I hesitate to say it in polite company here in south central Iowa, but I am a wine guy. I find beer good, also scotch and most whiskey. Yet given my druthers, it's wine.
But not just any wine; I'm picky. Like in the rest of my life, I like things outside the norm, items and experiences with verve and panache (you should meet my wife).
My "wine problem" started after I left being a chef. I landed a position as a beer buyer at the Whole Foods in San Ramon, California. Later, when the (extremely knowledgeable) wine buyer suddenly announced his resignation, I was promoted to his job.
Honestly, I knew next to nothing about wine, and likely shouldn't have been given the job. But it was a new store and so the outgoing wine buyer gave me a quick training, offering me important advice that saved me.
"Taste everything!" he said. "It's the only way you are going to really learn what is good." He was right. It exposed me to wines from all over the world--from down the street local to thousands of miles away. It taught me what I liked--because good wine, in the end, is very a personal preference.
As I tasted more and more wine (over time, though there were a few days....), I began to see the fine differences and could talk about them with customers. I started to understand which wines were better for sitting on your porch, enjoying a glass on a sunny summer afternoon, and which were wines were created to elevate a meal to another level. Very rarely were those wines one and the same.
I began to love wine and to seek out the weird and out of the mainstream stuff, much of it styles and varieties most people never see or get to try, because wine is...well, it's hard. There is so much to know and so much wine available from every conceivable place in the world. And who wants to take a chance every time you walk into a wine shop and try out something you've never heard of? The stuff just ain't cheap, and frankly, who has the time? People spend years absorbing all there is to know, 75 percent of which becomes superfluous in a few years.
But just like in life, there are some basic tricks you can use to get yourself through, rules that are fairly easy to learn. By acquiring just some of these morsels of knowledge, it can help you pick a new wine that will knock your guests (or hosts) socks off.
Like the simple fact that wines from a specific area of the world tend to go well with the foods from that same part of the world. This is a fun fact you can use tomorrow to buy a bottle of wine for your mother-in-law's Spanish themed dinner party - don't show up with a California red, find a Spanish wine - it's most likely going to be better (and you look worldly as you present your choice). This is the type of information--along with tastings of five "off the beaten path" varietals, with food--that I am excited to present to those who venture to the farm in March for our new wine class.
No more will you rely on the 'old faithful,' that same bottle you always choose (although I am sure it is great too). You can venture out into the wine world armed with some useful tools.