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"\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n If you didn't pick up those subtle hints of \"kaffir lime,\" \"black currant confiture,\" and \"the sweet stemminess of burning vine clippings\"* when you stuck your nose into the glass. Take a look at two different tasting notes for the same bottle of wine\u2014same vineyard, same vintage, two different critics. They almost never taste or smell the same stuff. Which is to say\u2014your guess is as good as theirs. So drink. Decide what you like. And if you detect a hint of quince paste in your Sauvignon Blanc, keep it to yourself.\u2014Stan Parish \n\n * Real Wine Spectator tasting notes!\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n Sean Thackrey, one of the best winemakers in America (seriously, try his wine), explains why you should get your head out of the soil \n\n The theory of terroir is the agricultural version of the theory of aristocracy: You are as you were born. You are the Duke of Norfolk or you are not the Duke of Norfolk, and that's that. You buy Ch&amp;amp;#xE2;teau Margaux because it's Ch&amp;amp;#xE2;teau Margaux, and it's Ch&amp;amp;#xE2;teau Margaux because the grapes were grown on a particular piece of land. So much money is riding on this idea that it's imperative, from a financial point of view, to maintain this extremely profitable mystification of real estate. There's no traditional word for 'winemaker' in French, Spanish, or Italian, because over there they'd like you to think that we humans are just humble servants of the soil's desire to express itself. Of course grapes grown in different places taste different; that's a banality no one disputes. But so much has to happen to those grapes before they end up in your glass, and someone\u2014the winemaker\u2014has to call those shots. Even if you supplied ten different restaurants with identical produce, you would expect ten totally different results. Do you really think the work of a winemaker is less complex than the work of a chef? Winemaking is like cooking: The chef bats last, for better or worse. And if we're to take the blame for bad results that we deserve, we should get credit for good ones, too.\"\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n wine-searcher.com\n\n Looking for that killer Menetou-Salon you drank at someone's party? Wine Searcher will tell you exactly where to find it\u2014and where to find it cheap.\n\n garagistewine.com\n\n Kick around the site, then sign up for the poetic daily e-mail offers full of kick-ass wines you've never heard of. \n\n jjbuckley.com\n\n Massive inventory, regular sales, and a \"Top Wines Under $25\" section from which we've caught many a buzz.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n Most oenophiles are like basketball coaches who stick to supertight rotations and leave legitimate talent to languish on the bench. Your Pinots and your Cabernets get tons of playing time, but Riesling? Rarely takes off its warm-ups. This is a waste of great wine\u2014and no way to live your life. So shake things up.\u2014David Lynch \n\n  Your Usual   Chardonnay  Sauvignon Blanc   Pinot Grigio   Pinot Noir   Cabernet Savignon  Your Preference   Creaminess, depth   Assertive aromatics, brisk acidity\n\n   Crispness, poundability   Woodsy aromatics, finesse   Power, longevity   Your Better Bet  Pinot Bianco from northeastern Italy, a happy medium between the mineral Chardonnays of Burgundy and the fruity full-blown wines of California.   Riesling, the most underappreciated white wine in the world. Austrian versions are reliably dry, whereas German versions should say trocken (dry) on the label, unless you have a sweet tooth.   If you want a lighter inexpensive white with character, give France's Muscadet a try. Zippy and mineral, with a sea-brine salinity that betrays its coastal origins, Muscadet is resolutely unfashionable and way underpriced.\n\n  A simple Sangiovese from Chianti Classico often blows away a Burgundy or American Pinot that costs twice as much. If you're looking for finesse, avoid Chiantis with riserva on the label.   The reds from Portugal's Douro Valley\u2014deep, dry, soulful wines that can wrangle with the fat in any steak. They're made with the same grapes used in the fortified ports that no one drinks anymore.    