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i am turning 21 in December and i want to ask my family for wines to see what is good, so i won’t look retarded when we go out and I can order drinks..What are some good wines and champanges?
i would like it to take sweet…ive had some wine..but it didn’t taste good to me..
i would like it to take sweet…ive had some wine..but it didn’t taste good to me..

If you like a sweet wine ask for a Dolce!

Or if sweet is not a preference:

"10. Rodney Strong Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve (Sonoma County) 2000. Big nose and lots of fruit flavor. Black cherry, blackberry, olive, chocolate, and sage. Lots of (relatively smooth and well-rounded) tannins and good acidity make it fairly easy to drink now but suggest medium-term cellaring would be rewarded.

9. Spencer Roloson Sueño Vineyard Viognier (Lodi) 2003. Excellent. Good acidity makes it very food friendly. Lightly oaked. Nice mix of honey (trace), apricots and peaches, and flint. Very highly recommended.

8. Fattoria di Felsina Berardenga Chianti Classico (Tuscany) 2000. Delicious, although it tastes more like a claret than Chianti. Leather, cedar, currants, black cherries. Very highly recommended at $20/bottle.

7. Magito (North Coast) 2003. A Zinfandel-based blend with Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Sangiovese, Syrah, Petite Sirah, Barbera, and a touch of Cabernet Franc. Intense fruit seasoned with oriental spices. Yummy. A little hot on the finish (14.9% alcohol), but otherwise easy to drink and easy to like. This is one of the best Zinfandel-based wines I’ve had in a long time.

6. Joseph Phelps Le Mistral (Montery County) 2002. An excellent Syrah and Grenache-based Rhone-styled red wine. Young in appearance on the palate, but easy to drink now. Intense strawberry flavor and aroma, plus cherry, chocolate, pepper, and allspice. A very, very good food wine-delicious and versatile.

5. Pahlmeyer Red (Napa Valley) 2001. Delicious. Rich currant, blackberry, and cedar flavors. Big nose. Very enjoyable now but has plenty of tannins and acids for extended aging.

4. Diamond Creek Volcanic Hill (Napa Valley) 1986. At age 20 (almost), this is a profound example of what an age-worthy California cabernet can achieve with time. The bottle was in excellent shape. The wine was still in the neck and while the cork was somewhat stained, there was no evidence of seepage. Still a remarkably deep ruby, albeit showing some brick-red coloration at the rim. A huge bouquet of anise, leather, tobacco, cedar, and prunes. A tad light on the palate and a relatively short finish, however. Even so, it offers tasty fruit leather, dried currant, and cedar flavors. All told, however, this was one of those wines where your time is best spent savoring the spectacular nose.

3. Piña Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon Estate Grown (Napa Valley) 2001. A limited production wine sourced from Howell Mountain grapes and very reasonably priced at around $50. Earth, cigar box, dark berrries, mocha java, and sage. Lots of toasty new oak. Very drinkable now, especially if given a double decanting, but the firm structure suggests laying a few bottles down for the usual 8-15 year aging of quality California Cabernet.

2. Joseph Phelps Eisrebe (Napa Valley) 2004. This is consistently one of California’s very best dessert wines. It’s vinified from the relatively obscure Scheurebe grape and grown in an estate vineyard near St. Helena. Unlike German or Canadian ice wines, where the grapes can be left on the vines until they freeze, Phelps uses commercial refrigeration to freeze the grapes before pressing. The resulting must is so high in sugar that the wine ends up with about 8% alcohol and 25% residual sugar. Intense apricot aromas and flavors. A deliciously sweet, unctuous wine, which still has enough acidity to avoid cloying on the palate.

1. Silver Oak (Alexander Valley) 2001. A stunning wine. Big nose of cassis, lead pencil shavings, and toasty American oak (vanilla and dill). Medium to full bodied, the palate offers clean and forward flavors of currants, black cherries, olives, sage, and dill. One of the best young California cabernets I’ve tasted in ages."

