Wine can be a complex subject, but does it have to be?  Picture the scenario if you will, it is Saturday morning and you are in the laborious process of buying the food for the Saturday night dinner.  However this is no ordinary dinner – the returned favour to a friend who treated you to a glorious meal accompanied by some wonderful wines.  The food you can cope with thanks to the naked chef but the wine is a different matter! 

What will go with the food you are preparing?  How much do you spend?  Will it be nice?  What is a Pouilly Fume anyway?  Suddenly you are confronted by shelves and shelves of wines of all types.  Each label describes the “stunning” wine contained within them.  You are drawn to other wines simply because the label looks nice or the bottle is pretty colour.  Bamboozled by the choice, price becomes the next determining factor.  If you buy a cheap wine, you will look cheap, buying an expensive wine will guarantee better quality but will you like it?  So you look at the wines others are buying or the wines mentioned in the myriad of books available on the subject but swiftly you draw the conclusion that it is all someone else’s opinion and yet more hype!

So what is the solution?

Try before you buy.  Tasting wine is the only way to ascertain if it suits your taste and your pocket.  Most wine retailers will not allow you to taste their product – they rely on people not knowing about wine!

How can you do this if you are in France buying your wines? This is actually my favourite question because I personally do this and make a lunch of it. We go to a hypermarket and get a great selection of lunch and then visit the wine shop and purchase a dozen wines which either catch my eye or I have a vague recollecction of. We then proceed to taste them all over lunch making notes of which are good and which are poor. Then we return to the shop in a jovial mood and purchase the winners. This has worked for me every time and is a great way to find out which wines you like when abroad.

How about if you don’t go to France then……well I recommend asking me for a taster case. This is a selection of wines which I will select for you to try at home on the condition that you give them a fair an honest appraisal and obviously return to buy them at a later date. The reason for this is that taster cases are at the lowest price they can be but I dont just want to sell taster cases, therefore I am relying on the integrity of the customer to buy the wines and then to return to pay the usual price for them later. That way everyone wins! so go to wineman and ask me now for a taster case of your choice.