How do I get into wine?
Advice for the wine curious.
I’m always a bit suspicious of those who write about what people always ask them, as if they’re Michael Portillo fending off questions about his remarkable trousers1 from over-familiar cabbies. Nevertheless, often enough to make it notable, people do ask me ‘how do I get into wine?’
They’re not talking about an inability with a corkscrew. It’s something that a lot of people feel that they should know more about. A young Frenchman said it to me at a swanky Burgundy dinner this month. I thought that if he was on the mailing list for a Burgundy importer then he was well on his way. And yet he wanted my advice on getting into wine. Que se passe-t-il?
It’s often puzzled me why people think they should know about wine. Perhaps it’s because it’s everywhere, there’s shelves and shelves of it in shops. In restaurants there’s this thing called a wine list which is treated with great reverence. There’s so much of it in a way there isn’t with beer or tomatoes. And most of it is baffling. Looking at a wine label: what does ‘feinherb’ mean? What’s Late Bottled Vintage? And what do you do with a lieu-dit (be brutal)?
So how do you get into wine? Well the first thing, the most important thing, is that you don’t really need to get into wine to enjoy wine. You can just buy things you like the look of, labels with animals on for example. But a little learning can be a great help as this article, How to be a Wine Midwit, demonstrates. It’s helpful to understand which wines taste similar and why. For example, if you like riesling, you’ll probably like albariño. The author Kristian Niemietz notes that while some basic ground rules are helpful, when you start to learn more, you realise the limitations of what you thought you understood and it all becomes confusing again.
If you’re subscribing to this Substack, then I assume you want to go beyond the midwit stage and embrace the confusion so I’ve come up with some suggestions below. The great thing about wine learning is that you can take it as far as you like. It might set you down the path to become a Master of Wine, or you might simply find a group of like-minded people to get drunk with once a week. Like a book club stripped down to its essence.
