Food: My wine rant/manifesto/post

In response to bookishbiker's comment about wine from my last post...

So, wine. I wasn't always a wine person. When I started drinking I was too busy hitting the gin, or beer if I was feeling poor, to explore other options. After all, you needed to know something about wine to drink it. I did not want to put that much thought into getting my drinky drink on, so tom collinses it was! Flash forward about ten years to the recent past. Scene: Trader Joe's. The Husband and I are walking through the wine section and I am looking for interesting things in the center island, because if something were to catch my eye it would have to come home with me. I was dismayed because while they had interesting wines like Vinho Verde and the Honey Moon Viognier, there were a lot of bottles of white zin and chardonnay and merlot for cheap. I go off on a rant about how really, wines like that are the opiate of the masses and people who drink cheap white zin or chardonnay are really people who have no imagination and aren't adventurous and just want people to think they're sophisticated because oooh, I'm drinking wine, aren't I a hipster/it girl? After I stopped to take a breath the Husband pointed out that two wines over, some girl picked up a bottle of chardonnay, heard my screed and put down the bottle and slunk away. Then again, for that story there's also the time I stood there in Trader Joe's for fifteen minutes helping some guy pick out a bottle of wine that would go with his dinner. How did I get from college Drinky McDrunkerson to Wine Snob? Let me tell you.

Honestly, I am not knowledgeable about wine in the slightest. My tastes developed by trial and error and mostly were influenced by Trader Joe's, their fliers and in store wine tastings. I guess it started out from a love of spumante. It's sweet, it's bubbly and it goes with brunch, my favorite meal. My brunch enabling friend A (she who introduced me to the joy of bacon crack) got me hooked on Prosecco at brunch. Prosecco is a lot like spumante, sweet and bubbly. She got it at Trader Joe's. Normally when I got the Trader Joe's ad I went through and circled what looked interesting, so I'd remember to take a look at it in the store. When I looked I usually skipped the wine but after that I started looking and adding wines to the list. After all, TJ's is inexpensive enough that you can experiment with wine and not have to drop a bunch of money. Remember the movie Sideways? I had to try merlot because of the whole "I'm not drinking merlot!" bit. After trying a couple different varieties (Purple Moon comes to mind) I agreed- merlot is out. I finally hit a point where if I liked what I tried, I'd buy a couple bottles because it wasn't always in season. Then I started noticing TJ's had wine tastings, so I'd try to manipulate our trips so that we were there while they were going on. I asked a lot of questions of their wine guy- who was a really great guy and I really do have to credit him with my love of wine, too. Had he been a jerk I think my wine experimenting wouldn't quite have flourished and I wouldn't know the drop in the bucket of wine knowledge I have right now- and gradually learned a few things other than just what I like.

Rather than babble, let's go over what's in the wine rack right now.
* 1 bottle of Charles Shaw Merlot- okay, I know I said I was a wine snob, but Two Buck Chuck (which isn't two bucks in Ohio) makes for good mulled wine for our holiday party.
* A bottle of 2005 Menguante Garnacha, which was a gift from the aforementioned holiday party. I have no idea how it is, we haven't opened it yet, but it does say Carinena, which I have no idea what that means but I've had some great wines that say carinena, so I have high hopes for this one.
* A bottle of Bear's Lair Viognier. I really like viognier. Sweet but not too, crisp but not dry, it's a great light white wine. This isn't my usual viognier, I'm trying something new.
* A bottle of 2004 Charles Krug Cabernet Sauvignon. Also a holiday party gift. I like cabs, I'm a fan of full bodied reds, and a friend of ours who also loves wine invited me to bring it over so we could drink it, so I'm guessing this is going to be a good one.
* A bottle of Vinho Verde. I pretty much always have a bottle of this around. While at TJ's, my friend S and her husband J asked "Vinho Verde? As in, green wine?" Yes. The wine has a really green, grapey taste to it. It's a great non-sweet white wine and it's rather inexpensive. While at Jungle Jim's I saw a couple different vinho verdes and wondered how they compared to mine, but held off from buying half a dozen bottles to conduct research.
* A bottle of 2005 Abrazo del Toro that says Carinena on it. I bought this after tasting it at TJ's. It's a good red.
* A bottle of Tabor Hill Red Arrow Red table wine. Holiday party gift.
* A bottle of Conti Neri Valpolicella Classico. Another full bodied red I tasted at TJ's and loved.

Our open bottles: Black Mountain Malbec, which is one of my favorite wines, hands down. It's a read and it goes well with so much- steaks, chili, burgers, Mexican food, and best of all, chocolate. In fact, the day I tasted it at TJ's the wine guy was telling me what it went with and we lucked out because dinner was enchiladas and TJ's tiny chocolate cupcakes. It went well with everything and tastes great. In the fridge is a bottle of Pinot Grigio. Can't tell you which, I'm too lazy to get up and look. I will tell you that I am not so much a pinot grigio drinker because to me it's too dry, but TJ's had some thins summer I tried that was sparkling- normally pinot grigio isn't? Anyway, it was sparkling and that cut some of the dryness for me and I loved it. There's also an open bottle of Schmittsohne Reisling, because I like rieslings as well.

So there you go. Not an educated viewpoint, but at least the voice of trial and error.