At our house, the go to red is a Petite Sirah, followed by Tempranillo or Zinfandel(old vine) if we’re doing barbecue. For white, we always have New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc on hand, but we also love PicPoul, Albariño or any Spanish white.

My personal favorite is a dry Rosé, but definitely NOT a white zin. Usually a French from Provence is a reliable option. But lately I’ve been into the dry rosés from California, Oregon or Washington. They are usually from a Pinot Noir which makes a fabulous Rosé.

Hubby loves port, at present we have about 25 bottles of port in the cellar. Not sure if we’ll ever get through all of it lol.

We do not ever open a bottle of cab sav or Chardonnay, I keep a couple bottles of each in the cellar for guests but they collect dust lol.

My parents go-to wine was Myers Pink Catawba, which is kind of gross. And then in college and for awhile after White Zin was very popular but also not very good in my opinion. So when we were visiting my wife's uncle in the Provence region in France, and were having an al fresco lunch in the courtyard near the pool and they brought out a Rosé my first inclination was to decline, but I thought that might be ungracious since we were their guests, so I accepted a glass. Just after they poured it they said it was the "family wine" -- as in they own the land on which the grapes are grown and a nephew or cousin of theirs runs the winery that makes it. The wine was really good, and went perfectly with the lunch they had prepared.

So its not that I don't like Rosé, I just don't like cheap, sweet, awful American Rosé

I thought I took a picture of the bottle to remember it, but cannot seem to find it.

I just looked up the Meier's Pink Catawba wine and found that I had misspelled its name above. I also found that according to this website:

https://www.vivino.com/wineries/meiers/wines/american-pink-catawba-9999

it is "Among top 6% of all wines in the world" Really? Really!?!

I love a good bordeaux, but the best I have had were in France. I think Martha's idea of adding a pink is a great idea. I know you are in California Lindsey, and I don't know about the rest of you but when the weather is warm I cannot drink red wine. It makes me really hot. Or maybe that's just the cheap blended stuff I have on hand. But I am generally a red wine for winter, white wine for summer type of gal. Although California winters are a bit different than Wisconsin winters. And I despise chardonnay.

My old favorite was a white grave. Too sharp to drink by itself but wonderful with food.

Lindsey part of my point about opening the bottles is the time needed for them to breath to taste their best. Yes, most people can open bottles and talk at the same time but most leftover bottles are going down the drain. People will say that they will use it but most do not. A sad waste of good wine.

Box o' wine or some other plonk.

I try so hard to appreciate good wine, but I just can't....I leave that to my wine snob hubby...

Friends don't serve box wines to friends.

Opening a bottle should take 10 seconds or less. Those who can't do that should try buying different openers until they find one they can operate with ease. Many cheap to even moderately priced wines have screw tops anyway.

Open bottles at the end of a large get together are no problem - suggest toward the end that everyone is welcome to take an open bottle of what they were drinking.

OK, we do have a good supply of rosé, so we'll bring some of that. Port, which had been mentioned above, is more of an after-dinner sipping wine. We do, however, have a whole lot of it because I love it, so we can add in some of that.

Yes, Maifleur, I realize that it is best to decant the reds, and we will bring a couple of decanters with us. We also have three Vinturi wine aerators that we'll bring. I'd love to bring our Riedel varietal-specific wine glasses, too, but we simply don't have enough of them for everyone to be able to drink their wine out of one. How do you choose who gets to drink their Pinot out of a Riedel Pinot glass and who drinks out of a Libby wine glass? ;-)

Good one, Bob! :-)

"How do you choose who gets to drink their Pinot out of a Riedel Pinot glass and who drinks out of a Libby wine glass? ;-)" Easy! Choose ME!

Lindsay, do you have any of the Gabriel glasses? I have 4 of the hand blown glasses and we love them.

No, we don't have any Gabriel glasses. We have a minimum of 6 of each of the following Riedel glasses: Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot, Sauvignon Blanc, Zinfandel/Riesling, Port, and Champagne. And, yes, it does make a difference when you drink wine from a glass made for that varietal.

I think there are three basic types - flutes for bubbly, glasses for whites that tend to be a bit smaller and more straight sided, larger ones for red with more rounded or bulbous sides. Sure, there are slight variations available but to think they matter as within types of red (for example) seems rather pretentious.

We view wine glasses as disposable - they break in normal use. Knocked off tables and counters, accidentally bumped, etc. etc. It's easy to find nice glasses for $5-6 per or sometimes even less. Funny thing is, good to great wine in them taste good to great and lousy wine (which we try to avoid) tastes lousy.

