and it all comes from grapes

Except the wine that comes from apples, dandelions, blackberries... Wrong on your second statement.

Buy some Frappe Vino. Turns any wine into delicious slushies.

Alright fancy man #1 in the building! lets keep it going everyone!!!

and #2!!!

http://m.wikihow.com/Make-Blackberry-Wine

A recipe for blackberry wine without a grape near the bottle.

Remember to decant red wine. Huge difference.

I love you all

And sparklings are best served as soon as they are opened.

Are there special characteristics of wine from different countries or does France just have the best shit?

Mead can be a better substitute for white wine in many situations. Just be sure it's chilled.

I'd be a lot warmer and happier with a belly full of mead

"Looking for cheap, unpretentious wine to woo the young ladies, my good Padawan? You've come to the right place." --webDiplomacy

The Gentil by Hugel. Best wine I've had and not too expensive. I love Gewurztraminers.

I prefer Italian wines to French, personally. A nice Chianti with some fava beans and liver. Nomnomnomnom...

"A nice Chianti with some fava beans and liver. Nomnomnomnom..."

Yum, PCBs. I'd rather eat toxic waste.

Putin rubs the lotion on its skin. It does this whenever it's told. It puts the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again. Now it places the lotion in the basket. Put the fucking lotion in the basket!

I like Argentinian Malbecs. They're also inexpensive.

ahhh! Mapleleaf is my new best friend. My girlfriend and i LOVE argentinian malbec. I have half a case at home (soon to be an empty case, now that fall is here)

Make sure the wine is as unpretentious as possible.

It depends one what you're looking for. Wines from Australia, South Africa and Chile (New World) tend to be much bolder than their European counterparts, which have more complexities to them, and subtler tones.

I love good Chianti, and Rieslings are nice too, but my favorites are some nice Burgundian reds. Beaujolais, though....not too sure on that one. I have a bottle of it I'm waiting to try.

Whatever....as long as the wine comes in a frosted mug, right?

I don't know if you folks have had mulled wine before, if not I highly recommend it, a fantastic winter brew for warming up. :-)

I also make wine, fun fact you can make a wine out of sweet iced tea. (I have 9L at the moment in the fridge.)

There's a winery round my place which does glass tastings. Yes, you read that right.

I havent been yet, but a friend has and he was blown away by it. What they do is grab only a few different wines, and taste them with different glasses. He told me that he was served a red wine in a proper glass which tasted delicious. Then the same wine was served in a plastic cup and he spat it out.

Apparently, the shape of the wine glass determines what part of the tongue comes into contact with the wine first, and that determines a lot of the experience.

Or we're socialized to think that wine tastes better when you drink it out of a fancy glass. Much of that wine-o stuff is nonsense. Whiskey and beer "enthusiasts" as just as bad.

The same thing happened to me when I had Bud Light Platinum in a can a while back. In a bottle it's pretty much my go-to light beer for tailgating, since it tastes the same as Bud Light but has slightly more alcohol. But in a can it was disgusting, while regular Bud Light in a can isn't. Or at least not in the same way. I'm pretty sure I just like the way the blue bottle looks. Something similar is likely happening with the wine glasses.

I like dry Chilean whites and full-bodied Spanish reds.

Cognac. End of story ;p

... or alchemists' spirit distillations of wine for other ends...

Is cognac worth the money? I haven't seen much between the obviously overpriced stuff and plastic bottle swill brandy.

Cognac's only worth the money if you like it. I don't. It's too sweet for anything but an after-dinner drink, and for that I think a good tawny port is underrated.

Yeah, not real big on the after-dinner drinks, but then I've never had port. I made a Brandy Alexander for a girl on Valentine's Day once in college. Great success, but then I was stuck with the bottle for the rest of the year.

Back to wine, a very authentic way to have German or Austrian wine is to mix it roughly half-and-half with soda water. NOT TONIC. It's more of a warm weather drink, though. I think it works for either but I only remember having white wine that way while I was abroad.

Agree with hecks. I never got cognac, but I'm probably missing out.

Port > Cognac. Quality port can be really amazing.

Has anyone here had Elderberry or Damson wine? I read a ton of the Redwall books when I was younger, and was wondering what those were like.

My wife frequently drinks cocktails with St. Germain, which is Elderberry liqueur, but not elderberry wine.

@Invictus - I disagree. I love milk almost anyway I can get it *except* in a plastic cup. Event hough I pour it from a plastic carton (and I love to drink out of the plastic gallon jog, but it pisses the wife off) something tastes funny out of the plastic glasses we have in the cupboard.

@TMoW and others - No a cognac fan either, although I do like sherry and port. Scotch (single malt be it highland or speyside) and vodka (Stolichnaya!) are my choice for harder stuff.

Oh, and rum when mixed is good, but not straight up.

All plastic is not the same. Some really stinks. Others, like solo cups, are as neutral as glass.

I think there's a Penn & Teller Bullshit about a similar thing. Like box wine tasting as good as high-end stuff when presented as such. Can't look on Youtube right now. My point is that the presentation can matter a great deal in whether or not things taste good to use, and that that's a more likely reason the wine at the glass tasting can taste different rather than some explanation about the glass making different parts of your tongue get hit at different times.

I will admit milk in a solo cup is fine. It's these thick plastic things we got down in Cozumel that give the milk an off taste.

OK philistines.

This is the deal with cognac/brandy.

It's THE grape. In fact it's the grapeyest grape ever.

TRY to taste it. When you do, then you're in Grape Ape Heaven.

I'll just leave this here.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/lukelewis/10-facts-that-prove-wine-experts-are-completely-clueless