As far as Champagne ask for:

"Heidsieck

Monopole Red demi-sec
Monopole Blue Brut
Monopole Blue Premier Cru Brut

Pol Roger

Cuvee Brut
Cuvee Sir Wiston Churchill Brut

Nicolas Feuillate

Cuvee Rose 1er Cru Brut

Taittinger

Cuvee “La Françoise” Brut
Comte de Champagne Brut"

Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Ale is probably my favorite beer at the moment. However I have never seen any other barley wines at my local liquor store.

Are there any other barley wines that are commonly available in the US? I’m assuming there are some which do not clearly have "barley wine" on the label, and so for that I missed them…

Any ideas on specific, common brands I should try to find?

It’s required that all barley wine in America be labeled as “barleywine-style ale.”
One of the more recent brands to grace North Texas shelves is Green Flash Brewing Company of Vista, California, close to San Diego. YOu can find in Central Market and Whole Foods.

Others are Old Blue Granite Barley, Blind Pig English Style Ale, "Old Dipsea" Barleywine Style Ale,

I am studying a wine menu from a bistro that i might end up working at and i need to lern about wines. i need to also match the wines with food … its hard work but i was wondering if there is a website out there that might make it a bit easier. pls hepl!

If you are looking for mixed wine go with food, Wacanai might be a good choice:
http://www.wacanai.com

You can input your wine that the bistro has, and the website generates suggestion to mix, a pretty fast way to learn bartending. Input the things you have, and that’s it. However the website is not focusing on tutorials.

I know a lot of red wines go bad and white absolutely wont save for more than a couple years. I want to start a wine cellar I can pass down through the years. I want to stay around the fifty dollar mark on most red wines. I wouldn’t be against an expensive bottle here and there, but don’t want to go broke.
Thank you for your answers
I have been to company parties where the owner of the company will serve two hundred dollar bottles of wine. Wow, I just don’t have that kind of money, but they are great wines. I wish I could afford them. maybe I am better off drinking beer. lol. I love my job, I love my job, I love my job…

Here’s a really important thing to consider: eventually, someone in your family will decide to open up the wine and share it with family and loved ones on a special occasion. Are they going to like the wine? There are a lot of red Bordeaux and Italian Barolos that will go the distance in terms of aging, but a fully mature Bordeaux or Barolo are not to everyone’s tastes. In fact if you are not used to drinking fully mature Bordeaux, you might find it a bit strange, and aged Barolo is somewhat of an acquired taste.

Therefore, a safe bet would be to go with either a vintage Port or Sauternes from a great vintage. Both will age very well for decades and because they are sweet dessert wines, they tend to have wide appeal.

Presently, vintage ports from the 2000 and 2003 vintages should be readily available. For $50 you should be able to buy the top end ones like Fonseca or Taylor Fladgate in half bottles. You’d either have to downgrade or pay a bit more money if you want a full 750 mL bottle.

The 2001 vintage in Sauternes was a classic vintage, and a top Sauternes like Chateau Suduiraut, Chateau Rieussec, or Chateau Guiraud will cost you roughly $50 for a half bottle and will easily age 30 years.

Good luck!

Is it bad luck for the stores business if some employees told some customers on which wines are private labels and because the store employees are not suppose to say the word private labels?

bad luck?

most stores have private labels, and unless some dumb boss makes it against the rules to say the word… most customers will likely know its a private label if they see 3 bottles of wine and one of those bottles is significantly cheaper.

I am doing a class project where I have to get a wineries wines into some restaurants wine lists.
How do I go about this? Is this something feisable for me to do or is it really difficult?

Usually restaurants go through wine and beverage distributors; in some jurisdictions this means going through an ABC body.

The direct-sell approach is very tough on a restaurant, usually what happens is the wine is reviewed in a magazine or entered into a competition, and interested sommeliers or cellarmasters contact their distributors to get some. Sometimes the distributors may try promoting it to restaurants, either by giving a sample or packaging it with other, more well-known and desirable wines, but wineries themselves are only likely to deal with restaurants very close to them that want some local flavor.

