New to wine

[Kcwhippet]

A bit more on the cooking wines. If the wine is being used in a recipe in which it will be reduced, either in a long cooked stew or a reduction sauce, be careful which wine you use. A wine with heavy oak treatment, such as many Cabs, will leave all that oakiness behind as it reduces, and your finished dish may end up tasting like you're chewing on hardwood flooring. Syrah based wines, even with a touch of oak, have wonderful flavorful profiles for cooking. In fact, one of the best I've found is the Ca 'del Solo Big House Red.

Oh, and those supermarket cooking wines - they wouldn't use a good quality wine and add salt, sugar and preservatives. BTW, all that salt and sugar, can noticeably alter the seasoning of your dish if you don't take them into account. That can be very difficult because there's no way of knowing how much of each that stuff has in it by volume. Just say "NO!" to those supermarket cooking wines.