Hello and welcome to The Upgrade, the podcast from the team at Lifehacker.com, where we help you improve your life one week at a time.

I'm Melissa Kirsch, editor-in-chief of LifeHacker. And, where we help you improve your life one week at a time. I'm Melissa Kirsch, editor and

chief of LifeHacker. And I'm Alice Bradley, LifeHacker's deputy editor. Today we're talking about wine,

how to choose it, buy it, order it, drink it, talk about it, and stop feeling intimidated by it.

And yes, in addition to talking about wine, we'll also be tasting some wines. We'll be trying three different wines with our guest, Marissa Ross.

Marissa is the official wine columnist for Bon Appetit, and her column, unfiltered, appears monthly in the print magazine.

Her blog, Wine All the Time, earned her editors and readers' choice awards at the Savur Blog Awards.

Her new book also called Wine All

the Time, The Casual Guide to Confident Drinking, came out last week. So, Alice, I have tried to

learn about wine several times. Once upon a time, I was in a wine club, wherein five friends

and I got together once a month and tried a different varietal of wine.

I had a book called The Wine Club that I was following.

Each month, a different person would host at their house and would cook foods to accompany

the wines.

We each brought one bottle of that particular varietal, and then we would cover the bottles

with tinfoil so we couldn't see what they

were and then taste them and talk about them and get drunk and eat and learn about wine.

And I remember absolutely nothing of the two and a half years I spent drinking wine and studying

it every month. That makes me feel a little bit better because I've been to a few wine tastings

and also have just let the information fall from my brain the moment I left that place.

Why do you think it's so hard to remember how to drink wine or how to have good taste in wine?

I think it's just the sheer variety of wines.

...