DOMESTIC OR IMPORT

[stevebody]

Rocky,

EEK!! SPIT, SPIT, SPIT!!

Wine tasting is one opf the only social situations in the world at which it is not only acceptable to spit but expected. Tables at wine tastings will almost always have a big silver bucket (or a flower vase or a terra cotta canister or, on one memorable occasion I attended, a coffee can) in which you are expected to spit the mouthful of wine and dump the unused portion of what's poured into your glass. I've been to tastings at which there were upwards of 100 wines to sample. If you drank even a half ounce of all of them, they'd be slapping the paddles on you down at your local ER before the evening was out. What tiny amount of wine remains in your mouth will be plenty to experience the finish. In our house tastings of sampels at Esquin, we almost always sample at least 25 bottles, two nights a week. Learn to spit.

As to the thing about imports, yeah, count me in: God Bless America. That said, Bota is right - there's a hell of a lot more good ol' American green flying around in the selling of a bottle of imported wine than in a bottle of domestic. Jeez, drink both, okay? Your goal, at this point, is to experience wine, and "wine" is a whole lot of different things. I get these customers all the time who say, "Oh, I only drink Oregon wines" or "I heard that wines from Washington are too Do yourself a favor and sampel as many wines as you can from as many countries and regions as possible and decide for yourself what you like. I didn't drink Italian wines for years because I started by experimenting with Chiantis and didn't like a good number of them. I've since come to LOVE Italian wines and to find that they're as different, region to region and vineyard to vineyard, as any wines in the world. Three of the five best wines I've ever tasted are Italian and I was ready to just write off the entire country because of a few mediocre Chiantis.

Remember who's at this end of the pipeline: Americans. ANY wine you buy supports our economy.