How to open up and expand your wine world.
Prior to 2006, I was a wine heathen. That meant that I only drank fruit shakes with every meal and hard liquor after and on weekends. It took a 3-week wine class at culinary school and a dedicated professor to convert me. My conversion began with German Rieslings and my teacher did it deliberately because he knew I was a Filipina and he said Filipinos liked sweet things. I remember my professor grinning at me as he watched me tasting the glass of German Riesling (it was a Spatlese JJ Prum). It was like a light switch, an epiphany. Suddenly, the wine world opened up to me. I would sit down with my father in NYC restaurants and the wine menu suddenly wasn’t in hieroglyphics. He liked to joke that our bill shot up and never normalized after I learned wine.
You don’t have to go to an intensive wine class nor have a dedicated mentor to baptize you into the world of wine. For most, it’s all about just tasting bottle after bottle until it clicks. With Wine Drop’s Discovery bundles, discovering wine is made easy for you. You can choose to do a gradual discovery path with two or three bottles at at time.
Compare if you like New World Fruit Forward Flavors with the Allan Scott Set or the Old World Mineral and Earthy Flavors with the Bordeaux Set. For the more adventurous, proceed straight to the Italy trio and try the Garnagega grape from Soave, Dolcetto from Piedmonte and the rarely talked about grapes of Corvina, Refosco and Raboso.
For a complete wine adventure, jump in the Loire Valley, a favorite of sommeliers for its great value and varying wine styles. This set will take you across the map of the Loire, from the West (Pays Nantais) to the East (Sancerre – one of my favorites). It’s a treat because you find everything, sparkling (Armance Brut Rose), light white for shellfish (Muscadet), off-dry white (Vouvray), dry white (Sancerre), light red with restrained fruit (Pinot Noir), a not so common Cabernet Franc based bottle from Saumur, and a different take on a Cabernet Sauvignon.
These bundles will help you figure out your wine personality and your wine preferences. Take the time to keep a wine notebook or excel sheet of all the wines you’ve tried. This is especially helpful in the beginning to help you remember different distinct flavors and styles, like forest floor, mushroom, wet stone, pencil shavings and the like. Most of all, don’t forget to enjoy and share with your loved ones.