How does your partner/SO fit into your wine life?

I’d like to hear how your partners/significant others fit into your wine world. Do they participate? How much? How do you handle the financing of your wine hobby/habit/obsession, in the context of your relationship?

Mine is actually an interesting (I think) story. My then girlfriend (now fiancee) had substantially more experience than me, growing up in a family that went to tastings, wine dinners, and wine country. She also had a second job pouring wines on the weekend, and so at first I was extremely intimidated by her wine knowledge.

I came from a family that had little interest in wine, and through my early adult life very few of my friends had interest in wine either. I had no interest myself until about 5 years ago, when she turned me onto it.

In fact I knew so little about wine that I’d open a bottle, have a glass, stick the cork back in, and then stick the bottle under my kitchen sink for a few weeks until I wanted more (gasp!). Perhaps because I was so intimidated I sought as much information/knowledge/experience as possible.

I got bitten by the bug, and so while we tried to share costs where we could, I found sometimes my desire to have the nicer bottle/case etc led to me shelling out a bit more than my share, which I had absolutely no problem with.

We found our palettes overlap nicely in most areas, but with a few big differences. We both love Pinot and Zin, for example, and while she shares my love of Loire whites it does not translate to the reds. I’m on my own for Riesling as well.

Over the years our roles have shifted a bit. My interest in wine has definitely passed hers, but her financial situation is more similar to mine now. This leaves me in a really great (but sometimes challenging) place in that she’ll split the cost of nearly all purchases so long as I can get her buy-in.

I don’t even bother asking her to pay for Loire reds or German Riesling; I just make those purchases/pickups when she’s not home.

What about you?

Stuck in the sidecar, uncomfortable with the aggressive driving, but thrilled on the straights.

Great thread. My wife is the ultimate trooper. She loves drinking wine with me, and never gives me grief about the amount of time/money I spend on it. I’m a lucky man.

Bitch runs things.

You or her?

She lets me buy what I want, and I let her drink what she wants. Not that either of us would do differently without permission.

P Hickner

The first time I took my girlfriend to Europe (Spain it was) and after a couple days she remarked; “Is that all you do is eat and drink here?”

“Well, no honey, did you like, want to go sightseeing or something?”

She is starting to drink my reds if they are not too shitty.

My wife has a fine palate and nose, but by far not as much knowledge as I have about wine.
Her interest in wine is to drink good (now even better) stuff, but without going into too much details.

We´ve been together on most of my wine-travellings in France and Austria - and she joins me on many of my tastings … so she knows also a lot of wine-makers and dear wine-friends …

However - the deal is: I PAY !
I pay the wines, I pay the tastings, the dinners with wines etc. … but we share the travellings, usually combined with holidays at the Mediteranean etc. until recently with the whole family most of the times …

My wife has her own money - and our agreement (which took a certain time to come together) is now: as long as she and the family doesn´t miss anything important she won´t care (anymore) how much I spend on wine …

(well, in the beginning there were kind of discussions …)

The boys are also quite interested (and can´t stand a bad bottle of wine anymore …)

She has her vices, I have mine. Like a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

She manages the household finances, I don’t micro-manage. In turn, she’s pretty cool about my spending on wine, cycling and art, within some bounds of course.

We drink wine most evenings together, me typically a red that she dislikes, her a crisp Sav Blanc. Sometimes we meet at Riesling. A lot of our entertainment has wine either at or near the center, and I normally organize that.

She fits nicely in a double-size bin between the Baroli and Burgundy in the cellar…

I push most of the purchases but she gives some input; like when she told me to order some Lewelling the other day and last night when I told her about the BD purchases I made she asked why I didn’t order more of a couple of the really good deals. So I went back and ordered more.

We do tastings together and we have done a few wine trips together. When we bought our new house she allowed me to build a true wine cellar rather than the repurposed closet I had before. She enjoys wine and has a better palate than me, but she is more willing to drink lesser wine than I am. She does not see the sense is spending more than $70 a bottle ever.

All of that being said, she isn’t happy that we have 500+ bottles of wine right now, she had limited me to 365 about a year ago. She would rather spend that extra money on vacations or working towards an earlier retirement. But as long as the mortgage and bills are paid, we fund our retirement accounts, and she gets her two vacations a year, she goes along with it.

