Here’s my take on the current wine market: if you are evenfairly serious about quality wine, you are seriously challenged like the restof us. Why? Because by my estimation, there are about 100,000 or so labels inthe market at any given time. Less than 5% of those wines are worthy of yourattention, the rest being junk. So with maybe 5000 quality wines available weare left with the task finding a needle in a haystack. Still, I’m beinggenerous with 5000.

Did you think this was going to be easy? It is going torequire time, some dedication, time, some money, time, research, and time. Thefirst thing to start with is getting familiar with wine publications:

Wine Spectator – http://www.winespectator.com/

Robert Parker/Wine Advocate - http://www.erobertparker.com/

Stephen Tanzer – http://www.wineaccess.com/expert/tanzer/newhome.html

Make a list of wines you think you might enjoy based ondescriptions. Although wine scores are very controversial, no matter if they’reright on the mark or not, they serve as a very useful guide, especially if youget to know a reviewer’s personal taste. Plus these people get to reviewthousands of wines each year, which puts them far ahead of what we might beable to even get close to. If you begin buying only wines above a certainscore, say 88 or 90 points, you’ll soon begin to filter out much of the junkwhile establishing a personal baseline for yourself. This guides you to whatwill be acceptable to you and what will not and further refines your chances oflanding on wine that you’ll actually enjoy.

Wine authorities are a great source of information but thereis simply no replacement for actually tasting wine, which is why I encouragepeople to attend wine events as often as possible. And don’t just go to oneplace if you have choices because every wine bar has it own characteristicswhen it comes to putting a wine menu together. In other words, not all winebars are equal; you will find different wines, tastes, business models, andphilosophies at each establishment. In fact there are a fair number ofso-called wine bars that only serve or mostly serve junk! Still, make everywine experience a learning experience and keep track of things you like anddon’t like. To find events in your area sign up for a free weekly newsletter athttp://www.localwineevents.com/.

Other serious collectors I know go to CellarTracker’swebsite (not surprisingly located at www.cellartracker.com) to find newwines. This is an enormous base of wine drinkers that write tasting notes andscore wines they have experienced. I have avoided this site personally becausethere are so many wine critic wannabes that have so little credibility fromthese million plus tasting notes, that it potentially puts one back in the sameposition we started in – how to eliminate junk. However I am told on very goodauthority that once you figure out who’s who on this site, much valuableinformation can be extrapolated from visiting CellarTracker. It’s worth lookingat.

If you do nothing else to rid yourself of the clutter outthere, pick at least two out these three strategies and stick with it. Once youdiscover wines you want to buy the next challenge will be at retail. Many ofthe wines you read about may not be readily available at your local wineretailer and I have yet to find but a small handful of retailers that willactually take the time to call their distributors or look through long lists ofwine available to them, just to find you some wine. This is a big problem formost of us but of course there are always exceptions to this rule. If I fail tofind what I want locally, I will go to www.wine-searcher.com where nearlyanything can be found somewhere, including many older vintages.  Just use common sense here. If mostretailers on WineSearcher sell a particular wine for $500 but there is one thatsells it for $80, there’s something wrong. Always remember if sounds too goodto be true . . .

There are far too many great wines out there to drink junk.Make even a minimal effort to eliminate junk wine from your life and watch yourwine-satisfaction meter move toward ten. As always, please let me know if youhave other strategies or any questions.

David Boyer