Walking into a wine shop and asking "what's good?" gets you the shop's opinion. Walking in able to answer five questions about yourself gets you a bottle you will actually finish. The questions are not difficult, and none of them require you to know any producer names.
Five things to know about your own palate
- Tannin. Do you like the drying grip on your gums, or does it read as harsh? If you dislike it, Cabernet Sauvignon, Nebbiolo, Sangiovese and Syrah are working against you; Pinot Noir, Merlot, Grenache, Gamay and Tempranillo are working with you.
- Acid. Do you want the wine to make your mouth water, or to feel round and soft? Cool regions keep acid — Chablis, the Loire, Alsace, Germany. Warm regions lose it as the grapes ripen.
- Alcohol. A 12% wine and a 15% wine behave differently at the table and the next morning. Warmer climates and later picking produce more alcohol; it is printed on every label, so this one is free to check.
- Oak. Vanilla, spice and a broader texture come from barrel; the clean, tight version comes from steel. Neither is a level of quality, but knowing which you prefer removes about half the shelf.
- Age. Young wine is fruitier and more direct. Older wine trades some of that fruit for savoury, earthy notes and softer tannin. People assume older is better. Older is different, and it is only better if you like what it becomes.
Then the questions about the occasion
What are you eating? Who is drinking it? A bottle for six people at a table has a different job from a bottle for two on a Tuesday. And if it is a gift, the useful information is not your budget — it is what the recipient has liked before, or where they have travelled.
The question almost nobody asks
How long are you going to keep it?
This is a real cost and it is worth doing the arithmetic once. Hong Kong is hot and humid, so anything you intend to hold for years needs proper storage, and proper storage is not free. At roughly HK$150 a year per bottle, a bottle you buy for HK$500 and keep for twenty years accumulates about HK$3,000 in storage — six times what the wine cost. That is before the money you tied up.
None of which means don't cellar. It means the maths only makes sense above a certain bottle price, and below that line you are better off buying wine to drink now and buying it more often. Working out where your own line sits is more useful than any recommendation a shop can give you.
On scores
A score is one taster's view of one bottle on one day, usually of a specific vintage. That is genuinely useful information, and every publication has the right to publish it. Two things to keep in mind when you use one: check that the score belongs to the vintage in the bottle — the same wine can move several points between years — and find the critic whose taste happens to line up with yours, because that is what makes their number predictive for you rather than just impressive.
What to say at the counter
Say what you have liked before, say what you are eating, say your budget, and say whether it is for tonight or for the cellar. Any competent shop can work from that. If you have a photo of a bottle you enjoyed, that is better than any adjective — it tells them the region, the vintage and the style in one go.