I seldom get a bad bottle. I buy based on past experience, the
producer, and the recommendation of the wine shop owner. I experiment
a lot. I never taste a wine before buying it, unless the wine shop
owner happens to have a bottle open for sampling.

Why not? Barberas, for instance, taste quite astringent by themselves,
and anyone who would try one in a tasting would probably think it's
bad. But put that wine in its proper context, with a Piedmontese dish,
and it tastes quite different. Tasting is quite useless, and therefore
a foolish waste of time.


Ronin wrote:
wrote in message
ps.com...
What Max writes is utter rubbish. Wines are not for 'tastsing' but for
drinking, and can only be evaluated (if they have to be evaluated) in
the context of a meal. Everything else is a complete waste of time. Why
do wines have to be evaluated anyway? Are you obsessed with having
something with more points? Why can't you just drink and enjoy? True
connoisseurs do not engage in such lunacy. I don't care how many points
my wine gets by any critic, and I NEVER have tastings, ever. I consider
this some kind of sick joke.

Grow up, people!


So, how *do* you buy wine? By label? Cost? Shape of the pretty bottle?

I taste, and over 50 years of drinking wine, have found I can tell pretty
much how a wine will "drink" with a particular style of food. But I'm not
going to plunk down cash for a case of wine I haven't tasted, no matter what
any critic says. Then after tasting, and deciding it suits my purpose, I'll
buy and 'drink and enjoy'.