One to Try   Cantina Terlano Alto Adige Pinot Bianco \"Vorberg,\" $21   Weingut Brndlmayer Riesling \"Kamptaler Terrassen,\" $20   Luneau-Papin Muscadet S&amp;amp;#xE8;vre et Maine sur Lie \"Clos des All\u00E9es,\" $15   Querciabella Chianti Classico, $26   Niepoort \"Redoma Tinto\" Douro, $48 \n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n Instead, I was in for a different kind of gustatory revelation. Rudy was one of the country's biggest wine collectors, and he'd brought some spectacular bottles, among them weathered magnums of 1990 and 1973 Dom P\u00E9rignon and a 1961 Comte de Vog\u00E9 Musigny, which goes for about $8,700 a bottle. On the menu: dim sum dumplings. Pork buns. Steamed crab. Spare, common Chinatown fare\u2014the last thing you'd expect to eat with world-class French wine. And yet as the champagne bubbled into my glass, it felt like a perfect pairing. After gnawing on a pork dumpling, I could taste how the Comte de Vog\u00E9 Musigny changed, growing thicker and more complicated as it soaked up oxygen for the first time since JFK was president. And there was something viscerally decadent about reaching for a champagne flute with greasy fingers.\n\n Ever since, I've gone out of my way to drink great wine with great low-end food. All the textures and flavors against which wine plays so beautifully\u2014spice, crunch, char, salt\u2014are precisely what make \"comfort foods\" so comfortable. And simple cooking allows you to concentrate on what you're drinking, instead of trying to discern the influence of fennel pollen on that poached-salmon canap\u00E9. Quaffing a fine Bordeaux with a burger is also a good reminder that the god of wine is Bacchus, not Apollo, and that drinking should be a lusty ritual, not a hushed, subdued one. It feels good and right and celebratory to walk into a burger joint with a $100 bottle and your own glasses, provided you don't get your ass kicked in the parking lot.\u2014Brett Martin \n\n In Vino Veritas\n\n \"Picking out wine is like doing your tas: Sure, you could do a decent job yourself, but you'll get a bigger return if you ask a pro.\" \u2014Adam Rothstein, Beverage Director, Bobo, N.Y.C. \n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n \"It pairs with fish, with meat, with dessert. And when you open a bottle of ros\u00E9 champagne, people understand that you are spoiling them.\"\u2014Eric Ripert, Chef, Le Bernardin, N.Y.C.\n\n One to try:\n\n Billecarte-Salmon Brut Ros\u00E9 NV, $75\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n Argyle Brut, $24\n\n Made like champagne (in Oregon), tastes like champagne (well, almost), and if your little sister makes mimosas with it, it's no big deal. \n\n Castellroig Brut Rosat Cava, $15\n\n Like ros\u00E9 champagne, this goes with damn near anything. And at this price, you can afford to drink all day.\n\n Parigot Richard Cr\u00E9mant de Bourgogne Blanc NV, $22\n\n A bargain white from Burgundy? That's right, and the sparklers get you champagne grapes and serious pedigree at a steep discount.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n Oh, you have every Gaja vintage since 1961 on your reserve list? Who cares? It's the oenophile's equivalent of name-dropping, because me and those Barolos are not going to meet in person, at least not at your 300 percent markup. A menu tells you something about the chef, and the same should be true of a wine list and the sommelier. So make some choices. We'd rather see a focused, self-assured one-pager than a tome that takes all night to read. Throw in a bottle of indie champagne, if you must, and one trophy Barolo for the guy who got his bonus. But don't give us eleven pages of wines that most of Monaco can't afford to drink with dinner. We don't use the Yellow Pages, either.\u2014S.P.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n Buying wine can feel like Russian roulette, but you can stack the odds in your favor by knowing your importers and distributors\u2014the guys who pick the foreign wines that end up at your liquor store. It's usually the distributor's name on the back of the bottle, but a few big-dog importers also leave their mark. We asked Joe Campanale, co-owner and beverage director at Dell'anima and L'Artusi in Manhattan, whom to trust.\n\n Importers\n\n Kermit Lynch: \"The godfather of importers and patron saint of elegant French and Italian wines.\" \n\n Louis/Dressner Selections: \"A killer portfolio of unique and natural juice from all over the Old World.\"\n\n Jos\u00E9 Pastor: \"The Dressner of Spain.\"\n\n Distributors\n\n David Bowler Wine: \"He is smart enough to distribute Dressner and Jos\u00E9 Pastor. What else do you need to know?