A lot of the questions I get asked are about the cost of a bottle of wine.  What makes a $40 wine worth $40?  Is a $50 wine twice as good as a $25 of wine?  How come two buck chuck is so cheap?   Let me first talk about the cost of wine.  A lot goes into the cost of a bottle of wine.    Chateau Margaux - One of the most expensive wines in the world. First off the land that the grapes grow on impacts the price .  Using California as an example, a n acre of land in Napa will cost several times what an acre of land in Livermore County costs.  The taxes on that land are also much greater .  That additional cost works it's way into the price of the wine.    The cost of the grapes works its way into the price of a bottle of wine.  Because they are co nsidered some of the best grapes in the world grapes grown in Napa are some of the most expensive grapes in the world.  Because they don't have mu...

One of my favorite things about being a wine guy is making new discoveries and sharing those discoveries with others.   In order to make those discoveries I often need to get out of my comfort zone and drink wines I have never heard of from places I am not familiar with.   There is some risk associated with trying new things, I often taste wines that I do not like at all (a wine variety from Arizona called "Symphony" comes to mind), but finding new wines that I would have not otherwise enjoyed more than makes up for any bad experiences.    Most of the time when I go out to dinner with friends, because the majority of our friends are not wine guys, they ask me to pick the wine.  Most of them only drink a few brands from California or play it safe by always ordering wine from Napa or Sonoma.  I can see the look of fear and bewilderment in their face when I end up ordering a white wine from Spain or a red wine from Washington State.  Napa ...

For Mrs. Wine Guy and I Temecula is sort of the Seven Eleven of wine regions. It is overpriced, the quality is mediocre, but since iis so darn convenient (only about 6 hours from home) we keep going back.  This was our third trip to the area if you want to find out about our first two trips you can click one of the following links:   Trip1 , Trip2 . As convenient as it is for us it is only an hour or two from LA or San Diego so it is only a day trip for those folks.  Add to that the fact that most of the tasting rooms range from very nice to spectacular, there are great restaurants, the views are magnificent, and that many of the tasting rooms feature music and other entertainment, it is no wonder it is a lot of fun even if the wine is so so. This trip  we visited Ponte, Baily, Robert Renzoni, and Oak Mountain for the first time, and revisited Wiens, SC Cellars, and Europa Village.  While we were not impressed with most of the wines there were a few sta...

Several years ago friends visiting us at our Arizona home brought Mrs. Wine Guy and I a bottle of Vino del Barrio from Page Springs Cellars as a gift. The wine was bottled in Arizona and made from grapes made in Arizona.  Prior to this I did not know that you could grow grapes in Arizona let alone make wine.  I had never tasted an Arizona wine, was not looking forward to it, and was more than a bit surprised when the Vino del Barrio did not suck.    That experience motivated us to make several wine tasting trips to Arizona wineries to dig a bit deeper. At first there were very few wines that we would classify as outstanding (a Barbara produced by Javelina Leap Winery comes to mind), several were drinkable, and several more that had some serious flaws and had a way to go to catch up to wines from the more established wine regions.   After each subsequent trip we found more wines outstanding and drinkable wines but still found several that were still ...

I have read a lot of books to help me learn more about wine.  Three (two old friends and a recent acquaintance) that I have found most useful are as follows: The two old friends are: Drink This - Wine Made Simple by Dara Moskowitz Grundahl (Click on the title to go to it's Amazon page).   Published in 2009 it highlights useful information about the most popular types of wine and wine regions in easy to understand language. It's 12 chapters cover the nuts and bolts of drinking, buying, and tasting wine, 9 chapters on each of the most popular varietals (the type of wine), a chapter on the relationship of the cost of wine and how much you will like it, and a chapter on how to order wine in a restaurant.  Each of the chapters on the type of wine will also give you some hints on how to identify the wine you are drinking, and how to host a wine tasting for that type of wine.  An easy enjoyable read that dispenses lots of useful information with a lot of wit and person...

Mr. Dave Orth of Washington D.C. writes, “Hey Wine Guy you did such an incredible job of letting us know that screw top wines can be good I was wondering if the same thing was true for Box Wines?” Thanks Dave that is a very insightful question and I feel blessed to have received it, as any insight coming from Washington D.C. is indeed rare. Before I answer your question let me tell you about the box.  The main advantage of wine in a box is that it has a membrane inside the box that holds the wine.  As you drink the wine the membrane shrinks around the wine minimizing the contact that air has with the wine.  Air causes wine to go bad so the less air that touches the wine the longer it will last.  A refrigerated, half empty bottle of wine sealed with a wine stopper will last 2-3 days before going bad. A half empty box of wine will last two or three weeks.   The tap attached to the box makes if very convenient to use. Box wine is more convenient the b...