*Note: I spent hours slaving over my computer hand-crafting a quiz to help you find the wine you should be drinking!
The link is all the way down at the bottom of this post to encourage you to actually read it.
Also, please take the quiz, post your results, then, if you are so inclined, go out and grab a bottle of the suggested wine and let me know how it goes!
Just the other day I got into a conversation with a coworker who considers herself a passionate, knowledgeable, and sophisticated foodie (one of her twitter accounts is her initials followed by “loves food”) about the fact that she knows nothing about wine – not even what kind she likes. My coworker went on to mention that she usually goes for white wines that are “really sweet” but has recently been falling for Shiraz – but that’s about the extent of her wine knowledge and tastes.
I was reminded, then, of my own developing tastes in wine and how I started off drinking only whites, too. When I was first starting to drink wine I loved a Pinot Grigio that was light, crisp, vaguely fruity and super easy to (Santa Margharita was a favorite). Next, I had a brief fling with Sauvignon Blanc that was really ripe and tropical-tasting and had the kind of pineapple acid that gently fizzed on my tongue. I guess these very early affairs precipitated a lot of what I would come to look for and love in wine later, yet also illustrated something I always knew, right from the start, that I didn’t – sweetness.
Even when the only thing on hand for a rebellious teen to sneak was my mom’s saccharine KJ, I said nooo thank you! And a little later when I visited a cousin who was also just getting into wine, her deference for Reisling that was on the sweet side, put me off Reisling for a very long time – I had so firmly associated it with syrupy sweet wine.
As I grew older and my tastes developed, I started what I refer to as “my descent” into red wines, starting with lighter fare like Pinot Noir. When I first started drinking reds, anything that was fairly tannic was too much for me and something I sucked down rather than sipped pleasantly. The very first glass of wine I ever truly loved and described, with enthusiasm, as “delicious” was a glass of Dolcetto. I was so delighted and enchanted by this little glass of wine that I believe the fling I’d been having started to develop into something serious.
All that being said, I think that as a newcomer to wine, whites are a safer place to start than red. They’re generally more approachable to an untrained palate and they’re, frankly, just more fun to drink sometimes. And while it’s easy to go with one of the big three (Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon Blanc), there are more interesting wines that are also easily accessible, affordable, and sublimely delicious than ever before. Take the quiz I crafted to find which one of these white wines best matches up with your taste and get started on your own guide to that perfect revelatory glass.
Forget Burgundy 