DAE choose wine based only on looks of the bottle and price range (lower half, but not cheapest)?
If the bottle has a nice vibe, I will enjoy drinking it. The only measure of quality I can apply based on taste is if it does or doesn’t taste unpleasantly acidic. If I wanted to get into wine, I wouldn’t even know where to start.
I had a good friend that worked in a wine shop and learned a good bit about it. The weird thing about wine is that it varies in quality year by year to a surprising degree. The best thing to do is develop a relationship with the folks at your local wine shop, decide on a general price point, and learn what flavors you prefer. Most wine shops will do tasting events which are a great way to achieve all of these goals. Then your friendly wine seller will know what to suggest every year as the new vintages become available.
I agree. I’ve tried various cheap wines, though, and the very cheapest taste like grape jelly or Welch’s grape juice to me. Decent wine can be had for $6-10 a bottle. It seems like it gets good through about $30 and over that, excluding stuff that’s merely overpriced, it’s a gamble. Maybe I don’t have a refined taste but some more expensive wines I’ve had are too heavy on weird astringency and odd flavors.
I suppose I used to, but now I also pay attention to the region, and type. I became familiar with which types of white were sweet and which were dry, and the spectrum of red wines ranging from Pinot Noir to Shiraz to Chianti to Cabernet Sauvignon. Overall my favorite is probably Rioja and Tempranillo, from Spain. Valpolicella is great too.
I used to think I had to spend 20-40 on a bottle for it to be decent (2005-2012, so it would be more now) but eventually I figured out that actually some more expensive wines actually tasted worse to me. These days most wine that’s $10-25 is perfectly fine for me. I do prefer the more traditional looking labels vs. the more modern or gimmicky ones, not that it necessarily has anything to do with the wine (it could even literally be the same wine).
So, the only way to figure it out is by trying them!
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