I love a stemmed glass over a stemless one and will pretty much refuse to drink (anything) out of a glass with a rolled lip (like Libbey) - wine or water. I love a thin crystal glass, try to avoided leaded these days but have a couple of Waterford brandy snifters that survived our last big earthquake that I make an exception for.

I have a dear friend who has worked in wine and food service her whole career, mainly in fine dining restaurants in Santa Barbara and Montecito, and as a caterer in the homes of the very wealthy, as well as movie/tv stars, so she's learned a great deal about fine wine (love to benefit from her knowledge). Recently, she showed up to meet me at a restaurant with her own wine glasses because she really hates to drink great wine out of inferior glasses! I was kind of shocked, but she'd dined before where we were meeting and didn't think their choice of stemwear was worthy of the wine she'd selected. When I questioned her about it, she said it isn't an unusual practice. People like what they like and can be quite particular about their wine glasses. I don't think people do that much here in the PNW!

Our K-Mart reusable plastic wine glasses have served us well for over 10 years. Especially for our weekly summer cookouts. We like the Menage a Trois blended red wines.

YMMV

Cripes!! I am just as much a fan of a good wine as anyone but I do draw the line at having a specific type of glassware for each varietal. That is just taking things to an extreme and does appear to be bordering on pretentiousness. A good wine tastes just the same to me out of a red plastic cup as it does out of a crystal balloon glass. And I've had it in both :-) At home I prefer stemless glasses or Italian wine tumblers.

That's your opinion, Gardengal and Elmer, and you're entitled to it. But it's a shame you felt the need to state it in such a way that criticizes the OP. From reading this thread, it appears that Lindsey and her husband enjoy owning and using (and sharing) these glasses, and they're entitled to that too--without having any aspersions cast on them, borderline or otherwise.

I don't understand the attraction (by some people) to stemless wine glasses. Wine glasses are supposed to be held by the stem, not the bowl, to avoid warmth from the hand changing the temperature of the wine. Can’t do that when there is no stem!

Thank you, Alisande. :-)

Elmer reminds me a lot of one of my old boyfriends. We first dated 50 years ago, and even lived together for a while. He has kept in touch with me through the years, and he was a guest at our wedding when Hubs and I married (32 years ago). This old boyfriend is a multimillionaire -- he owns large shopping malls all over the USA, as well as apartment complexes and lots of other real estate. But, he refuses to pay more than $20 for a bottle of wine. He's not a cheapskate - he and his wife travel all over the world, he owns expensive cars, and omg you should see his house...

Hubs and I are far from being worth a million dollars, but we don't have any kids for whom we have to put money out, our house will be totally paid for after four more payments, my car is paid for, and Hubs' car is almost paid for. Neither one of us owes anything on any credit cards. We have more disposable income now that we're retired than we did when we were working. It's up to us to choose what we spend our money on. And if we can share some of those things -- well, why not?

Gardengal, Randy427, and Elmer, too, there is no doubt in my mind that if you were to do a taste test drinking the same wine out of a varietal-specific Riedel glass as well as a Libby wine glass (or in Gardengal's case, a red Solo cup), you would absolutely tell the difference. And from that point on, you wouldn't want to drink good wine out of a Solo cup.

A little bit upthread, Olychick wrote about a friend of hers who is knowledgeable about wine, "Recently, she showed up to meet me at a restaurant with her own wine glasses because she really hates to drink great wine out of inferior glasses! I was kind of shocked, but she'd dined before where we were meeting and didn't think their choice of stemwear was worthy of the wine she'd selected. When I questioned her about it, she said it isn't an unusual practice. People like what they like and can be quite particular about their wine glasses."

Yes, we have four Riedel "bags" specifically made for transporting Riedel wine glasses. And, yes, depending on the restaurant we do take our own glasses with us. And sometimes we even take with us a bottle from our cellar. We would never take our own bottle to a restaurant that has that same exact wine on their wine menu (that's just tacky), but why order a bottle of wine and pay three times more for it than you would if you bought the same bottle direct from the winery (or even in a liquor store)?

I apologize if my comments were interpreted as a criticism. Wine aficionados - and I am one myself - can sometimes come across as displaying a bit of elitism (for lack of a better word) to those not similarly inclined which just sort of perpetuates the myth of wine snobbism. In this day and age of craft wineries, it is very possible to get really good wines for a very good price so the enjoyment of the liquid grape should be welcoming and affordable to all. And the enjoyment of a good wine is NOT dependent on the type of glass it is served in. Otherwise, all wine bars and fine dining establishments would be serving wines in specific varietal glasses and few do. Even the tasting rooms at the wineries seldom go to that extreme.

