Thorsen - Reverse wine snob : how to buy and drink great wine without breaking the bank

Copyright 2015 by Jon Thorsen

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Mary Belibasakis

ISBN: 978-1-63220-681-7

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63220-923-8

Printed in China

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1
THE RATING SYSTEM

CHAPTER 2
TEN TENETS OF REVERSE WINE SNOBBERY

CHAPTER 3
WINE TASTING BASICS

CHAPTER 4
TOP VALUE REGIONS AND VARIETIES

CHAPTER 5
BUYING WINE

CHAPTER 6
COSTCO

CHAPTER 7
TRADER JOES

CHAPTER 8
BOX WINE

APPENDIX 1
RESOURCES

APPENDIX 2
WINE RANKING DATABASE

INTRODUCTION

U RBAN D ICTIONARY.COM DEFINES A WINE SNOB as a wine enthusiast, particularly one who is pretentious, or self-important because of their immense wine knowledge.

We all know the type. Perhaps its your uncle or a friend who once vacationed in Bordeaux and has now become the overbearing know-it-all who cant open a bottle without first giving a lecture. The bane of average wine consumers everywhere, wine snobs love to point out just how superior their $75 bottle of wine is to your $10 one.

Still, I have to admit there is a bit of good in wine snobberythe enthusiasm. Theres certainly nothing wrong with being enthusiastic about wine, right? Its the pretentious and self-important parts of wine snobbery that most of us cant standthe belittling of someones chosen drink and the supremely false belief that expensive is always better.

My solution to this problem is to simply turn wine snobbery upside downto become a Reverse Wine Snob. I am a wine enthusiast for sure, but a wine enthusiast with an open mind and a reasonable budget!

I am simply a wine consumer. I have no special training or tasting powers. I dont have any certifications or fancy letters after my name; in fact, Ive never even taken a wine appreciation class. Im not able to tell you the region or variety of a wine just by sniffing it. Im just a guy who loves to drink wine and tell people about the good, cheap ones. I love saving money and not overpaying for things.

Several years ago, after constantly hearing about all the health benefits of wine, and knowing that heart disease ran in my wife Brendas family, we decided that we should drink wine more often. After we realized that three or four $20 bottles a week was going to quickly blow apart our budget, I went on a search for great, inexpensive wine that we could use as a daily drinker. Like most people we assumed you had to spend $15$20 on a bottle to get a quality wine. After all, the cheapest bottles on restaurant wine lists were often more than this. (Well talk about why that is later.) We didnt expect to find much and thought our adventure with wine was going to be a short one, but we were pleasantly surprised to find that there is a ton of really good, inexpensive wine out there. Once we made that discovery we knew we had to tell others, and my website ReverseWineSnob.com was born.

Thanks to the success of my website I have wine sent to me from all over the world. Ive also had the opportunity to travel to well-known wine regions like California and France as well as lesser-known wine regions like Virginia and Slovenia. This has given me the opportunity to try almost two hundred different grape varieties in just the last few years, from every possible price range! Ive tasted tons of wine now, much of it bad but some of it good.

My objective in writing this book is simpleto get more people to enjoy the world of wine. I figure if people are like me (a truly frightening thought indeed!) there are a good number of you who would drink more wine if you just knew that you didnt have to spend a small fortune to enjoy a glass of wine with dinner every night.

This is not a book that sets out to explain every wine term or to give a comprehensive review of all wine regions. This is a book designed to set you free from the notion that you have to be an expert to drink wine and that you have to spend big bucks for a good bottle. I am a staunch believer in learning through drinking (what could be more fun!), so much of the information shared in this book is through my wine reviews. I encourage you to try out some of these recommended bottles and learn right alongside us.

The book starts with my unique rating system that builds price into the equationthe more expensive the bottle, the better it has to be to garner a recommended buy rating! This would seem like common sense, but its bordering on radical in the world of wine. The book then hones in on my Ten Tenets of Reverse Wine Snobbery, beliefs I hold dear that likely fly in the face of much of what you will read in other wine books.

From there well take a quick look at some basic wine terms and then dive into region by region highlights of the very best wines under $20. Since getting the best deal on a bottle is critical to our mission, well then turn to buying wine. Well examine where to find the wine we recommend and how to buy wine online, and take a deeper dive into wines exclusive to two of the biggest retailers out thereCostco and Trader Joes. (Plus some hints on how to use their unique pricing models to your advantage.) Well then wrap up our exploration with a look at the wine snobs number one target of derision: box wine.

Still wondering if this is the right book for you? This book is not directed at the established wine aficionado. This is a book for the average Joe who just wants to know that the $10 or so he plunks down for a bottle of wine is going to be well spent. And on the rare occasion that he spends $20 on a bottle, its going to be much better than the $10 one. Far too often its not and were here to help fix that.

Cheers!

Jon

CHAPTER 1

THE RATING SYSTEM

A T ITS HEART, OUR RATING system is fairly simple and admittedly a bit subjective. Its simple by design. With a background in analytics, my first inclination is to design an extremely complex formula, analogous to, say, the convoluted QB rating in football that no one can understand. Instead I decided its best to keep a wine rating system as basic as possible. All wines are rated on two factors: taste and cost. From there I came up with an algorithm that combines both of these into one overall rating.

THE TASTE RATING

A simple scale from 110. Im endlessly confused by the 100-point rating system given by the major wine magazines and critics. If you have 100 points, why are 80 percent of wines rated between 85 and 94? Simplify, simplify, simplify. This rating is subjective, so your opinion may vary.

THE COST (VALUE) RATING

Again, a 110 scale, but as price goes up, the rating goes down.