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'.