I have had exceptional wines, and some very expensive, served to me in various glasses. My enjoyment of them is just the same regardless how or in what they are served. I believe it does a disservice implying that one can not fully appreciate the taste of the wine unless it is served in a varietal specific glass. If that is how you prefer it, fine, but not every wine lover will agree.

While fishing in Canada last summer, the four of us were drinking Ice Wine from a Moscow Mule cup. Didn't change a thing about the wine or the enjoyment thereof. Try it.

And sometimes we even take with us a bottle from our cellar.

I didn't know restaurants that serve wine allow customers to bring their own. Maybe this varies by state? In my area, we bring wine to BYOB restaurants but leave it home otherwise. I always thought that was the rule, but maybe I'm wrong.

PS: I wouldn't even want to drink water from a Solo cup.

I have many lovely crystal wine glasses which I enjoy. I have never brought my own glasses to a restaurant or a friend's home, even if I dislike their stemware.

I have 6 of these Burgundy glasses that I love.

I have 6 Pinot Noir glasses that a dear friend, who is also a wine lover, gave me.

I have 6 Riedels for whites, the vinum series as I recall.

Then the Gabriel universals which I use for Rosé most of the time.

Then I have an assortment of glasses collected when doing tastings.

Alisande, imho higher end restaurants generally allow you to bring in your own. In most cases they charge you a corkage fee. We frequently do this when we have a special bottle we’d like to enjoy with a chef prepared meal. And yes, many people do bring their own glasses. I’ve never done that as I’m never quite that organized lol.

Also, you always want to check their wine list first as it is frowned upon to bring in a bottle that is offered on their wine list. Additionally it is considered good practice to offer a taste or a glass to the server.

This is actually what got me into wine, a good friend brought a REALLY nice bottle of wine to a dinner we were going to to celebrate a big birthday. I had this awesome wine with a fabulous dinner and was hooked! I had never experienced an intentional pairing and couldn’t believe how it changed the experience.

Thanks, Annette! Interesting. I'll have to mention it to the brothers who introduced me to good wines. Their great joy is fine dining paired with fine wines. But I would think they'd know about this if it were a common practice here. It could be this area is different. I'm originally from NYC, where "higher end restaurant" bears little resemblance to the higher end restaurants where I live now. But it also could be I just haven't noticed anyone doing this.

Annette, as a total outsider to the wine culture, I'm purely curious. How do you check the wine list -- is it on line, or do you have to talk to a person?

PS: I wouldn't even want to drink water from a Solo cup.

SMH

You can shake your head all you like, CindyMac. My comment about Solo cups has nothing to do with snobbism--it's about the taste of the plastic. Those cups are great for soda, lemonade, children's juice, etc., at outdoor gatherings, but I'd rather drink water from a glass.

The last few times I served an aged French Bordeaux my Riedial Bordeaux glasses remained in their box. Instead, I'm mostly using Ultima stemware. It's lead free crystal and carries a 10 year warranty against breakage under normal use. The warranty works as I've had to replace a couple of glasses, no questions asked. https://www.iwawine.com/glassware/wine-glassware-by-brand/ultima

I've pretty much quit decanting wines as well. The instructor for a wine class I took years ago had a saying, "Years in the bottle. Minutes in the glass." So, we may sit, swirl, sniff and admire the wine for several minutes before taking the first sip. I guess as I age I subscribe more and more to the KISS principle.

I wouldn't change any minds nor make new friends by extending my comments about special glasses, and don't need to, so I won't. What I said before is enough and I'll also sign on to what gardengal said. For those who swallow this bunk, if you see/hear people chuckling when you bring your own glasses to a restaurant (and the chef and others in the restaurant will be among the chucklers), you'll know why.

As for bringing your own wine to any decent restaurant (I'm talking owner-operated ones, not chains which I don't patronize), it's certainly acceptable but I've always thought of it as a bit of a slap in the face. Owners/chefs choose wines for their lists that compliment their food, that they can price and sell at a range their customers will buy. If you ask for a suggestion to go with the food you've chosen, there usually is a good recommendation. I understand there are special occasions or special bottles for exceptional circumstances. People too often seem to act a bit showy when they bring their own bottles, that's off-putting in and of itself. Yes, wine is marked up a lot in restaurants and so is food. If you want to save money, eat at home.

