With Thanksgiving having just passed by, the wine-drinking world has also seen the release of the 2008 Beaujolais Nouveau wines. Experienced drinkers each have their own take on this well-marketed, commodity wine made from the Gamay varietal. Being an intermediate wine drinker (that’s right – I’m no longer a beginner!) who’s been paying attention to wine for nearly a year, I was anxious to try one of these wines that has the reputation of being more fun than fine.

When I went shopping for one here in my temporary home of Morgantown, WV, the local grocery store had only two available. One of the two was the Labouré-Roi Beaujolais Nouveau 2008 ($11). It was packaged in a plastic bottle with a screw-top, so I just had to pick it up – since one of our main topics is low-impact wine. As a bonus, one tree is planted for every bottle sold of Labouré-Roi Beaujolais Nouveau 2008. [click to continue…]

Restaurant wine lists can be extremely confusing with long lists of wines that you know nothing about — in fact, many of the wines you cannot even pronounce. When the waiter comes to offer assistance, you realize that he or she does not know anymore about the wine list than you do. At this point, what do you do? If you happen to be dining at a restaurant that uses a progressive wine list, you may be able to gracefully find a way out of this situation all by yourself. Progressive wine lists are arranged in a specific way, making it easier to know something about the wines on the list without tasting it yourself.

First of all, the wines on a progressive wine list are grouped by varietal. So all the wines made mostly from Cabernet Sauvignon are listed together, Chardonnays are listed together, and so on. Within each type of wine, the wines at the top of the list have the lightest body. As you go down the list, the wines become more full bodied and generally more expensive. Adding body to wine costs money. [click to continue…]

It’s no secret that De Long’s Wine Info produces great resources for wine education. A recent post of Neil’s talks about his efforts to become a member of the wine century club, which promotes tasting of at least 100 grape varietals. In the past, I’ve been impressed by their wine tasting notebook and wine periodic table of grapes.

But their newest product may be the best yet — it’s a highly detailed map of the Iberian wine regions of Spain and Portugal. It has up-to-date information on traditional and new wine regions in Spain and Portugal, maps the roadways for travel, and even shows what other wine regions in the world are on the same latitude. And it’s attractive to boot.

Let’s face it, there are a lot of aromas and flavors in wine to keep track of when you’re just starting out. To help you, we’ve created our wine aroma chart, which is part of our wine 101 section.

The common aromas found in white and red wine are listed separately, and we also provide some common smells that you don’t want to find in your wine but sometimes do. Let us know what you think, and if there’s any way we can improve it. There is also a pdf available for downloading, printing, or emailing.

Since starting to drink wine, I’ve digested many books, magazines, and blogs on the subject. If you’re new to wine now, you may be wondering what the best wine books for a beginner drinker are. I mean, it’s pretty disappointing to spend $20 on a wine book that’s corked.

Great Wine Made Simple by Andrea Immer

Hands down, my favorite book when I was just beginning was Great Wine Made Simple by Andrea Immer. As one of only 160 Master Sommeliers in the world, Immer is more than qualified to write an educational book on wine. It’s the most accessible book I’ve come across, and it helped me to start to understand wine and compartmentalize the constant barrage of different flavors and aromas. [click to continue…]

When I first started drinking wine (a very long six months ago), I tried hard to get a grasp on all the different wine varietals. This seemed an important step towards compartmentalizing the different tastes I was encountering. I wanted to learn what typical wines made from the famous grapes tasted like.

There are many grapes to work through, with many confusing moments, such as the difference between Syrah, Shiraz, and Petite Sirah. [click to continue…]

In the first post of this series, Beginner’s Wine Journal, I laid out my plan to go through the wine tastings in our Wine 101 series. This is my experience with our first tasting that highlights two of our Wine 101 styles: Smooth & Bold red wines.

My original plan was to do this tasting with a group of friends, but as we all know, it’s just hard to get people together sometimes. I pressed on and just decided to do it myself. Hopefully, I can rope some people into trying it later with me.

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We think that one of the best things our site has to offer is that is authored by two wine drinkers at very different stages. Neil has been drinking wine for around thirty years, and I have just started drinking and learning to taste a variety wines in past six months (though I drank the dull, homogenous stuff for much longer).

As I’ve gotten started, I have looked around for sites for a beginning wine drinker. Unfortunately, there seems to be a shortage of frequently updated resources for new drinkers – most sites are written for people who already know quite a bit about wine.

And so this Beginner’s Wine Journal article series was conceived. It’s written by and written for someone who is, for all practical purposes, just starting out on his/her wine journey. It will exist online at this homepage, so any beginner who starts drinking wine in future can still easily access the entire series, starting here, from the beginning. (This is presuming, of course, that it will be worth reading…)

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