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Edited on Thu Dec-01-11 02:20 PM by Xithras
I'm certainly a "wine aficionado". I go wine tasing in the various California AVA's (Napa, Livermore, Lodi, Gold Country, etc) many times a year, and I'm a member of four different wine clubs (basically, a "membership" at a winery that gives you access to wines not normally available for retail sale). A few weeks ago I got to do a barrel tasting at a winery, where we pulled samples of wines straight out of the oak, a full year before they were bottled (we actually got to try several wines at various stages of the fermentation process, from newly crushed to ready-to-bottle...it was pretty cool.) I take my wine seriously :)
If you want to try some new wines, I strongly recommend checking out Wine.Woot.Com. If you're not familiar with Woot, it's an online retailer that sells one item a day at huge discounts, until that item is sold out. Once that happens, they shut their sales down until the next item goes up the following day. A few years ago they opened up a second site that specializes in wine and wine related gear. Because of the lower volume, they only rotate their item weekly, but it's an awesome way to sample great wines from around the world at a fairly substantial discount. They also have discussion forums for each item, so you can get other peoples opinions on the wine before buying, and they usually have the vintners participate, so you'll end up with all sorts of other great information, including aging recommendations, suggested serving temperatures (did you know that many wines are crafted to achieve their ideal taste within a certain temperature range?), and food pairing suggestions. These discussions are usually oriented towards beginners, and are never snooty or serious. If a wine tastes like brake fluid, you can gurantee that someone will post "It tastes like brake fluid."
It's just a shame that they're selling cheese this week. It's good cheese, at an amazing price, but it's...cheese. On Wine.Woot. Last week they had some funky hand-crafted olive oil. It was supposedly awesome and people were raving over it, but I'm not into the oil thing. After two weeks of no wine, they'll probably post a great wine deal next Wednesday.
Oh, and for that WORD OF CAUTION that I warned about in the title: Good wine is temperature sensitive, and contains many natural compounds from the grapes it was harvested from. Like any natural juice, wine can be "cooked" if it gets too hot, and wines cooking temperature is VERY low...like 85-90 degrees. Keep a bottle of very good wine at 90 degrees for 5-6 hours, and you'll turn it into a bottle of very bad vinegar. While it's not a big problem at this time of year, this can be a HUGE issue when you're getting wine shipped during the spring or summer, when your wine could easily end up spending several days sitting inside of a 100+ degree UPS or Fedex trailer. Before purchasing wine online, look for information describing their shipping process. Any reputable wine retailer will have this information on their site, but call them if not. If the wine is just placed in a padded box and shipped via UPS, skip them and buy somewhere else. BevMo, for example, ships many of their Arizona and Southern California wine orders using only UPS Next-Day delivery, in a temperature controlled box. If you order wine from them in Atlanta, in July when it's 90 degrees outside, it's going to come via UPS 3-Day in a plain padded box, and there's a good chance that the wine will be bad when you get it. You don't want wine that's been in the back of a 100+ degree trailer box for several days:puke: Wine.Woot, mentioned above, is an example of a retailer that does it right. All summer shipments go out in temperature controlled boxes, ALL shipments are sent via a delivery company with temperature controlled trucks, and they watch the weather, and will hold your shipments entirely if there's a heatwave, to prevent spoilage. Most reputable wine retailers will do the same.
Just do your homework before buying anything. Shipping can work great, but I've seen people blow hundreds of dollars on wine, only to have it arrive "cooked" after sitting in a FedEx bin over a long June weekend.
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