Wine Country Strategies: revealed!

After our recent trip to wine country, our place is teeming with bottles of this and that. A 12-bottle, insulated box of assorted Zin and such in the hall closet. Our wine refrigerator stacked full of special bottles to save for years to come. A few lousy chardonnays and merlots (brought to us, not purchased, mind you) sitting in the wine rack, devil may care if they spoil. Some olallieberry concoction in the door of the fridge, probably too cold.

After carting many many bottles home from this trip and those before it, I have seen some better strategies to tackling the tasting/purchasing game of wine tasting. Here are my thoughts, and if you follow even one or two of them you may end up skirting buyer's remorse:

1. Don't buy anything the first day. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule. If we hadn't bought the 2002 Omaggio the first day in Healdsburg, Ed Seghesio would never have signed it and we may never have learned of his predilection for tripe. But generally, don't buy until you know all of the competitors, unless you can tell it's a sure thing. If you have paid to taste, get a receipt and most places will take the tasting fee off the price of a future purchase.



2. Pay the extra to taste the reserve wines. They are worth it, and if they aren't, would you really have wanted to taste the regular list? After our recent trip to Napa, I wished I had spent a little more of my money trying fabulous reserves I may never get to try again or elsewhere, and a little less of my money on bottles that were mostly on par with things I could find at the local wine shop in Larchmont. Plus, in many cases, you can avoid the herds of "I only drink Chardonnay" bovines who are looking for Disneyland-style entertainment and wouldn't know a good Cab if it came up and bit them through their elastic-banded walking shorts. There isn't usually much shoving for counter space going on by the reserve wines. It makes the whole experience that much more pleasant.



3. You don't have to buy anything. Especially if you paid for a tasting. They have made money. Do not feel obligated or guilty. Sometimes, if the counter folks figure you may have money to spend, they try to devote a lot of time to you so you will feel obligated to buy. Be firm. I got really good at politely saying "We're waiting until our last day here to make any purchases so that nothing sits in a hot car." They don't really want their wine turning in a hot car, do they? Also, if someone seems to be spending a lot of time trying to give you a hard sell, you can always smile and say you want to walk on the grounds or step outside with your wine to savor it. The grounds are better-looking than the counter, anyway. The Alcotourist started our trip with the logic that we should buy everywhere to recoup our tasting fees, but I feel this is remiss. For the $5 or $10 you spend on a tasting, you are getting the equivalent of a good glass of wine at a restaurant. How much would you have paid for it? Probably more than $5, possibly more than $10. For those $20 reserve tastings, it's usually not so hard to turn down the wine, because it is typically $100 a bottle or so. Which leads me to my next musing...



4. Buy a few of the really good, sold-at-winery-only wines. If you have saved money and space by not buying bottles everywhere you go, you can afford a couple of those $60-$100 cabs. And there will be a couple of other wines, not so pricey but only found at the wineries that you can go back for on your last day. Which ones stand out after all that tasting? What tasted like nothing else? Get those memorable ones, get a couple of nice bottles of reserve wines, and if you want some of the others later you can get them at the store back home--or maybe even afford to have some shipped to you from the winery when you've gone through what you have. We bought over a case of wine on our trip, and I wish we'd gotten maybe 4 of the bottles we did, and had money left to get another reserve cab. I'm already thinking about wines I will order or hunt for locally that we tasted, but I didn't need to break the bank with so many bottles right now.



5. Take this, all of you and drink. Share some of the tastings with a fellow alcotourist. This way, you won't be so obliterated at the last stop you can't even taste the wine and have embarrassing hiccups you would mask behind a hand if you weren't clinging to the counter to remain upright. Many of the places we visited were good, but not so good that I finished my pour. In fact, when you reach hiccup-riddled, counter-clinging tipsiness, you can't finish the pour even if it's the best thing on earth. So share with a friend. Save your palate and your money and get separate tastings only when it's a great reserve tasting or if tasting is free. And even then, don't feel you have to finish even the best of tastes, so you may live to taste another day.



6. Chill, man. Get a cheap Styrofoam cooler at the store before you go. If you are weak and purchase (or run into Ed Seghesio or a spicy XYZin), you can go on to taste the day away, knowing your wine is not spoiling in the heat of the car. Keep bottles in the cooler, in the trunk, and you may actually want to drink them when you meet again. Also, you may want to keep a few crackers or something in there. Very few places offered any sort of palate cleanser or stomach settler, and all of that tasting can be overwhelming.

So take these tips and run with them. May you remain upright and financially solvent.