Get a few friends together in the summer, each of you bring a Super Soaker water gun, and fill them with the wines you don’t like. It will be smashingly fun!
With $30ish wine from WTSO, I’d give them away as gifts unless I’d tried one and it was actually bad in a way a civilian would notice.
The problem for me is always what to do with the lower end supermarket type wines people bring over sometimes. I appreciate the sentiment, of course, but I don’t really have uses for Coppola merlot, Mondavi “California” Cabernet in bourbon barrels, and so forth. Maybe this is vanity, but with people knowing me as the wine collector guy, I don’t really want to give them or serve them to friends, either.
So back before our office closed and I started working from home, I would sometimes leave a box anonymously in the office break room with a sign saying “take one.”
I’ve also taken boxes of them to my Parish, for the priests to use - with their meals, for gatherings, whatever. I’ll usually throw in a few good bottles, too. Sometimes, I’ve put colored stickers on the bottles to suggest “everyday wine” versus “better wines.” Which is probably stupid, but it just made me feel better that (I imagined) the better wine wouldn’t go into sangria or the food or something.
When this does happen (typically when family is visiting) I always open the bottle that night, along with what I was planning to open anyway. When the supermarket wine inevitably doesn’t go, I make people take it home with them.
Cook with it.
Gifts.
If not to my taste, not flawed, and worth the effort, sell it.
Down the drain if corked or otherwise badly flawed.
When the supermarket wine inevitably doesn’t go, > I make people take it home > with them.
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How does that conversation usually work out?
We have a few large parties each year and put them out. Most people don’t even look at what it is. We also hand out bottles as little thank you’s for everyday stuff. I hit the guys at the deli with a couple bottles. The UPS guy etc.
Random ideas:
And, of course gifts for anyone who enjoys wine but isn’t a geek.
Hope this helps.
I think if you handle it appropriately people are happy to take it home with them. “We have so much wine here, why don’t you take this home with you and enjoy it, we’ll never finish it on time?”
That’s one way to do it. I’d be nervous my guests would see it for what it is; “the wine guy” pushing the plonk on the neophytes. Some great ideas in this thread for how to give the wine away and create good will.
This. To a civilian, a $30 wine is very premium, even if you don’t like the style.
Out of curiosity, which wines are they?