Thursday, May 5, 2011

Mastering Wine From A California Winery

By Doris Willis


A California Winery can help you have the greatest wine for you. Whether or not you are out to dinner at an upscale eating place or preparing dinner at home, knowing how to select the right wine is going to be useful. Certain wines go best with certain meals and deciding on the best wine to suit your needs includes sampling many. The few suggestions here will help you find the wine that suits you. It is very important to get wine from liquor retailers that take proper care of their wine, like purchasing straight from the winery. Intense heat or cold, direct sunlight, and dramatic temperature fluctuations are not great for wine. It is also necessary to buy wine from the vintner who uses high quality Oak barrels for the aging method, as this imparts a beautiful flavor to the wine. Also, before you purchase, make sure the wine is filled up to the neck of the container, the cork is not moving out of the bottle, and there are no indications of leaks.

In our community we have a shop run by a young man who is extremely knowledgeable about every aspect of wine, from vineyard techniques to manufacturing to tasting, and he is really passionate about the subject. I have learned to trust his judgment, and whenever he advocates a wine, I can depend on it being a great choice. Of course he must charge a lot more than the big volume liquor stores for his bottles of wine, but his knowledgeable advices more than compensate for the additional expense.

You can drink good, often even outstanding wines, at very affordable prices. The simplest way to do this is to wait for the local liquor store to have their occasional sales. For instance, about once per month a large liquor store nearby our home, which includes a fairly good selection of wines from around the world, features a sale for 15% off for those on their "family plan". So this is certainly the time to fill up.

The following question is what wines to settle on. Unless you already know some good producers and have your favorites, the best guides would be the tiny tags which give wine rankings by wine critics such as Robert Parker of "The Wine Advocate", the "Wine Spectator", and "The Wine Enthusiast", among others. Nearly all good liquor stores make a point to display these tags for the wines which the experts have sampled.

In general, wines originating from a California Winery have the good reputation for being of excellent quality and economical. They are actually one of the most consistently used wines in several restaurants across the western world. Look for liquor shops or supermarkets which have a wide array of selection of wines and do not hesitate to sample wines which are marked down. They are often top quality wines. If in doubt don't think you are exhibiting ignorance by asking the staff at the wine merchant for their opinion of a good wine. These folks know what sells well and becomes popular for consistency of quality and value for money and their help and advice will be worth having.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment