Tag Archives: Cheap Wine

My wife and I started our wine country vacations nearly twenty years ago. Not very long after, we began collecting wines. At first, we stored the wine in racks, then later in expensive environmentally controlled cellars. Initially, we bottle-aged reds only, then whites and finally sparkling. A couple of years ago, I was formally trained in a classroom, passed the Sommelier exam and received my certification. It has been a wild and crazy ride. If this already has you thinking, “I could do that!”… It is time to accept your secret inner wine-o and warn your children. The first one to move out will lose his/her bedroom to a well-decorated, Tuscan themed wine room!

The Transformation

I graduated from a beer and whiskey drinking male stereotype, to someone who spends a good chunk of his income on fine food and wine. How the heck does THAT happen? I think my path broke the mold when it comes to your typical wine-o/foodie archetype. For the 6-pack of Budweiser Sunday football guys everywhere (old me), I will attempt to look deep inside and reveal the wonder of this miraculous change.

1. Romance

No, not that namby-pamby touchy-feely kind. When a guy figures out that your honey can be talked into just about anything, after a few bottles of REALLY GOOD red wine on a patio overlooking a beautiful vineyard, you will understand the connection between wine and hormones.

2. “Mellow Buzz”

The red wine effect is unlike any other alcoholic beverage. You feel good, warm inside, relaxed, sexy, friendly and all the world’s problems are thoroughly pointless.

3. Social Connections

You meet people when enjoying the wine country and drinking wine. It adds friends to your circle and you get the extra added benefit of impressing them with your manly description of floral aromas.

4. Cheap Wine vs. the Good Stuff

If only I had never traveled to Napa that first time, it would have saved me at least $100K over the last 10 years. Before that trip, I had never spent more than $15 on a bottle of red wine and it was all pretty awful. Had I been born in Italy, where the difference between cheap wine and the good stuff is not as great (topic for another day), my life would have been entirely different. I would have been wealthier, closer to retirement, much more good looking and writing this post from my villa on the Tuscany coast.

5. Crazy Flavors in Wine

How the heck do you make grape juice taste like graphite, or tobacco? Or for that matter… mint, bacon, or eucalyptus? The big guy upstairs really put some mojo in those grapes!

6. Adventure

Terroir is more than a Dictionary definition, it is a wonderfully engaging concept. Not just from the perspective of its impact on flavors, but the idea of “place” it brings with it. With every new wine region, it brings new expressions of different varietals, new flavors and aromas… and provides a very different experience. Tie that to the regional cuisines associated with each and you have an endless journey of discovery.

The Journey

There it is. I never pushed. I was always drawn along the path. Ladies, want to see if that Sunday football couch potato can transform into the kind of guy that talks YOU into a vacation in the wine country… here’s your template. Best of luck though, while he may become that dreamboat you always wanted, he is sure to be in the poorhouse begging for foie gras on the nearest street corner!