\" \n\n Rosenthal Wine Merchant: \"Traditional, delicious, and ultrareliable wines from all over Europe.\"\n\n Domaine Select Wine Estates: \"Their stuff gets better every year, especially on the Italian front.\"\n\n In Vino Veritas\n\n \"Don't confuse power with greatness. Take a wine at 15 percent alcohol\u2014fairly common nowadays, especially in California. That wine has 15 percent more booze than a wine at 13 percent. That's about an extra glass per bottle. It's the difference between just right and too much.\" \u2014Eric Asimov, Chief Wine Critic, The New York Times\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n First take off the foil capsule, then take off your shoe and fit the base of the bottle snugly in the heel, grasping the toe of the shoe with one hand and the neck and shoulders of the bottle with the other. Too much padding and this'll take forever, so remove your Dr. Scholl's.\n\n Find a hard vertical surface with no give. Keep the base of the bottle firmly connected to the shoe and perpendicular to the wall; you're driving the bottle into the wall with the shoe as a shock absorber. Don't be too gentle. Wine bottles aren't made of little girls.\n\n Keep an eye on the cork, which should start inching out after a few hard whacks. Once you can see enough cork to sink your teeth into, try loosening it that way. Why? Because it looks badass.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n Even when you have a wine that needs to breathe (big, young reds, high-end Bordeaux, and trophy bottles of Burgundy and Brunello), save the $200 you'd spend on some mouth-blown crystal vessel and buy two or three or six bottles of damn good wine instead. Then \"decant\" them in a regular glass pitcher. Or a carafe. Or, hell, an unused flower vase. They all get oxygen into your wine, which is all that matters.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n Most of my contemporaries had been similarly seduced by the Old World, and nothing was lamer in sommelier circles than California Chardonnay, the vinous \"ugly American\" in socks and sandals. Yes, the most exalted white wine on the planet\u2014white Burgundy\u2014 is 100 percent Chardonnay, and American Chard-makers have long cited Burgundy as their inspiration, right before they make butterscotch syrup in their McCh&amp;amp;#xE2;teaux.\n\n So imagine my distress when I took a job at Quince in San Francisco and was forced to change my tune, the Bay Area being famously proprietary about its local produce. I bought and sold plenty of Chard. Then I tasted Stony Hill's Napa Chardonnay for the first time. I was embarrassed: Here was a wine with the acidity and structure of a white Burgundy, and I'd never had it. There have been other humbling moments since then, which is the best thing that can happen to a wine guy. The minute you think you know everything, you're sunk\u2014and if you claim your taste isn't influenced by fashion and peer pressure, you're lying. Whether it's Chard or Cab, I'm tasting more treble and less bass across the spectrum of American wine\u2014and finding a lot to like along the way.\u2014D.L.\n\nThree to try:\n\n Stony Hill Napa Valley Chardonnay, $30\n\n Peay Vineyards Sonoma Coast Chardonnay, $20\n\n Au Bon Climat Santa Barbara County Chardonnay, $40\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n Filip Verheyden, editor and publisher of the whip-smart, awesomely geeky, and encyclopedic Tong magazine, on the most up-and-coming and underpriced regions in the world\n\n Australia\n\n Where: Margaret River and Barossa and Eden valleys, Australia\n\n What: Chardonnay\n\n Why: Australia came onto the stage in the 1980s with luscious, fat, and buttery wines aimed at entry-level drinkers. But these days the Aussies are turning out wines that could easily be mistaken for white Burgundy, until you check the price.\n\n Two to try:\n\n Vasse Felix Heytesbury Chardonnay (Margaret River), $43\n\n Yalumba Wild Ferment Chardonnay (Eden Valley), $17\n\n South America\n\n Where: Casablanca Valley and Colchagua Valley, Chile\n\n What: Syrah\n\n Why: Chilean wines were once considered boring, probably because they were. These days winemakers are looking to the cool and varied coast to produce fresher and more vibrant stuff. The Syrah from the coastal valleys is anything but dull.