never had wine; please help

[hotwine]

Hi, New, and welcome to the board.

We could recommend any number of wines to accompany steak or chicken, but it would be difficult for us to predict how you would respond to a particular wine. If you could attend a tasting at a retailer in your area, you could get some ideas. But if you simply take a recommendation from us, buy a wine, try it without food, decide you like it, and try to re-cork it to serve the next night, you would be disappointed - it wouldn't taste anything like the way it tasted when you first opened it. Yet spending up to $50 on a wine, only to take one sip, declare it ugly and throw it away, wouldn't make much sense, either.

Try this: if you want to serve chicken and have wine with it, get a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. The one from Kendall-Jackson is widely available and costs only about $8. Serve it chilled, with the meal.

If you want to serve wine with a steak dinner, look for the Merlot from Blackstone, the California label. Serve it at room temperature with the meal. That one will run you $6-$8.

If either of those choices works for you, you're on your way. If not, it won't have cost you much.

Good luck.

I failed to mention the amount of alcohol involved. As I recall, both of those I mentioned are about 12% by volume, so a six-ounce pour would amount to 0.72 ounces of alcohol; two glasses would total a tad less than 1.5 ounces, which is a "jigger" for a mixed drink.

Glasses: get some cheap wine glasses at your local supermarket. Those will do fine for now, until you see if you're going to like this stuff.

[This message has been edited by hotwine (edited 01-24-2004).]