Better Wines for Less Money

Preface

This is not a cheap book.

Still, This Book is a Bargain.

This is not meant to be a cheap book. This book was not priced by the number of pages it contains nor by the number of hours it took for me to write.

It has long been my experience that people do not value that which costs them little or nothing.

While this book is not cheap, I maintain this book is a bargain. This book is priced as a fraction of the amount it can easily save you if you heed my advice………………

Introduction

This book will be of greatest value to the following people:

To those who did not know that many wines are rated for quality.
To those who didn’t know there are many highly rated wines at disproportionately low prices.
To those who never thought of or didn’t know how to compare price to quality to maximize value.

The wine market is a market like any other. Any market has dislocations, which allow those who do their homework to find significant bargains by seeking out value. It is easy to fine 25% savings among bottles of the same quality of wine. Savings of 50-75% are not at all uncommon.

And if you have been buying bargain wines, it is very easy to see an increase of 100% in the quality of wine you pay for.

I’m not talking about the kind of bargains you get with manufacturer’s coupons. The phony bargains where you find that, after you deduct the coupon, you are still paying more for the heavily advertised brand than another, lesser-known brand of the same quality. I’m talking about how to find the best bottle of wine for the lowest price. I want to teach you how to recognize very fine wines by taste.

Here are the questions I propose to answer.

In this book I show what it takes to learn these things:

How do I save money while enjoying better quality wine?
How do I learn to tell a good wine from a bad wine?
How do I learn to tell what wines are really superior
How can I tell with confidence when a wine is terrible
If I can’t trust advertising, and I can’t trust wine salesmen
- How can I find good wines without having to taste every wine in the store
- How can I locate fine wines at reasonable prices?
- How can I find good wines at bargain prices?
- Where can I get continuing help pointing me in the right direction?
- How do I sort all this out? It takes effort, but only a modicum thereof. Perhaps 30 minutes per month at first. Later only 30-60 minutes once or twice per year.

The Lesson of Olive Oil

There is a great lesson I learned a long time ago from olive oil.

There is such a thing as extra virgin olive oil.

Olive oil is available in 3 liter cans. They’re big cans like the cans paint thinner comes in.

It is not unusual to pay $28 for the finest extra virgin olive oil. That comes to almost $0.28 per ounce. If you buy similar quality extra virgin olive oil in pint containers, it can cost $8. That comes to $0.50 per ounce.

I love olive oil. I eat a green salad every day if I can. I love fresh salad ingredients. Also, it greatly helps my digestion and seems to help me eat less.

Partly to save money, partly because I like my own better, and mostly because it’s so easy, I make most of my salad dressing at home. You just take a clean wine or whisky bottle with a good cap; pour in about 1 ounce each of cider vinegar, balsamic vinegar, water and wine. You pour in whatever spices you like, then fill the bottle to about 85% with olive oil. The other 15% is shaking room so you can blend the oil and water.

Most salad dressing is 2 or 3:1, oil to vinegar. I like mine 4 or 5:1. I like the dressing to be very thick and cling lavishly to each piece of salad.

I go through a lot of olive oil.

I knew that the premium extra extra virgin olive oils are very fine. They do not have a greasy feel on the tongue. They do not have a heavy flavor of olives. They are so fine and superior as to be almost tasteless. ???? !!!!

When I thought about that for a moment, it hit me. Basically I was paying for something that I could neither feel in my mouth nor taste on my tongue. That kind of thing never made sense to me. I don’t care how fashionable it may be. Especially since my taste in food is much more of a rustic, Cuisine de Provence sort. I’m not the kind of person who frequents restaurants where they bring you a dinner plate with one bean surrounded by an artful design of sauce. My appetite has much more in common with a farm hand. Not that I can’t appreciate modern cuisine. It’s just not my thing.

Anyway, as I was first examining the shelves of olive oil, I noticed one brand for under $7 for a 3-liter tin. Sure enough it said “Olive-Pomace Oil”. But rather than extra virgin olive oil, this was pomace olive oil. pomace simply means pulp. I will not tell you that olive pulp oil is the same as extra virgin olive oil. It’s not. And in fact, if you look deep enough into it, and you are really squeamish about how things are produced, you might choose not to buy pulp oil. But from what I’ve seen, the complaints about pulp oil come from its competition. The specific complaints against pulp oil would hold true for anyone who uses extra virgin live oil for frying or sauté.

In other words, olive-pulp oil is entirely healthful. More important for me, it has a bit of the taste of olives, which is lacking in extra virgin olive oil. Also, rather than costing 50 cents per ounce, or 28 cents per ounce, olive-pulp oil only costs 7 cents per ounce. And my evaluation tells me that even if the cost were the same, I’d still buy the pulp oil because I like the flavor better. This is an 86% max and a 75% minimum savings. On top of a 100% improvement in flavor. How much more of a bargain do you want?

I save $21 about every 3 months. I carry home the same cans of oil. Now the cans are full of an oil I like better. Over 20 years that comes to $1680, again, without lifting a finger.

Similar savings are to be found in wine, also without having to sacrifice pleasure or quality. It’s up to you. I can lead the way.