I'm in your time basically and I like both. My roommate just bought me two bottles of Arbor Mist for Christmas and 1.5 left that people have given me just because they know it's my thing.

Seriously, I'm that girl that will just bring her own bottle and drink it all night. Oh well. :rolleyes:

BUT I also appreciate real wine too (hospitality student -I'm slated for a for-credit wine appreciation class next fall) except that I'm in college and can't afford to spend money on expensive alcohol *unfortunately*

When I lived in California my roommates and I would get hammered on Sutter Home on summer nights on the porch, and -wait for it- Sutter Home White Zinfandel... :o



I also really like Hamilton Russel wines, they're from South Africa and their Cab is very refined. That's the wine I give to my graduating friends.

Rodney Strong? You're in, aephi alum! :)

Fish Eye
Barefoot
The Hundred Shiraz

all reasonably if not under-priced. a lot of aussie wines are good and inexpensive.

Recommending wines is tough, because only the ones with large distribution will be available all over the country. Most wines are regional.

These days, almost all the wine I drink is from Washington. With about 600 wineries in this state now, there's not even enough time to get around to all of them. Chateau Ste. Michelle is our biggest and oldest winery, but we have many that produce 90+ points wines.

My "go-to" wines right now are the Ethos Merlot by Chateau Ste. Michelle and any red wine by K Vintners/Magnificent Wine Company (particularlly the K Syrah and House Wine). I also like Rhone (French) wines, because they feature a lot of Grenache, which is one of my favorite varietals right now.

I don't like sweet wines, so I'm not a good judge of those.

I don't drink wine often when I do I have only 2 real options. If I'm at the wine bar, which is one of 2 places that sell the one wine I really like, I drink a red called Cagnina di Romagna.

http://marketviewliquor.com/index-id-105491-a-1.01.html

I love it! Sweet red wine if that is your taste. If I'm going white I usually go with a Moscato.

I actually like the Nouveau.:o


My favorites are Graham Beck Pinno, Carlo Rossi Paisano, and Vino Vherdi. I like some of the Carolina wines, but the tend to be too sweet for me. Yes, I drink cheap wine, but I also don't drink very often anymore.

Chateau Ste. Michelle puts out a good product. I'm a huge fan of Cote du Rhone and Cote Rotie Wines. My husband loves Burgundy...I'm not a fan. Just taste watered down to me since I really like robust, California wines. He says I'm a Philestine!

I LOVE Cakebread, even though it is pricey. As I heard it, Mr. and Mrs. Cakebread, (the owners) went through a nasty divorce. She "stole" the "recipe" for Cakebread, and now markets the exact same wine as Cupcake for only $10-15 a bottle. The liquor/wine stores around here can hardly keep Cupcake in stock, but if you find it, I would highly recommend it, the reds in particular.

http://www.elkcreekvineyards.com/tem...-facts-box.jpg
Kentucky Blue Box Wines

Hm-m, I don't know if I believe that rumor. I've had Cupcake before...but I'm not sure if I tried the merlot. I'll have to pick some up in March and report back then.

Yumm Cakebread. The cakebread cab ranks up there with Caymus special select for me.

Do y'all get your wines from Target? Next up I'm going to hear someone extol the virtues of Yellow Tail. Blech. Ptooey.

Love so many but my favs

Greg Norman Shiraz

Castle Rock Pinor Noir

I've heard good things about Washington State's wineries.

Most years, I go on a wine tour of the wineries of Long Island. So much fun!

Oregon State Pinots are great, too. Argyle makes a great wine.

I forgot a whole class of wines that I love- Chilean and Argentinian wines! Malbec is fabulous. My chairman from residency is Argentinian and introduced me to Malbec about 8 years ago. There are tons of really good bottles to choose from. There are a couple varietals from Chile that I don't know the name of, but I love the winery called Montes. They routinely put out a good product. Purple Angel is my favorite.

Tempranillo and Jumilla are also nice varietals from Spain and South America that are fairly cheap but very good.

Ive tasted better Arbor Mist / Barefoot/ Yellowtail than some of the likes of Robert Mondavi, Opus 1, Kathryn Hall.. etc.

Malbecs are my favorite varietal.

I like getting a local wine if I can. But I'm fortunate to live in an area with several nearby. (Pennsylvania wines, woot woot!)

I think a riesling/chardonnay is always a safe bet. Something on the sweet side. My mom won't drink anything but, and even my sister leans more that way.

Now at the holidays, I vote for something apple-y, cranberry-y or generally that sounds good for making mulled wine. :-)

i like sterling vineyards cabernet sauvignon as well as their sauvignon blanc, banfi chianti classico riserva, nobilo marlborough sauvignon blanc, a reisling from pacific rim winery and totally out in left field, a reisling from blue duck vineyards that can be found at wal-mart for under $5!

I would put Mondavi in the first category. Opus One was founded in part by the Mondavi family. All three of those are pretty commercialized, just like Barefoot and Yellowtail. Again, probably things that can be had in Target or a grocery store. (I will say here, however, that good wines can be bought at a Costco or Sam's Club; they actually have pretty decent wine buyers.)

You have to be careful about Chardonnays...a lot of people are allergic to oak, so if they drink oak-barrel Chardonnays, they can get pretty sick. It's much more common than you'd think. They can drink steel-barrel Chardonnays just fine. Because of that, I only gift Chardonnay to people whom I know drink it regularly and enjoy it.

People buy wine because of name recognition not because they actually know the flavor profile.

That's a generalization.

