I’ve bought from K&L Wines by mailorder, buying for a winetasting club: also once to try a real Bordeaux (Lynch-Bages). They’re good shop.

One of the few regrets I have about not being rich, is not being able to afford the kind of wines that are on the top 100.. oh well.

In the end, if I find a restaurant with good wine pricing I return. If the wine pricing is off-scale, I don’t order wine and I don’t got back.

How lucky to find a reviewer who consistently agrees with your own taste!

The retail markup on wine may be significant in stores, but the situation in restaurants is even worse. My wine expert in the neighborhood wine store recently told me that he’s usually horrified when he reads through the wine list in a restaurant, finding, for example, bottles for which they are charging $50 that sell for only $30 retail in his own store. Wine and liquor are big cash cows for the restaurants. He also told me that he sees a consistent pattern that the second to the least expensive wine in the list is usually the worst deal on the list. Why? Because many people don’t want to spend a small fortune for their bottle of wine, but feel embarrassed to order the least expensive bottle — especially when on a date I suppose — and so they target the next most expensive bottle as a money maker with a low quality to price ratio. I can’t personally confirm this theory, but I thought I’d pass it on.

Fairview has a series of “Goats” wines: Goats do Roam, Goats do Roam in Villages, and Goat Rotie. Which is best depends on the particular vintage. All are great fun!

And now I’m going to get snobby, but there is point behind my snobbiness. One can never be too careful in reading the label of a wine in order to know exactly what one is drinking. You mentioned the Ridge Lytton Springs Zinfandel, which is a very good wine, and is widely available in good wine shops literally throughout the world. I was talking about Ridge Lytton Estates Zinfendel. It’s a different animal. It’s only sold to members of Ridge’s Advanced Taster’s Program, or at the winery if you happen to know the person behind the counter. I have only been fortunate enough to taste the 92 and 96 Lytton Estates and it is a nectar from the Gods. It’s a small difference on the label, but a large difference in taste between something good and something special.

Gosh - just in case somebody might be reading this and wondering what to get me for the next occasion (like, maybe my birthday?) how about the gift that keeps on giving - a membership to Ridge’s Advance Taster’s Program!

That was shameless of me - sorry. Couldn’t resist….

I agree with you that the absolute best way to develop one’s wine palate is to taste, taste, taste, and then taste some more. I have been fortunate to tour almost every major wine growing region in the world (I’m presently missing only Piedmont, Tuscany, and South America - ok, Germany too, but I don’t like German wines so that doesn’t count). And I’ve been attending tastings regularly for the last 15 years. When approached with a new to me bottling, I can make a fairly accurate educated guess as to whether or not it will be to my taste.

However, the Wine Spectator - for good or worse - was an essential part of developing knowledge of my wine tastes. I have this love-hate relationship with them. I have consistently found their recommendations to be reliable (I find that my taste is well calibrated to James Laube - their California wine editor). I have been steered wrong by Robert Parker so many times that I no longer subscribe to his Wine Advocate. As a contrast, I have never, and I repeat, never, found a staff member of a local wine shop to be helpful. (OK, to be fair, the exception is when I’m choosing the SLAC Summer Institute wines. They know they’re getting a $1500-2000 wine order and they go out of their way.) I find that wine shop staffers tend to steer me towards slightly more expensive wines that don’t pack the punch. They leave the juicy bargins that sell out quickly to the people who know what they’re buying.

And, one must continuously be cautious with wait-staff in restaurants. Unless I’m in a place like the Little Nell at Aspen with a world-class sommelier I ask them to leave me alone on the wine choice. Most of time they don’t know diddley squat. It’s really disappointing.

Continuing this diatribe for those brave enough to venture on, I have a pet peeve with most wine shops. They overcharge. I know what exactly what some wines should cost, and nothing gets my dander up more than seeing them overpriced. A perfect example near SLAC is Beltramo’s in Menlo Park. A less then 5 minute drive down the street will land you in K&L Wine Merchants. They may not pay as much attention to you, but it’s the same wine at $5 less per bottle. I have no idea how Beltramo’s can stay in business.

And you can’t go wrong with Ridge Lytton Springs Zinfandels, although I don’t think I’ve been lucky enough to try the 1992.

The best approach does not give instant satisfaction, but is probably best in the long run. Establish your own taste by sampling many different wines from different locations — sweet [yech] or dry, single grape or complex blends (most French are blends), full bodied or bright — and make sure that the wine expert in your local store understands what you like and don’t like over time so that they can give progressively more accurate recommendations. Also, wine tastings can be an excellent way of sampling many wines at one time, but pay attention to biases that may be built into them.

Slightly off topic: don’t make the mistake that I just made of opening one of your best bottles of wine when you have a head cold. Save it for later!