Shopping for Wine Doesn’t Have to be Tough
It’s not just you -- shopping for wine can be a frustrating, befuddling, and anxiety-inducing experience. Even the wine section of a grocery store can be a confusing mass of wine labels, parts of the globe you couldn’t find on a map, and grape names that belong in a Latin textbook. When you’re looking for a new wine to try, the bottle usually tells you: where it came from, the grape(s) used to make it, and the alcohol content. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you’ll get a short blurb about the aromas and flavors that only helps if you recognize you like those specific flavors in a wine.
Thankfully, there one big thing you can do to make wine shopping more of an adventure and less of an anxiety trip, and that is...
Come Prepared
You don’t need to memorize maps of France, and you don’t need to have encyclopedic knowledge of every wine ever made and where they come from. However, a little preparation and taking some simple steps before you go wine shopping will take you far:
Read through our list of recommended books for beginners. You don’t have to be an expert, but having a foundational knowledge about some of the bigger wine-growing regions and the grapes they grow will serve you well in thinking about what you like.
Keep visiting Vinhound! Or, you can visit sites like Wine Folly and Vinepair -- they contain tremendous amounts of knowledge targeted at people who are new at learning about wine.
Write down what you like, where it’s from, and what it’s made out of it (or type it up in your phone’s notes app) -- or even consider taking a picture of the label. Then, you can point yourself towards something similar, but not the same, and get a better sense of whether or not you liked a specific wine, or the style in general.
On its face, the concept of needing to prepare before wine shopping sounds ridiculous, but think about the context: buying wine is essentially gambling. By shopping for wine, you’re putting your faith in, at a minimum, all of the following to get a good wine:
The quality of the land the grapes were grown upon
Whether or not the weather was good in a given growing season
The skill of a winemaker to turn grapes into something drinkable
By knowing a little bit about where wine comes from, and the grapes that make it, you stack the odds in your favor -- not doing so is leaving money on the table (literally).
Finally, don’t forget one last resource -- the folks who work at the store! Of course, your mileage may vary here: if you’re at the grocery store -- the fancy ones excluded, like Wegmans -- or some other large retailer, you might be out of luck, but that’s all the more reason to visit local wine shops. The staff at stores like these, even the large ones like Total Wine, will often be able to steer you in the right direction and give you some advice on what to try next.
Questions about which bottle to buy next, or anything else you’d like us to cover? Subscribe to our newsletter or email us, and we’ll drink and think over it.