I've been to a lot of excellent BYOs in the Philadelphia area including several in the Passyunk district. Many are small and I always figured that a wine/beer license must either be hard to get or too expensive to justify unless the restaurant is of a certain size. I'm not sure what the reason is.

LOL about the plastic. When we moved, I took the opportunity to divest our household of kiddie plastic cups that we'd accumulated over the years. Now I'm using our glassware, even for tap water. And liking it.

When I was growing up, we had no plastic cups or colored aluminum tumblers in our home. I was a grown up person before anyone handed me a beverage in plastic. I disliked the mouth feel of the plastic and it made the drink feel warm. So I don't drink out of plastic at all.

Except for the few very old wines I had the only time I decanted was if the party called for it. The old wines did need to be decanted because of the sediment/lees that can form. Although I agree that some wines do taste better in certain types of glasses when I used to drink wine for the average drinker it makes little difference except for a few like some of the dessert wines. Before I was married I had a collection of various types of glasses. Which goes back to the thought that the average occasional drinker will drink what is available no matter if it comes from a box or a 100 year old bottle of the finest wine.

@nickel_kg, I generally find the wine list online. If not, I just call and ask about their corkage policy. I will say that the other thing I’ve learned is that it is the norm to bring just one bottle(2 if you are larger than a party of 4), then order from their list after that.

There are 2 online wine groups I belong to that have ongoing threads discussing corkage policies of popular restaurants around the world.

Elmer J Fudd, I think it depends on where you live. Here in Georgia there is a weird law about wine and alcohol distribution, depending on where you are, you are restricted to certain distributors. So that restricts the wines you have access to offering in your restaurant. So for example, the awesome Nothern Italian restaurant near me has only 4 or 5 wines in each category in order to be able to keep the cellar stocked. The somm at that restaurant is always happy to see us come in as he knows we will have something awesome that he will get to try. Like stated above, we only bring enough for a glass or so per diner and then we buy from their list.

Annette, thank you for the information ... it sounds very gracious, especially sharing a glass or taste with the "somm." Doubt I'll ever participate, but it's nice knowing :-)

annette, see this link I found to a site with more information about what you described. Here's a polite description of Georgia's alcohol laws- they're outdated and create a mess. And I know some other states have state liquor stores and (unbelieveably) there are still dry towns and counties throughout the US.

Georgia liquor laws

Needless to say, most places have free markets. But I would say that 4 or 5 choices per category, if a category is a varietal and origin location, is a lot.

I have a pretty good wine collection at home but I almost never take a bottle to a restaurant. I'm as happy to sample a place's wines as I am their food. We almost always drink a bottle (between my wife and I) when out to dinner. The exception would be when we're eating something more casual or more suitable for beer.

A friend of ours invited us to dinner a few years ago. She explained that her father had been collecting wine for years (or decades) and that he had recently realized he wasn't going to be able to drink all of it. So every time his daughter visited he gave her several bottles. For this dinner she had selected two bottles, and had looked them up on some site that not only described them, but listed current prices for a given year of a bottle of wine. According to that site they were worth $80 and $130. She had poured them each into a special decanter that captured all of the sediment.

To my taste the $80 bottle was good, but not great, overall not really better than the cheaper wines I usually buy, with a slight, indefinable "off" under note. The other one looked almost brown rather than red, but upon tasting it, even I could tell it was something special. However although it was much better than my usual wines, I'd have a hard time saying it was $100 better.

Around me there are several dozen wineries with more opening every year. Many of the ones I've been to make what I'd consider a really good $10-$15 bottle of wine. Unfortunately they usually charge $25 to $30 for them.

I have a hard time imagining how a slightly differently shaped glass could affect the flavor of a wine.

Elmer, the liquor laws in PA are just plain bizarre. Every couple of months, we drive down to the big store in Delaware (makes Bevmo stores look like the corner liquor store) and stock up, then have a nice lunch and make a day of it. I still gravitate towards the wines from the Santa Lucia Highlands in Monterey County, and I can get quite a few wines from wineries that we know.

We are trying out new BYO places, and there are a lot of 'em! We have a friend who also likes wine, so about once a month, we try a new place with him and choose the wines careful. We are trying to drink the wines in the cellar, a few cases of French wines from the 70's. We've found it best to share those with friends here at home on special occasions, like my 70th birthday last fall. We still have about a case of lovely Rieussecs. One nice French bistro-style place in Chestnut Hill has a full bar and some decent wines, and they have no corkage fee on Sundays, which is a nice touch.