That said, you may be able to convince a restaurant manager or two to start carrying a few wines on a trial basis or as a "special" until they decide whether or not they want to add the wine permanently to their list.

Can anyone recommend a few different wines and spirits that would be good to start out with? Some major "must haves".

Several wine suggestions:

1) Sauvignon Blanc – which is a nice fruity, not so dry, slightly sweet white wine, well liked and well made in California. Sauvignon Blanc is a nice priced wine that I like to use to introduce people to wine, since they don’t have the acidity and driness of Chardonnay nor the tannin bite of red wines. I would suggest Robert Mondavi Fume Blanc ($15-18), Chateau St. Michelle Sauvignon Blanc ($12-14). If you want to go higher price, try Caymus Conundrum ($22-25).

2) Viogneir – which is a French grape also made by some Californian wineries. These are not as sweet as Sauvignon Blanc, but equally as floral in smell and taste. It also has the crispness that I like in chilled white wine. Try Miner Viogneir ($20), Fess Parker Viogneir ($25).

3) Riesling – a wonderful German white wine. There are several different classes, so you will have to ask the salesperson, but some are sweeter and some are less sweet. The key is to look at the alcohol content – the higher alcohol, the less sweet. You want to find Riesling with less alcohol for your purpose. I would suggest some German Riesling such as Gunderloch (personal favorite is about $60, but there are a variety of other types), Leitz (again, personal favorite is about $30/half, but lots of variety), Strub ($25-35). Also can try some US Riesling, such as Wilamette Valley Riesling ($15), Chateau St. Michelle Riesling ($15).

As for other spirits, you have to try, since they are all so different. A few suggestion to start out:

1) Cognac, which is a distilled wine (sort of) from France, wonderully complex and much higher in alcohol

2) Brandy, which is also a distilled wine, also more fruity and less dry.

I never personally get into Tequila or Whisky, even though I do enjoy Tequila in my Margarita and occasionally try a martini or two. It takes some getting used to. However, getting a bottle of Tequila with Margarita kit may be fun to have around the house.

Good luck

I can not find a resource to refer me to a good wine distribuitor of wines from Mexico in the US for me to ship to rest of the world!
Can anybody give me any leads please?
Desperate to find an answer!

You’d be better off working in reverse order. Mexico is not really known for great wines, so you might want to find a winery that fits your needs and then ask them who their distributor is.

Or, find out who the distributors are in your area and ask them if they carry Mexican wines. Ask the people at your local wine shops who their distributors are and go from there. Heck, even a google search may help lead you in the right direction.

I was just on a couple of wine tours and brought a whole bunch of great wines. I have opened one bottle of white and it has been in my fridge for 4 days now. It is still great cause I have a proper wine corker in it to keep it fresh but I’m wondering if they have limits.

Does the limits differ from Red to White??

Really good wine? Not very long…

You’re looking at a matter of hours here. Good red wine lasts 2 days MAX with the cork shoved back in the bottle…whites may last 3 to 4 days…but I reccommend drinking ALL the wine in each bottle you plan on opening. Oxygen is wine’s greatest enemy over a prolonged period of time.

Particularly white wines, I like those better.

I’m generalizing, but here goes. The driest whites are from Burgundy. Most french and american whites are dry. Some australian whites have a touch of residual sugar. Austrian whites, as a rule, have tasteable sugars. German Rieslings, particularly Kabinett’s and Spaetlese, are semi sweet to sweet. With Italian whites, you just have to try them, I’ve found no way to tell from the label whether they will be sweet or not. Eis wines from Germany and Sauternes from France are sweet dessert wines. For Champagne, Brut is the driest, followed by demi-sec (some sweetness) and sec (sweet). Hope this helps.

Happy sipping.