\n\n Two to try:\n\n Loma Larga BK-BL Syrah (Casablanca Valley), $26\n\n Montes Folly (Colchagua Valley), $73\n\n Europe\n\n Where: Burgenland and Weinviertel, Austria\n\n What: Blaufr&amp;amp;#xE4;nkisch and Grner Veltliner\n\n Why: Austria is producing some of the most interesting and least pronounceable European wines. Blaufr&amp;amp;#xE4;nkisch reds were once made in the oak-heavy international style, but these days they're all about finesse\u2014more Burgundy than Bordeaux. The Weinviertel, in the north, is where to find pure, refreshing Grner Veltliners with plenty of minerality and a peppery finish.\n\n Two to try:\n\n Schlossweingut Graf Hardegg Grner Veltliner (Weinviertel), $15\n\n Schieffer Blaufr&amp;amp;#xE4;nkisch Szapary (Sdburgenland), $40\n\n U.S.A.\n\n Where: Long Island, New York\n\n What: Sauvignon Blanc, red blends\n\n Why: The wines coming off the East Coast are a world apart from the hot and alcoholic Californian style. Long Island's maritime climate lends a freshness and minerality to everything from Pinot Grigio to Bordeaux-style blends. \n\n Two to try:\n\n Channing Daughters Rosato di Merlot (Bridgehampton), $18\n\n Channing Daughters Due Uve (Bridgehampton), $20*\n\n * Yes, Channing Daughters is killing it right now.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n The Merlot business didn't go bad because Paul Giamatti said, \"I am not drinking any fucking Merlot!\" In fact, it never went bad; it went blah. Too many winemakers didn't care. Or they didn't think clearly about weather and soil, which they do only with fucking Pinot Noir. At its best, typically in Bordeaux, Merlot is among the noblest of grapes\u2014lush, supple, smooth, powerful, and perfumed, the stuff of Ch&amp;amp;#xE2;teau P\u00E9trus. These days I look to Italy. Falesco's Umbria Merlot goes for about fifteen bucks, the fancier Montiano for twice that.\u2014Alan Richman\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n Is all \"zin\" superalcoholic schlock that tastes like Smucker's? Of course not. (The blends from Ridge Winery are a rule-proving exception.) But if we're flying blind, it's the last thing we'd pick, because the bad stuff is so, so bad.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n If your red wine hits the table at the same temperature as a restaurant's dining room, don't be afraid to ask your server to take it down a few degrees. Red should be like a September afternoon in the Loire Valley: somewhere in the mid-50s.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n The first sip can be bracing, but it's as refreshing and alive as any glass of white. And as the wine comes up by degree, the flavors open up and the juiciness comes into its own. It's all about the arc\u2014how the wine develops and evolves. The reds that work best chilled are light, playful, low in tannins, and high in acidity. The French have a phrase for it, vin de soif, which means 'thirst-quenching wine.' Chill the stuff that should be drunk at lunch, not swirled around with your nose stuck in the glass.\"\n\n Three to Try\n\n Young un-oaked Pinot Noir: Look for something you can see right through, which should indicate lighter body.\n\n Any Gamay ever made: A wine that sings when chilled. The perfect complement to fatty pork.\n\n Cabernet Franc from the Loire Valley: Dark and brooding, with herbaceous flavors that translate into cooling green tones.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n Charles Bieler, co-founder of the Gotham Project, on the coming wine-on-tap movement\n\n Between the cork, label, glass, and foil, you spend at least a dollar per bottle just on the dry goods alone. And what the hell for? We know that wine stores well in kegs\u2014the larger the format, the better the wine is protected. And for fresh reds and whites, the primary aromas are best preserved in something bigger than a bottle. Once you break those wines into smaller lots, they start evolving really quickly, so the keg is a real bonus for a Riesling or a ros\u00E9. And these days, people are realizing that, thank God, wine doesn't have to be so stuffy. I can't wait for the day when you turn up at the winery with your jug, fill it up, and then go home.\"\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n Sure, wine ratings are useful when you've got nothing else to go on, but all those 90+ stickers are just...some dude's opinion. If you know you don't love Barbaresco, all the points in the world won't make it taste better. And in the end, yours is the only palate that counts."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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