It's Tuesday night again and you're having spaghetti and meatballs again because it's cheap, and you spent too much last Saturday night at that fancy restaurant.
What kind of wine goes with that? Especially since that Saturday night bill was inflated quite a bit by that fancy French Burgundy you had with dinner?
You need a Tuesday night wine. A house wine. You can't spend $20 on wine every night. That would be $140 a week, a discouraging $1,300 a year.
You do all right, but you're not made of money.
In fact, even people who are made of money didn't get that way by spending recklessly. I always cite the example of a friend who had a 20,000-bottle cellar, but had an everyday house wine that cost less than $10.
Anybody can buy a $100 wine that tastes expensive. The trick is to find an inexpensive wine that tastes that way.
One good way is to make friends with your local wine shop owner. Another is to try a new possibility once a week, taking notes, with the idea of choosing a house wine within a couple of months.
Even better, throw a wine party. Invite a group of friends to bring bottles of wine priced $15 and under they think might be good house wines. Taste a dozen wines, blind, and see if you can pick a winner or two. At least one white and one red. Later you can do sparkling wines, dessert wines and others.
Below you'll see some of my recommendations.
It's homework, I suppose, but very pleasant homework.