From experience people will buy a bottle because so and so drinks it on tv. Kim on Real Housewives of Atlanta drinks Far Niente Chardonnay and Ive specifically had a woman order it because she saw it on RHWO Atlanta.

Ummm, no.

People with bad taste buy wine because of name recognition. If that were the case, then all of the smaller vineyards in Napa, Sonoma, Washington State, and New York State would have gone kaput at this point.

Just realize that your experience is limited.

You might want to tell the Master Sommelier teaching my Sommelier training class that he is making generalizations then. With that said, realize that your statement about my experience is an assumption. My experience is not limited. One of the perks of waiting tables to support myself through school is free sommelier training and wine tastings every week.

Not necessarily people with bad taste, but people who dont know much about wine. People will also buy wine according to price and there is nothing wrong with that. I'm not rich enough to go drop 350 dollars on a bottle of wine for dinner. Just from my 3 years of fine dining many people have order because they recognize a name and have not had it before. More people are going to recognize Cakebread, Mondavi, and Duckhorn over Twomey or Honig vineyards. Those who purchase because of name recognition certainly do not out weigh those wine-o's and wine snobs which is why boutique winerys are still around.

I just realized my comment right after yours. I didn't mean that in response to your comment about people getting sick from the oak. It is true. I prefer stainless steel chards over oaked chards but they tend to taste the same to me.

My best advice to someone who really doesn't know wine is to find the store with someone who knows something about it. Not everyone who works there does. I found an assistant manager at a local shop that helped me pick out different selections that I normally would not buy over the course of a year. I've also been to a few wine tastings and take the opportunities to test the wines when that is being offered at the store. I bought the Cakebread, because Andy sat next to a rep on a business trip and she really talked it up. We bought the first bottle out of curiosity, the others because we liked them. We had never heard of them otherwise.

I would tell him the same thing as well. A master sommelier's job is to know more about wine than the average consumer. They just might be a little biased. There is a huge world of wine connoisseurs that never study under a sommelier or wait tables that have far more experience than your three years of waiting tables...at what restaurant? You could say that "generally" people don't know much about wine, but to make a statement like yours was like I said, a sign of your "limited experience." And I'm sure your instructor didn't tell you that all us mere mortals just buy wine based on what our favorite TV characters drink, now did he?

Sorry sweetie but who are you to judge my knowledge? I'm pretty sure I know a little more than you "mere mortals" because of my oh so limited experience that you know all about. Because you dont know beyond my three years of waiting tables or me at all who are you to question it? And whats your experience exactly? I'm not claiming I have tons of knowledge or experience. I was stating a fact that I was told and have witnessed from MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE and if you choose not to believe it then thats your perogative but theres no need to make assumptions like YOU did.

Srsly? Most boring semi-hijack ever. I don't give a shit whose credentials are what.

Back on topic: if I had to be 100% truthful, I love so many Finger Lakes wines/wineries, but it's so rare for me to be able to get them unless I drive home to New York (State). Red Cat, Bully Hill anything, so good. We'll be bringing a lot back after Christmas.

I love Finger Lakes wines! I'm a member of the Cornell Club here in NYC, and every month they have a different Finger Lake white and red that they serve. There used to be a restaurant called New York Vintage, where all they served were Long Island, Finger Lakes, and Columbia Valley wines.

Have you ever done a tour? My parents did a trip every year. I'd seriously recommend it (along with getting a car service for the day).

I've never done a Finger Lakes tour, but I try to do the East End/North Fork tours every other year or so. I'm working on arranging one with my girlfriends. I honestly prefer the North Fork wine tours to Napa because they're smaller and you get to taste more wines and sometimes talk with the vintners.

We're hoping to do some Michigan tours next fall. This past fall, time got away from us. I might bail on live-in and to with some girlfriends.

You have reading comprehension problems. This is about making broad statements about the wine knowledge of the general public. Look at the posts of the people on this board. They can add to your personal experience. You have the personal wine preferences on display of Munchkin03 and me. Does it sound like we picked our wines based on RHWO Atlanta? PeppyGPhiB even brought up the point values of the wines produced in her state. These are examples of average people who aren't completely ignorant about wine. This proves that your statement was GENERAL! Maybe you just haven't had the right customers who know what they like, study wine, and order bottles based on that. That is why I said you have limited experience. In MY EXPERIENCE, there are a large number of people who subscribe to Wine Spectator, study the prices of wines, know what's a good deal when they go to a restaurant, order the appropriate bottle for what they plan to eat, ask the sommelier if they need some help and experiment with new wineries to expand their horizons. They are not the majority of people out there so I won't generalize and claim they are.

PS. Once you get out of college, you realize that your experience is ALWAYS limited. My experience is limited. That's why I continue to travel, eat at fine restaurants, drink wine when I can, study medicine, etc. If we knew everything, we could just hang it up and die.

Our wine tours started out as an alumnae chapter event! Then a small group of us started going on our own. The older women in my chapter are really knowledgeable when it comes to wines so they were a lot of fun!

That would be really cool. We had a wine tasting with my alum group before I moved from Baltimore. It was a lot of fun...great turnout as you can imagine!:D

I'm not saying that everyone orders or buys wine this way, and I'll say it again. Ive waited on many who know what they like, who are even more knowledgeable than myself. I'm not saying I know it all. I simply made a "broad and general statement" according to an experience IVE had. My parents subscribe to Wine Spectator, We've been to Napa, they have a cellar in their house. I'm not saying they buy according to name. I'm not the one with comprehension problems dear. You interpreted my statement as general, I interpreted your statement as misinformed on my circumstance.