Advice for beginners

As someone new to becoming proficient at enjoying, selecting and tasting wine, I was wondering about any resources that I'm overlooking or any advice that could be offered in getting started. I really have two main goals. One is to develop a sharper palette, the other is to have a restaurant wine menu not look like a foreign language.

At 35, I'm familiar with many general "wine with food" concepts. I've made a point to read/watch several "Intro to wine" books/DVD's. I've bought a wine journal and have been filling out entries regularly. Currently, I'm sampling a different varietal each week for 4-6 weeks to get a sense of each varietal's quality's. So far I've done Pinot Noir and I'm currently on Chadonnay. My budget has been keeping the price range around $10-15. I feel I have a good grasp of the basics of tasting, wine regions, processes, etc.

Of course there's attending tastings and wine parties and I'm signed up to the 30 second advisor and newsletter, but any other suggestions on palette development and wine selection? Do aroma kits work? With all the wine out there, it seems like 10 years before someone could know what they're talking about! And anyone from Louisville who has some local tips, that would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

As someone new to becoming proficient at enjoying, selecting and tasting wine, I was wondering about any resources that I'm overlooking

Well now that you've found this site, I don't think you've overlooked anything

Currently, I'm sampling a different varietal each week for 4-6 weeks to get a sense of each varietal's quality's. So far I've done Pinot Noir and I'm currently on Chadonnay. My budget has been keeping the price range around $10-15. I feel I have a good grasp of the basics of tasting, wine regions, processes, etc.

Although you might find that price range too constricting as your appreciation develops, your structured approach is certainly commendable and in my opinion is the best way to progress. It also helps to talk with knowledgable people about what you're tasting, so attending events and participating in forums like this one are another way to get the most out of your tasting experiences.

it seems like 10 years before someone could know what they're talking about!

More likely to be much longer. But that hasn't stopped anyone here!

Also, I can't resist the pedantic verification that you are not referring to your painterly palette but instead to your palate?

Concerning restaurant menus, you will quickly find that most regions have anywhere from a handful to a couple of dozen top producers that you are likely to see on most menus. If you know what those producers' wines are like and you encounter an unfamiliar name, you can always ask the sommelier/restaurant staff how their wines compare to the ones you know and you should get steered in the right direction.

However, as you noted, there are so many wine regions it could take quite a while to get up to date on all of them. So, another key tactic is being able to express your structural and stylistic preferences (oak, tannin, acid, etc) and let the sommelier/restaurant staff guide you from there.

Of course this advice assumes that the sommelier/restaurant staff is moderately familiar with his or her offerings, which is not always the case. So, you could always just carry your Blackberry and do web searches from inside the restaurant

Well now that you've found this site, I don't think you've overlooked anything

Take the time to become familiar with this site. In addition to "The Wine Forum", become familiar with "Wine Focus Forum", where a different wine is in the spotlight each month, the many links on the Home Page and subscribe to Robin's "30-Second Wine Advisor", which is emailed 3 times per week.

[Robin Garr]

Chris, thanks for signing on to the forum as I suggested ... I think you'll find a lot of good advice here, and fuel for your growing wine interest.

Since I live in Louisville, too, I'll be glad to help with answers to questions you may have about wine shops, events and such. If you're interested in food and drink as well, you might want to join also the LouisvilleHotBytes Restaurants Forum, which is on similar software as this but is an independent forum requiring separate information. Become a "regular" there as well, and you'll generally get the first notice of local tastings as well as frequent "offlines" where forum members get together at a restaurant or other venue to eat and drink.

LouisvilleHotBytes.com Forum

Hi Chris - just a couple of comments...

Personally I don't think I learned a great deal from my aroma kit. I have a Nez du Vin. The experience is very different from swilling and sniffing a glass of wine.

Varietals are not everything. Make sure also that you familiarise yourself with wines from the classic wine regions. I am a little sceptical about many of the claims made for terroir, but to me Bordeaux wine (for example) has an identity that has little to do with the varieties in the blend.

