What are your tips for working out which unknown wine to try

Picking up on Viscardo’s earlier posts, when in a wine shop or restaurant (or even a supermarket [smileyvault-ban.gif] )
what are your tips for selecting wines that are unfamiliar to you?

  • Do you seek advice from the staff? Do you follow their advice implicitly, or use it to inform your judgement
  • Do you carry a Hugh Johnson pocket wine book with you to read up on new stuff?
  • Do you do the same as above but using phone and internet?
  • Do you check out the price on wine-searcher to ensure you’re not getting fleeced?
  • Do you latch onto regions you know and try variants within the region, or dive straight for the most obscure wine there?

What successes (or failures) have you had selecting ‘blind’ and what advice do you feel that generates?


For me, trying an unknown producer in a known (but not famous) appellation has worked quite well. I recall an excellent Faugeres bought in Dublin, that I returned to empty the shelf of.

The only other advice that springs to mind, is recognising what type of shop it is. If it’s a convenience store then it’s unlikely (but not impossible) that it will have carefully chosen wines of character. More likely it’s commodity wine, and in that scenario I’ll stick to the water. One exception to this is in situ within the wine region. Often it is possible to stumble upon good wines in the unlikeliest of settings. If it is an independent wine merchant, then chances are the obscure stuff is where they excel. Any fool can buy and sell a Rioja, but a Bairrada suggests a merchant who knows their subject.

What are your hot tips for ‘going off-piste’

regards
Ian

This doesn’t work very well in restaurants but in stores I often go by importers. I would try any Kermit Lynch wine, for example.

Cellartracker, followed by Cellartracker and when all else fails, I turn to Cellartracker.

If Ian only lived in the US…

Ian, you have an awful lot available to you in the UK that we don’t get access to here in the States. I would think a crapshoot would yield better results.
If I am not sure about a wine I’ll check Cellartracker for clues but I rarely take that leap on an unknown without at least knowing the winemakers style. I hate spending my hard earned money on drain cleaner.

Good point on CT - something I often use especially for older wines.

I think the importer comment is valid, though perhaps more clear-cut in the US than in Europe. Plenty of option for the better European merchants to self-import rather than go through a middle-man importer - at least for European wines. I recall Darrell Corti (Sp?) getting lots of positive comments over the years on these pages (and e-bob before that).

In response to the OP, my wine “exploration process” resembles my experiences on YouTube: I begin with something I like, or that somebody has recommended to me, and eventually end up on the ecological equivalent of a Japanese game show clip.

Funny you should mention Mr Corti. I just was reading his introduction to a published interview with Louis “Bob” Trinchero.

Point taken, though I don’t think Ian was asking just for himself. I found this while looking around:

http://www.wineanorak.com/ukmerch.htm

WineAnorak is awesome, IMHO

These days, I can take a look at the CT app to assist me.

But in the old days, if I saw a wine was from (for example) Howell Mountain (in Napa), I’d take a flyer on it. I felt I had to play the percentages.