Wino Club's Wine Journey

I was reading a post last night by a fellow blogger at Rockss and Fruit where Lyle was complaining that the big wines he used to favor and subsequently built his cellar around just don't make the grade anymore. And it got me to thinking about Darcy's and my wine journey.

There was a day when wine was just another drink. Two-buck-Chuck did the job just fine. Bunko was Drunko and the number of empty bottles at the end of the evening meant the difference of walking on the sidewalk on the way home or trying to find home. It was a beautiful place to be.

Then we started our own wine tasting club a few years ago with a bunch of friends and for a while we continued our naive tasting experience. Our palettes developed a little and we outgrew Two-buck-Chuck but weren't quite knowledgeable to venture much beyond our safe California wines. When Darcy and I started making our Wino Club Kits (shameless plug: a party in a box with instructions and materials to start your own monthly wine tasting club with friends) we started taking wine classes and certification courses in wine and the business of wine.

And our wine tasting world exploded.

Suddenly we knew what Chardonnay was meant to taste like and how the complexity of a wine was so much more important than the initial pop. And the more GOOD wine we drank, the pickier we became. And it's getting worse. I was at a party last evening and just couldn't drink any of the choices available because, well yuck. My palette doesn't crave yuck. It wants yum. So I drank beer. It seemed the better alternative (I may have to cancel my upcoming beer tasting classes though because I need some naivety in my palette).

It is horrible to go from one preference to another. We have to morn that blissful ignorant day when a glass of Two-Buck-Chuck hit the spot. And don't get us wrong, it's not that the more expensive is better. Some of our favorite wines are under $10. We don't need to reopen the debate about the State Fair again - it's not about that. It's about a subtlety of flavor that at an earlier point in our palette development just didn't matter. Now we're wine snobs. How horrible!

For me personally, I guess I will just have to serve the stuff I've outgrown for my friends who are still blissfully ignorant. I can't serve it to my Wino Club but my Drunko group will drink anything. Sorry ladies, but I can't let even bad alcohol go to waste!