Oh, and don't forget to DRINK wine, and enjoy it

I am a graphic artist, must've been a Freudian slip - palate/palette, whoops. But these are some great points and just the kind of thing I was looking for. I hope to hear more...

Chris
One big lesson to learn - there is such a thing as a perfect palate... and it's yours! Many folk (myself included at times) accept too much influence from wine writers/critics and it's all too easy to think that as they speak so confidently they must be "right". Listening respectfully to other's opinions, whilst still making your own mind up is definitely the right attitude.

A couple of suggestions that might help.

- Get a good book on wine tasting (I like Schuster's Essential winetasting). It helps you put tastes into context and in describing wine (so you can recall what you like/dislike and share that with others). The wine tasting vocabulary sections are really very useful.

- Monthly wine focus and irregular "Open Mike" threads here are a useful way to compare wine styles and indeed with Open Mike, to compare palate preferences. Forumite Bob Parsons has a great attitude to these and has a really enquiring mind with resepct to wine styles and it's an attitude that I respect. If there's a wine that you fancy tasting and comparing views with others, then feel free to post an Open Mike thread and usually one or two others will make an attempt to source the wine if they don't already have a bottle.

I hope this helps

regards

Ian

I really have two main goals. One is to develop a sharper palette, the other is to have a restaurant wine menu not look like a foreign language.

To be honest, I am not sure what you are getting at with your first goal. One likes what one likes. It may change over time with exposure to many wines. Likewise, one generally becomes more accustomed to identifying flavors inherent to different grapes/wines/regions/etc. but this can also be a downfall when one starts to expect a wine to taste a certain way instead of just letting the wine express itself. The mind can easily create flavors not there if it expects them to be there. One example is when working at a winery in the mid-west, the wine maker sent me home with a couple of bottles of red wine and asked me to tell him what I thought of them. The winery only worked with grapes sourced from Napa and the standard Bdx varieties plus the occasional Pinot Noir or Zin. They did work with Chard and SB also but these bottles were red. Knowing this I unconsciously framed the wines into the box of what I knew the winery worked in and formed my impressions with that information instead of just tasting the wines. Turns out that one was a cherry wine and the other was Chardonnay that they ran through the filter immediately after the Merlot. Tasting again with that knowledge revealed something completely different.

While that is an extreme example, I find that I still occasionally fall into similar trap more than a decade later. Just last night, I opened a Pinot from the Sonoma Coast that tasted more to me of Zin and PN. I had to be well into my second glass before I had the confidence to ask my wife if she tasted the same green/briar/weedy flavor that I associate with Zin because I just did not think it could be there having never experienced that before out of a California PN.

Chris,

Just to echo some of the comments already made. It really is important to trust your own palate (and as you will soon see on this forum, or any forum or group of wine drinkers) many of the divergent views on wine reflect palate preferences. That diversity is important to appreciate and understand and so it’s a great learning experience to taste/drink in the company of others; you can certainly taste/drink alone but don’t limit yourself to that. The best way to lean about wine is to taste and its much better to taste more than one wine at a sitting because comparison is important in developing your ability to discriminate between different wines. I try to attend tastings held by one of the local wine shops as often as I can. One of these is a weekly tasting ($5 for 6 wines) that focuses on a different variety, style or region (last week it was Riesling, this week its California Cab). There is usually a core of folks that attend these types of events and they usually have quite a bit of knowledge. Ask questions. You can find tasting events/classes in your city/region by looking at the Local Wine Events web site.

Its also important to be open minded about wine. Just because someone (possibly with greater experience) says that a wine in rubbish does not mean that he/she is anywhere close to correct for anyone else. Its also important to have a good memory (and consistency) for tastes, and smells, simply because these are the main avenues we use to think and talk about wine. And you don’t need to drink wine to develop a taste and smell library – the world around us is full of smells etc.

Mike