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If you don't know anything about wine, the safest thing is to just go with what you like. And this means first and foremost ignoring price and prestige even if
by sddfd 9y ago
If you don't know anything about wine, the safest thing is to just go with what you like. And this means first and foremost ignoring price and prestige even if you'll be called a philistine.
One thing about wine I really enjoy is that there are so many different tastes available, and that tastes may vary by year.
If you're still exploring your preferences, I'd recommend to stay below 30€/bottle (reseller price, not restaurant) and try a lot of different ones (not necessarily on the same evening thought).
- robbrown451 9y agoMaybe you are talking to others, not me, but I'm not "still exploring my preferences" regarding wine. I honestly don't care...there are probably 10,000 things that I would rather spend my time exploring compared to wine. I enjoy wine 99% for the buzz, and if want something that genuinely pleases me as it goes down the hatch, and I'm not trying to impress anyone with my sophisticated tastes, my first choice would have to be a combination of whole milk and Nesquik powder.
- autokad 9y agoit depends on what foods you are eating. wine goes really well with certain foods eaten in a certain order. if you could care less about maximizing the experience, thats fine, but drinking and enjoying wine is not about some 'pretending to be wealthy' feeling.
- jaggederest 9y ago> wine goes really well with certain foods eaten in a certain order. > drinking and enjoying wine is not about some 'pretending to be wealthy' feeling. I'm pretty sure that these two statements are contradictory. Wine tastes good, and it tastes good with other things, but in no way more special than say, other fruit juices or beverages. Do you maximize the experience of a fine meal with a flight of six different orange juices? No, nobody ever does that. And yet there is certainly as much variation in citrus juice as there is in grape. Wine is treated differently precisely for the kind of reasons that you have to explicitly disclaim "pretending to be wealthy" as a motivation.
- foldr 9y agoOrange juice clearly doesn't go with food in the same way that wine does.
- delecti 9y agoAs someone who enjoys orange juice and thinks more than 95% of wine tastes awful, I agree but probably in the opposite direction that you intended with your statement.
- foldr 9y agoI enjoy orange juice too, but it doesn't go well with food.
- kbutler 9y agoI'm with the grandparent on this one - I like OJ with various foods.
- ionised 9y agoOJ goes great with my meals.
- delecti 9y agoI'm astounded by how many comments in this thread state as absolutes things that are obviously personal preference. I have never in my life felt a meal was better because of the addition of wine, but I find orange juice to be a compliment to a meal on a regular basis.
- doktrin 9y ago> Do you maximize the experience of a fine meal with a flight of six different orange juices? No, nobody ever does that. I love orange juice, but I don't want it with my steak.
- Radim 9y ago
- robbrown451 9y agoI think you underestimate the role culture plays in preferences. I don't doubt you can "maximize the experience", but you can do that with lots of things, for a lot less money. I could obsess over the exact balance and handle shape of the mug I drink my morning coffee out of if I wanted, to give the maximum pleasurable feeling on my hand as I lift the cup to my lips.
- biot 9y agoI'm not a fan of "obligatory xkcd" references but this one is directly relevant and hits the nail on the head: https://www.xkcd.com/915/ https://www.xkcd.com/915/
- robbrown451 9y agoAwesome.
- mannykannot 9y agoI think you are underestimating the role preference plays in preferences. We get it that you like wine mostly for the buzz, but it so happens that when people like it mainly for other aspects, they are not always faking it, and neither are they always posturing. When my wife and I enjoy a glass of wine at home, no-one else knows.
- robbrown451 9y agoI think you are misunderstanding what I am getting at. It's like music... some genres of music are pretty unlikely that an individual would like except for the culture that surrounds them and promotes them. And yet, sure, those people that do like them, after being exposed to that culture, still probably listen to that music when no one is watching. I'm not suggesting that most people are consciously trying to impress people.
- sanderjd 9y agoFor what it's worth, this doesn't seem true to me for either wine or your analogy to music. People like different things.
- corndoge 9y agoI'm with you, I'll take chocolate milk over port every day of the week
- sanderjd 9y agoWhy do you seem so aggressive about this? Don't drink wine if you don't like it. Nobody cares what you do. Lots of people do like wine. What difference does it make to you?
- secabeen 9y agoWell, there is a lot of evidence that your perception of the quality of a wine actually effects how you taste it. If you can somehow convince yourself that a $3 bottle is actually $30 bottle (or more), you'll actually like it better!
