Wine - Pros' Guide to Bargain Shopping

I openly admit that although I've taken 6 months of training as a sommelier and have passed the intro level exams...I STILL find wines to be somewhat of a mystery. Between food and wine - food wins hands down for me. I love being able to tweak the flavors of food when cooking and I absolutely love eating food in general.

I find that the wine program at school was/is the opposite of the cooking program. I mean - with food - you can add to the dish to change it and tweak it so that it can taste better or taste as it should. With wine, you are deconstructing a completed product to analyze the flavors of the wine and the structural elements of the wine. It's more of a science than an art. Food and wine pairing, however, is a completely different matter.

When you have the right food and wine pairing...all of a sudden the clouds part, the sun shines in a brilliant beam upon the two and an hallelujah chorus rings out. In short - it can be magic. I definitely find that taking the wine course has taught me the introductory basics of wine. I can now maneuver the aisles of BevMo without fear. In fact, I may even know a little more about wine than most of the employees at said store. (I've asked many questions there only to be given a blank stare in return.)

But the most important thing that I've learned about wine in the past 6-7 months is that you've got to get out there and taste it. I guess there are more opportunities to taste food, which is why I feel that my palate is more developed in that arena. After all - I rarely drink (because of my asian affliction of alcohol allergies or inability to digest the alcohol) but I eat at least 2-3 times a day.

So...long story short, get out there and taste some wines. There's only one way to develop your palate for wines if it's something that you're interested in. Go out there and try some wines!

Here's a Pros' guide to bargain shopping / With $70 in hand, 3 sommeliers scour the shelves for a week's worth of wine and then share their secrets from the SF Chronicle. It's an easy way to get started.


I'm also reading Educating Peter - it's a light easy read about one master sommelier's adventures in teaching a film critic about wine. It hits many of the major learning points at a high level and gives a good overview at how much there is to be learned in wine. So if you think that you want to learn more about wine and aren't sure where to start, this book is a good initial primer before you start getting into greater detail and theory. (oh boy - there's lots and lots of theory.)