No Stupid Wine Questions: How Do I Find Good Wine?
The most common, seemingly simplest, but most complicated wine question
This is a question I get constantly, because there is so much wine available in the world, and it feels incredibly overwhelming to stare at a shelf of bottles and have no idea whether you will like them. No one wants to spend a bunch of money on something they end up pouring down the drain, and bad wine can be very, very bad indeed. So today’s question is, how do I find good wine?
I bought my first bottle of wine in a grocery store. I’m not even counting my underaged forays into Boone’s Farm here; I started out buying my wine in grocery stores, and it never occurred to me to do otherwise. I bought what was readily available at the same place I was buying everything else, and I probably only found wine better than Yellowtail Shiraz because I happened to shop at a grocery store in Holland, Michigan that stocked a small amount of French wine, including a Pouilly-Fuisse that caught my attention mostly because I had absolutely no idea how to pronounce it and I wanted to be fancy.
I am a person who hates to go to multiple stores when I could just go to one. I’m not a shopper, I’m a buyer, with a list of things I need and a limited amount of time in which to procure them. So I fully understand when people ask me what the best wine is that they can find at the grocery store. I don’t want to make an extra stop either. But this becomes complicated if you want to find good wine, and I’m sorry to tell you, you’re going to have to go somewhere other than the grocery store.
Also, if you’re looking for a fast or easy answer, I’m sorry, this isn’t one. I’m going to complicate some things, hopefully in the interest of eventually uncomplicating them.
We’re probably going to need to define some terms before we go any further. First, by grocery store, I mean large, corporate chain grocery store: Kroger’s, Safeway, Meijer, etc. Small grocery shops and independently owned stores are a different ballgame. Chains that focus on organics, health foods, and smaller-production items - like Whole Foods - are also differentiated, as are regional chains. We’ll talk more about these categories later, as well as Trader Joe’s and their infamous and horrifying two buck chuck.
Corporate chain grocery stores buy wine as large, package deals for all their locations together. They get great wholesale prices for doing so, and often the wine producers even pay to receive the privilege of shelf space or featured merchandising like you’d see on the end of an aisle. The store also gets to rely on carrying a consistent product that a consumer will come back for time after time. This means the only wines they buy are those produced in large enough numbers to be sold in hundreds of locations.
To be clear, some of those wines might be wines you would enjoy. They are created to be enjoyed by the maximum number of people! But I am assuming that if you are here reading this blog, or in some other setting where you’re asking how to find good wine, you’re not just asking which $10 or less, mass produced, well-marketed bottle you should knock back on a Tuesday night. You want to find tasty wine, preferably without a ton of unnecessary added crap, that doesn’t utterly degrade the environment, and that maybe supports a smaller business, that doesn’t turn your grocery budget into a basket full of ramen noodles. I think this is a reasonable ask, but it does take a little more work than popping over to the wine aisle at Target.
If I can’t go to a big box store, where can I go?
Whole Foods, which I mentioned above, often has a decent wine selection with more variety than you’d find in other chains. Smaller, locally owned grocery stores aren’t beholden to national buying overlords and can sometimes have interesting selections. But it’s rare for these places to have knowledgeable and available staff, and the presence of such people are really going to be what makes your wine buying experience less stressful. Go to a wine shop. Not a liquor store with some wine. A specifically wine store, or a wine and spirits store with a dedicated wine staff. Ask them for help.
How does this random wine staff know what I like?
They don’t, but they know things about the wine. They can help point you toward appealing descriptions. Or you can help them along by knowing what you like and being able to describe it in basic terms. White, red, rosé, or sparkling? Light or full bodied? Very dry, a little sweet, or very sweet? Fruity or more mineral/savory/earthy? Do you like more acidity or less? Do you like the drying sensation and slightly bitter taste of tannins, or hate it? The more of these answers you can give, the better your odds are of getting a wine you like.
We don’t have a wine shop. Why can’t you just tell me exactly what to buy?
If you’d like to buy online, I probably can! Or if you tell me where you’re shopping, I can do some consulting. But offhand, I have no idea what your local stores carry. Except the chain grocery stores, of course, because they all carry the exact same things.
I’m in the store ALONE, and you’re not picking up your phone! What should I buy?
First of all, if you are the researching type, you can figure out a few producers ahead of time that you can look for in these situations. Producer websites will give you info about the wine itself, while professional and consumer ratings will tell you what others think of it. But I’m also assuming not everyone who drinks wine and cares about having good wine is a researching kind of person. Quick tip: many stores list ratings on the shelves or tags, and some bottles display their ratings. Find something rated higher than 90 for under $15-20. Or you can do what I do: buy something imported. Exportation is a vetting process of its own. Think of it this way: for that wine to travel between countries, several people had to think it was good enough to represent its own country or region on the export market and to travel the globe to be sold here. If I am stuck buying grocery store wine, I will always look to see if they have something French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. You’ll often find great deals on better quality wine than domestics in the same price range. This is also my tactic if I’m at Whole Foods and just want to try something new, sight unseen.
I shop at Total Wine but they’re always encouraging me to buy the wines with Winery Direct tags. What’s up with that?
Many stores including Total Wine have private label programs that give them better profit margins for selling certain wines. Full disclosure: I previously worked for a store that had a robust private label program. Sometimes it meant we had wines you couldn’t find anywhere else that didn’t come with much detail, which usually means they’re being intentionally fuzzy about where that fruit is coming from. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad, sometimes it’s just not from well-known vineyards or wineries. Some of our private label wines were very good, and cheaper only because they didn’t have to shell out as much for marketing. Some of them were even fairly well known wine labels that we happened to get for a great price. Last week I was at Total Wine and found Carboniste, a fabulous independent, natural producer, on their Winery Direct program. Don’t write it off just because it’s part of a store’s private label program…but do be leery if a salesperson only points you toward the special tags or the prices that end in a different number and doesn’t seem to know anything about any other wines.
What’s so bad about Trader Joe’s?
In theory Trader Joe’s uses fruit that is fine, it’s just grown in less popular areas so they can offer it for lower prices. I’m not a fan of the fact that they relabel with their own TJ’s labeling so you really have no idea where that fruit came from, how it was grown, what else is in it, or who grew it or made the wine. That’s a whole lot of room for shenanigans, and I’m willing to pay a bit more to drink shenanigan-free wine.
What do I do if I get a wine I don’t like?
This is the big worry, right? You’ve spent money on something, and now you don’t like it. The most beneficial answer to this in the long run is to learn to embrace wine you don’t like as part of the exploration. I try wine I don’t like every day, and I learn from all of it. But obviously we’d all prefer to bring home bottles we enjoy more often than not. If this doesn’t work out for you and you end up with a bad bottle, you don’t have to throw it down the drain and cut your losses. Some ideas:
- Get it very cold and drink it anyway; cooler temperatures flatten the flavors and aromas of wine.
- Pour it over ice, add a bit of soda or Sprite, and call it a spritz.
- If it’s a red wine, mix it with Coca-Cola. It’s a kalimotxo!
- Use it in a New York Sour, one of my favorite cocktails.
- Make sangria or a wine punch.
- Cook with it. I know they say not to cook with anything you wouldn’t drink, but it’s better than letting it go to waste.
- Give it to your snobbiest wine friend in a blind tasting, and then just sit back and enjoy the show.
Have a question for a future No Stupid Wine Questions? Drop it in the comments or email it to stacey@justasmidge.me.
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