Philadelphia is an insane restaurant town, the choices are endless and so many places are just ridiculously good. Little Fish is a BYO we enjoyed a couple of times but I see it changed hands recently. Yelp ratings are still mostly 5s. Plenty of others in the same neighborhood and elsewhere too. We don't go to Philly as much as we used to and I miss the visits. We always had a good time and ate very well.

BevMo is getting beaten at its own game by a newer chain called Total Wine & More. Huge stores, huge selections, great prices. Several in the Bay Area and in and around LA too.

Aha, Total Wine is the company that has the store in Delaware. Awesome place!

We don't actually go into the heart of Philly very often, even tho we are 3 blocks from the city limits. We go to the art museums, and the University City area (for the vet), and Chestnut Hill, Mt Airy, Manayunk. But I don't want to drive far in a place I don't know well, especially at night, especially if I'm having a drink. We rarely go out to a really high-end place, and there are a wealth of mom-and-pop BYO's around. I just wish that there were more than are NOT Italian. Not that there's anything wrong with Italian!

The fun is in the hunt, you'll never exhaust the possibilities. There's always lunch on Saturday or Sunday to venture out and still drive home in daylight. Or get a baby sitter and go with your younger generation

A restaurant that's not high end, but also not low end, and not like it's something no one knows about (it's popular) but I think worth trying all the same - The White Dog Cafe. I think they do brunch on the weekends. It's near campus on the diagonally opposite side of the UPenn campus from the vet school, on a narrow street across from the law school. A quirky and fun place, very good food.

This conversation makes me want to take a trip to Philadelphia, haha.

If you have an independent wine store in your area, I would encourage you to patronize them instead of big box wine stores, like Total Wine. They are death on your community small businesses. We have two wonderful wine sellers in my town, where I get personal advice, where they know what to recommend for my tastes and where they sell lots of wines from small producers, (as well as from larger wineries). I'd rather spend a dollar or two more for a bottle to support local businesses, rather than give my money to the walmart of wine.

We're in PA. The liquor stores are owned by the state.

And the staff at Total Wine is amazingly well educated on wines.

If the PA laws changed tomorrow, and a Total Wine opened closer, I'd be there. If I had a locally owned competitively priced store, I'd go there. But the price differentials are not usually just a dollar or two. The newspaper runs a weekly wine recommendation, and the PA stores are generally 20% more.

Oh, and the Delaware stores have no sales tax, that pays for the gas (it's about 25-30 miles each way) and lunch.

"They are death on your community small businesses."

When I need to buy something, it's value for money-quality-convenience-selection that direct where I go. Sometimes one or two get compromised, depending on the situation, but usually not.

What leads to the death of any community small businesses is an inability to be excellent and to otherwise compete successfully in the marketplace. Those that do so thrive. Those that don't go away, as they should.

There are a couple of family owned small grocery chains in my area that are booming and doing just fine against the bigger guys in the extremely competitive and cutthroat business they're in. They do what they do better than the others - better quality, better selection, better service - and people go there for that reason. (for you Bay Area people, I'm thinking of Lunardi's). Smaller ones that are only "me-toos" go away. We're all better off for it.

I only know of one local wine store (it's in Costa Mesa, with the unfortunate name of Hi-Time Wines) that's as dazzling an experience as Total Wine. Not as big but with a phenomenal selection and knowledgable staff to help. That store will always be around, for the reasons mentioned.

Every time I see this topic heading I think of that old joke...favorite wine? "I wanna go to Miami!!"

Made me wonder if PA has a liquor enforcement squad. Back when I was living at home my dad worked in Kansas and we lived in Missouri. There was a gas station/liquor store where he got his gas. Almost always there were people in cars waiting for someone that had been in a liquor store to pull into the parking lot. In the mid 2000's I was cautioned by the staff of a liquor store on our state line not to go over to Kansas because they were doing checks.

The one good thing PA wine stores have going for them are the "Chairman's Selections," which are often surprisingly good for the price. I'm not surprised, because the Chairman is Steve Pollack, a Patrick Swayze lookalike (sort of) my friends and I often consulted with years ago before he went to work in Harrisburg.

For me: Spanish reds, or a Malbec. Sauvingnon Blanc.

Absolutely loathe Reisling. The Barefoot brand can't do anything right.

Have you ever been served wine in a can? It's a different experience. Although it was a very delicious pinot noir, I didn't enjoy it as much as when served in a glass.

Underwood.