like it (although I also have a fairly wide tolerance), but not enough to say, "I like such and such a wine from such and such vineyard" or "I prefer fruity whatever to buttery whatever else" or "this wine pairs well with this food." I'll know it when I taste it.

BamaVol

It might be harder to do in Europe, but wine from the Bekaa valley of Lebanon will confuse the run-of-the-mill wine snob over here. It's not as easy to put your hands on it outside the bigger cities.

Even the local wine shops here seem limited to France, Italy, US, Australia, Germany, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina, Portugal and Spain. I never see a gruner veltliner from Austria outside of the occasional German restaurant. I never see Lebanese wine. I can state with complete confidence that wine from Bulgaria doesn't make it this far.

Scarier still, you can find wines from Florida, Alabama and Georgia on the shelf here. Mrs BamaVol and I covered the Alabama Wine Trail about 8 years ago. Save yourself the trouble.

Badenoch

How about South African? It's another favourite.

The problem with most of the lesser known wine-producing countries is the good stuff they keep for themselves.

andyh64000

My wife and I have always been into wine but when my daughter's softball tournaments took us through wine country we started really getting into Washington Wines (especially Red Mountain AVA).

Now the back wall of my basement level home office looks like this:

BamaVol

I'd be lucky to find 3 wines from S. Africa in a local wine shop. And none in a well stocked grocery store wine department.

You're right about the little guys keeping the good stuff to themselves. And the major wine producing countries keep the better low-priced stuff for the local market. I've walked out of a Paris wine shop with a decent €2 bottle under my arm. It's not economically beneficial to export that.

Holy Moly!

A guy that works out of one of our European offices is in the wine business with his husband as a sideline. I asked him how many bottles they had. His answer was "At least 10,000 in one cellar......."

Kagehitokiri

also crap sells vast amounts at high margins/prices, especially in US, so they dont need to have quality

BenA

You're gonna laugh, but the best place to find South African wine in the US Southeast is..... Walt Disney World?

As part of building Animal Kingdom and the Animal Kingdom Lodge, Disney developed deep relationships with many ZA wineries hoping to break into the export market that have stuck around to today. Their restaurant Jiko actually has one of the most extensive South African-focused wine collections outside the country, and many of the nicer bottles are at shockingly reasonable prices to encourage American audiences to give them a try. (Especially shocking by Disney price standards, actually.)

If you ever find yourself in Orlando doing the Mouse thing, I highly recommend a stop. They hold a weekly wine tasting on Wednesday, but that's pretty beginner-focused - I'd instead recommend booking a dinner reservation and asking to chat with their sommelier to pick out a bottle or two. (The food is excellent, too - I'm not going to claim it's Michelin starred, but it could certainly be competitive in the top tier of restaurants in any major US city on its own right.)

andyh64000

My wife and I did one of those wine tastings a couple of years ago (and it was reasonably priced...especially for Disney) and had dinner at Jiko that week for our 20th Anniversary...but I brought a 95 Jordan Cab because we were married in 1995.

I really like Chakalaka as a good value wine which we discovered there.

corky

That's a nice looking back wall!!!

Doc Savage

Are you saying he has a nice rack?

DeweyCheathem

Actually, yes I do. On one hand, trying stuff and buying quantities of the good ones is a critical activity - but first and foremost, one has to narrow down the most likely candidates for success:

1st of all, I largely avoid broad generic appellations, and hone in on wines that are from more tightly defined geographies and good vintage years. For example: GO has TONS of Zinfandels, but many of them are simply from "California". I generally skip those. OTOH, some of them are from recent good vintages, from specific AVAs such as Russian River Valley, Sonoma Valley or Dry Creek Valley, or Paso Robles. Those would be the ones to try.

For Cabernets and Merlots, again, I would avoid anything from "California", and concentrate on wines from Napa, or Sonoma, or Mendocino, or even more specific locations like Alexander Valley or Rutherford. One of the best $10 cabs I've ever found was a Trader Joe's 2007 Rutherford Meritage. At that time, no name winery was selling a Meritage from the Rutherford Appellation for less than $40 - and this wine was in the same qualitative class as those.

For Pinot Noirs, again, avoid the ones from "California", and seek out wines from known good geographies for pinot like Sonoma Coast, or Russian River Valley, or Carneros, or Santa Lucia Highlands, and again, pay attention to vintages.

For Syrahs or Rhone blends, I'll pretty much try anything from McLaren Vale or any good specific appellation in California or Chile.

Other general rules: I pretty much avoid wines from un-heard-of producers with fake winery names.

I also buy lots of Chilean, Spanish, and Portuguese reds - again, from specific geographies like the Maipo Valley, Maule Valley or Casablanca Valley in Chile, Ribera del Duero or Rioja in Spain, and Duoro in Portugal.

747FC

Regarding the comments above that foreign producers don't export the good stuff: I've never had bad house wine while driving through France, Italy, or Switzerland. In contrast, I'll never buy the house wine in any American restaurant not associated with a winery.

As to wine in J or F, unless I'm in F on a foreign carrier, I don't have high expectations.

Funny how our household wine budget has escalated over the decades. I blame our wine connoisseur friends who have shared their good taste and good fortune.

ckendall

I am not a wine expert but I know a fair amount (I do own more wine than I am likely to drink in the next year...or ten). When I go to restaurants I can "read" the wine list and understand more or less how it was put together and what stuff someone like me would be interested in. I perform a similar exercise on the plane and try to find something that will not (for me) be terrible, depending on what I am eating and how I am feeling.

When you spend enough time buying wine (as is discussed above) at different levels there are things you look for (vintages/producers/grapes/locations/styles) that give you a clue as to what's in the bottle, though there are often surprises. Perhaps not as many positive surprises as negative surprises, but you continue to learn because there are many more wines out there than you can possibly taste.