- nightski 9y agoIt's just not true at the very low price points. I can drink 3 buck chuck anytime but I will know it is 3 buck chuck. Why? It's much harsher and lacks any depth in flavor. Now give me a good wine in the $15-20 range and it can be incredibly satisfying. There are also plenty of bad expensive wines. But as you dip below the $10 mark I have yet to find a wine that isn't much harsher and harder to drink.
- arbuge 9y agoAny recommendations?
- staticautomatic 9y agoIn terms of value: For red, Portugal can't be beat. For white, Gascogne.
- xapata 9y agoTempranillo. It's light like a Pinot Noir, but without the cachet that the Sideways movie gave, so they tend to be cheaper.
- Avshalom 9y agoI am super pissed in a not actually pissed at all sorts of way that my local liquor stores seem to be stocking entirely 100% tempranillo. I don't know if Spain just gave into the American obsession with varietals or what but personally I love a 70-90 trempranillo but it's very much a grape that benefits from a blend.
- robbrown451 9y ago
- ars 9y ago> the safest thing is to just go with what you like. I have never tasted a wine I liked. Ever. At best some were tolerable. The sweeter the better. Dry wines taste absolutely disgusting. Like someone collected filth and put it in a bottle to trick people (the emperor has no clothes). I once tried adding sugar to a dry wine to see if I could taste those flavor notes the bottle said they contained. It helped a bit, but not much. Like a color blind person not believing color really exists, I have a hard time believing people that they actually like the stuff.
- fmihaila 9y agoI enjoy wine, but I understand where you're coming from. It turns out that neuroscience has some intriguing things to say about the general concept of 'acquired taste'. For instance, the first time people heard Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring', they rioted. This Radiolab episode [1] discusses an interesting hypothesis that might explain the events of that night, and I strongly suspect the same factors are the reason for similar reactions to many different kinds of stimuli, possibly including your experience with wine. Anyway, it's a great episode. [1] http://www.radiolab.org/story/91512-musical-language/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/91512-musical-language/
- cc81 9y agoDo you like beer or coffee? Those two are also pretty harsh and not sweet. The reason why I like red wine is because I can select ones that are not sweet and I really enjoy non sweet drinks with food. Water is nice and what I usually drink but it is pretty neutral and does not add to the meal the same way wine can do. However I'm not a fan of alcohol so I have been starting to drink non-alcoholic beers (I like lagers and I think those are fine as non-alcohol) but I have not found a good non-alcoholic red wine yet. I would love to though so if anyone has any recommendations please tell.
- ars 9y agoI do not like coffee, but I'll drink it with sugar if I need the stimulation (although normally I'll just swallow a spoonful of dried instant coffee instead to get it down quick). I'm neutral toward beer, don't really like it, but don't hate it either.
- matwood 9y ago> If you don't know anything about wine, the safest thing is to just go with what you like. Even if you do know about wine this is what you should be doing. Drinking expensive wine because it's expensive is the wrong thing to do. The people who I know who really know wine are always in search of good wine that is also inexpensive.
- kstenerud 9y agoAlso, a wine rating app like vivino is a good way to explore wines while (hopefully) avoiding the ones that are utter shit. Just pick whatever's cheap and rated 3.8 or higher, and you'll usually find something decent.
- radarsat1 9y ago> ignoring price and prestige It's funny to lump these together. Having lived in a couple of wine-producing countries now, I've found the wine culture is heavily centered around finding the best price for the best wine. Finding a half-way decent low-priced wine is considered just as much a skill as knowing which high-priced wines are actually worth the cost.
- SilasX 9y ago>One thing about wine I really enjoy is that there are so many different tastes available, and that tastes may vary by year. Are there? You may be missing that not everyone even notices this enormous variation in taste[1]. For my part, all wines taste like sting-y grape juice, and most beers taste like empty sting. This persists after numerous wine/beer connoisseurs have insisted that I just need to try one more of this special brand, or insisted that each wine in a particular flight has a very different taste. For that matter, perhaps you're just imagining the flavor variation and have tuned yourself to give the socially-correct answer? Furthermore, there may be an unrecognized disagreement in the basic ontology of "liking" something. I know people who will swear up and down that they "like alcohol", but it turns out they only like it when it's heavily diluted with other, universally enjoyable flavors (e.g. sugar). In my book, that's not what liking something looks like. See also this reddit thread, with numerous posters agreeing that all alcohols taste gross to them: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/2juncs/do_people_actually_enjoy_the_taste_of_alcohol_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/2juncs/d... [1] Important reading: "What universal human experiences are you missing out on without realizing it?" Punchline: people casually assume that all humans experience X, ground major beliefs on X, and turn out to be mistaken. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-experiences-are-you-missing-without-realizing-it/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-ex...