The Oldman's Guide

Shortly after I started my first job, I sat down for lunch with a very senior partner, who was very particular with his wine preferences. Knowing nothing about wine at this point, I figured the best strategy to not sound dumb was to admit defeat immediately and start asking about how I could even start getting into wine.

He said there was one book - the Oldman's Guide to Outsmarting Wine. I went home and 2-day shipped it from Amazon, and immediately went out and bought some of the value picks from each of the American grapes, and started to learn.

To this day, this is still the 'most' amount of effort I've put into appreciating and understanding wine. I can't say that my effort or knowledge has evolved too much more since then. But the one thing that really stuck out from this short burst of effort was the central lesson - the best wine is the one you like most. And that wine vocabulary is just a way of navigating toward what it is that you want to drink and learning how to discern between what you like and don't like.

As we discussed in class, I think there is definitely a desire for unsophisticated wine consumers like me to understand the basic tasting notes, and a desire for it to be simple and approachable. The Oldman's guide began to do that for me, but it was still a lot of effort. What I think I'm looking for is a guide that tells me what the 'stereotypes' of various wines are, so that I can begin putting words to wine and validating whether I taste the same thing or not.

Any recommendations?