Filthy

 

I hope nobody minds if I put my 2 cents in. Ken is spot on about different supplies in the U.S. I live in CA and have Bevmo here. If you've got one near you and looking for inexpensive bottle try Gina Montepulciano. Goes well with most meals.

Shifter if the Petrus is just too overvalued look for Ch. L'Evangile. It was the first Pomerol that blew my mind to kingdom come.

 

1997 was my first La Tache -- the aromatics left an indelible impression. The spice character is unique and compelling, and you couple that with achingly pure Pinot fruit? Amazing. Lives up to the reputation to a T.

I'll echo the sentiment here to use CellarTracker, which PayTriple smartly brought it. I'm a devotee. If anyone wants to follow me there, my screen name is gutt22.

I've got a good winemaker buddy who, to my mind, has articulated the best philosophy of wine there is: No one ever taught you how to eat, did they? Well, wine is just like food. If you like it? drink it! If you don't like it, drink something else. If you really like it? Drink some more!

 

You sound like Miles. lol

Love that advice from your bud, it's so damn true. We get overrun up here on weekends, all the name-dropping wannabe douchebags from Redondo or West Hollywood. They have the cars, the bling and the patter, then when you actually listen to them or talk to the staff later, they're mostly just total name-dropping wannabe douchebags from Redondo or West Hollywood. A funny thing also seems to happen locally. Monied LA-ers come up thinking the next conquest will be wine. They go through a couple sketchy vintages, then quit blathering and start listening, start chilling, and they start turning out good wines and as importantly drop the LA attitude. It's awesome.

 

I think this is some of the best advice for anyone getting into wine. Try a bunch of different grapes and try different regions until you find a combo that makes you say "damn that was good" and then buy more of it.

I typically only buy wines in the $15-$25 range and have found plenty that my unsophisticated palate enjoys. I usually will also have a bottle or two of Italian table wine on hand that can be purchased in the $5-$8 range but is still drinkable. The only time I break out of my price range is for regions I know I love or for recommendations from trusted friends. I have probably 5-10 bottles that I am aging and will be had over the next 7-10 years. (To date, the oldest I've ever drunk was a 15 yo bottle from the haut-medoc region of France and it was superb.)

@DannyOcean I'll have to look you up on CellarTracker. I somewhat recently downloaded it after using Vivino (user name: Unsophisticated Drunk) for years but have been too lazy about transferring over my wine list so haven't gotten into it. Need to soon though because I hate what Vivino has done with their service and I have a mess of bottles filling my kitchen that need some organizing.

 

I think that winemaker with the sage advice would dispute the thought of "unsophisticated." I know a lot of people who can recite song and verse of all the "proper" descriptors, tell you whose donkey fertilized which particular lot of Merlot in '74 somewhere along the Right Bank, but they'd plow through a bottle tainted by brett and not know it. It's that smoke and mirrors stuff with wine. I guess that's where the newbies feel uncomfortable. And it's too bad. Hell, I'm no somm but I've had a lot of grape juice go in me and sometimes I'm only left with the comment, "I like that." I get the cat-piss thing and whatever makes that alsphaty stench, but I often miss what comes out of our little vault and I don't always get corked to perhaps just a tad too old. I was at a tasting in Oregon last month, had something and must've made a funny expression. I felt like an idiot telling the guy -- one step short of a master -- that my predominate take from the wine was ... well, marshmallow. WTF, it's the connection I made.

Being here has helped, I get the green chile and peppertree of our cool-clime Syrahs. I think I get Dijon v. Pommard. I typically can pick one side of the hills over the other in our AVA. But it doesn't really matter. I'll only scratch the surface in this lifetime but I don't care because I'm having fun. And if I say candied strawberry and the aficionado next to me rolls his eyes and disdainfully says fresh cherry ... screw it.

At least it ain't marshmallow.

 

I need to warn everyone that in 1997 I toured Napa and took a leak at Opus One....in their vineyard! So if any of you ever have that vintage, there's a little bit of PT in there somewhere!

 

That's not like the cat piss thing in Sauv Blanc, is it???

 

PT did you have asparagus for lunch that day?

 

I prefer Serbian primitivo.