She’s a wonderful, patient partner. I do the legwork and buying. She actively participates and balances my extremes. Nevertheless, after 27 years, we still have conversations not unlike Tom’s.

RT

She’s got a good palate and enjoys drinking wine but has no interest in seeking, buying, selecting, describing or any of the geeky aspects, all of which she leaves to me. She’s pretty consistent and our preferences align for most things so it’s pretty easy to pick a bottle we’ll both like.

We have a circle of friends who love wine and while a couple of the wives in the group are just as or more geeky than the guys she gets her enjoyment at our group dinners from the friendship and social interaction and just ignores the wine geek components of the evening.

I got a little resistance on the financial front back when the cellar was in logarithmic growth phase but that passed when I showed her that there was room in the budget for wine, shoes and bag collections. Our acquisitive appetites have regressed in recent years.

Fit in??
Like a fish out of oil. My pursuit is solitary. Everything I do I have to do solomente.
The only support I get is if we have offlines, she’ll come along. You see, she doesn’t really drink more than a few sips and she’s done, even though she does have a good palate and can recognize if a wine is well-made or not. So this whole shebang is MY business, and mine alone.

Laura keeps me from bankrupting us. She’ll look at the cc bills once in a while and say something like “you spent $$$ on wine last month?” That’s the signal to cool it for a bit. She should be saying it sometime around February 27th, when the cc bill with Berserker Day and Rhys shows up.

Same thing at my home. I spend a fair amount on wine but she outspends me on Art. She’s a casual wine drinker (Riesling, Sauv Blanc and lighter bodied red). I’m slowly trying to get her into wine and I think I might have peeked her interest with a bottle of Limerick Lane Zinfandel I popped open this week. She’s taking us to the Dallas Art Fair this year where I’m sure whatever she buys will put my wine budget to shame.

We are both enthusiastic red wine drinkers. She has the better nose and palate (most woman do).
I pick the wines and the mailing lists. Many vacations we take, we spend part of that time visiting wineries.
Growing up without, we have both decided to cap individual bottle wine purchases to under $50 with few exceptions. We have managed I think, to live incredible lives enriched by our mutual love for wine.

We are almost exactly the same:

She loves wine too, but doesn’t know wine as well as I. We are both board members of our respective branches of the International Wine & Food Society.

She accompanies me on my wine excursions except Vinexpo which she finds too “hectic”.

Though she has her own money, I spend for everything (as in everything) - a cultural thing - the man is expected to fully support the family in all things. Once, she used her own money to pay for the family’s airfare on one of our trips to the U.S., but she did that on her own accord - I didn’t even know until she mentioned it to me much later on.

My sons also appreciate fine wine & food.

We are fortunate never to have had to take on any debt, and live reasonably comfortably.

She is, by her nature, thrifty, while I am much more open to spending more on creature comforts - so we strike a fair enough balance.

Best,

N

I have it made in that department. After 10 years + of collecting seriously and amassing a fairly large, carefully chosen collection, as well as a solid knowledge base, I married someone with a larger collection and even more knowledge, plus one of the best palates I’ve ever encountered. He’s been ITB for a long time in various ways, after getting paroled from work as a chef. There are those who refer to him as a “food savant,” which is pretty accurate, and together we prowl the world in search of great food and drink. It was in our marriage contract that there must always be champagne chilled, including a rosé.

We overlap almost perfectly in our love of Burgundy, Piedmont, Champagne, and Riesling, though he has more old CA than I do, a lot more oddities and an ocean of old scotch. He is more comfortable buying large quantities of the things we drink often, and I am more comfortable buying a few higher end bottles, though occasionally I get a note saying “Baby – I was bad today…” and I know he has been particularly good. Some might say we enable each other, but we also keep each other in check and make sure we are buying only what we truly want.

We do wine events together, and both have many friends from the wine world. Much of our social life together revolves around eating and drinking wine or spirits, and I’m a little embarrassed by how much time just the two of us is spent talking about food and drink.

There is no one in the world I’d rather drink and eat with. And knowing his first wife didn’t really drink or care about food much, I think he’s pretty happy as well.