If you can't ask in your own journal, whose journal can you ask in?

[kitanzi]

Ok, I actually want to know. I do know that a great many people are fussy and particular and knowledgeable about wines. Me, I know what I like - much like art. Can you tell me WHAT you like in wines, and what wines you like, and why? I'm actually curious, and interested in learing more about it. Most of my exposure to "Wine tasting" has been through someone who I have trouble communicating with in the best of circumstances, and this all seems so nebulous and (forgive me) often pretentious that I just don't seem to get it. There are a couple wines I get fairly often, at least when I get wine, but I'm interested in trying something new and a lot of this seems absurdly expensive to me for taking a blind leap of faith on. (I was tempted to buy the Our Daily Red just for the name and label - I'm such a sad sucker for puns!) Are any of you wine drinkers? Feel free to pontificate, even lecture - how ever you can, give me information! Thanks!

EDIT: Cooking wines too, for that matter. I know several of you are accomplished cooks!

Comments

[cellio]

I like sweeter wines and greatly prefer whites. I'm willing to grant the possibility that there exists a red as tasty as a riesling or a pino grigio, but I have not yet met it.

I don't know most of the official wine terminology. I like wines that are sweet but not too syrup-like in consistency. I think the thing I don't like about reds is the harshness that comes from fermenting the grapes in the skins. (But, on the bright side, some of that cooks out if you're mulling wine with spices. For that you definitely want a red.)

Oh, and one contradiction to my comments about sweetness and syrup: ice-wine is fantastic stuff, even if it's so sweet and syrupy that you should really drink it by the shot rather than by the glass. :-)