Wine Reviews: A Source for Tasting Notes

For many of us, choosing a bottle of wine can be a mystery and a challenge. One of the first decisions to make is whether to choose red, white or rose. It is generally agreed that you no longer need to follow the "red with red meats and white with seafood and foul guideline". Then there's the dry, semi-dry, semi-sweet, or sweet issue. Sometimes, this choice

is based on personal preference or what the wine may be paired with. For example, if the wine will accompany dessert, a sweet dessert wine might be most appropriate. Unless, of course, you dislike sweet wine.

Once you've narrowed the decision down this far, you can move on to varietal (the type of grape used in making the wine): Chardonnay, pinot noir, riesling, merlot, chenin blanc, cabernet sauvignon, pinot grigio, etc. You may even want to consider the region where the wine was made...United States, France, Greece, Italy, South Africa, Germany, Australia, Spain, New Zealand, just to name a few.

It's understandable if you're a little overwhelmed... and it doesn't get any easier. Let's say you decide you'd like to try a Chardonnay from the Napa Valley. Well, you're in luck. There are about 380 wineries in the Napa Valley. The odds are pretty good that you'll find a Napa Valley Chardonnay that you're sure to love. But with the abundance of wine to choose from, how do you narrow down your selection?

Wine-Reviewer can help make choosing the right bottle of wine easier. We offer tasting notes and let you know how a particular wine is rated by the leading experts like Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast. However, when a wine is scored very highly by an "expert" it does not always equate to an equally high score by the consumer. There have been many tales where the experts scored a wine in the high 90s, but in "blind" tastings in other venues the same wine scored rather low. The opposite is also true, a wine may be scored low by the experts, but be highly regarded by consumers. Kind of sounds like movie critics, huh?