Karen thinks she knows wine. My husband and I co-own a boutique winery and have 20 years experience.

I have been an enthusiastic whino since 1986. We attended a wine tasting fundraiser tonight at

a charitable organization my husband is secretary of. This is part of his role as the director of

sales with a local convention and visitors bureau. It's a great organization and the event is

generally a lot of fun. We were seated with three other couples and commenced to talking about the

evenings featured wines. A lovely woman next to me will call her L said,

I'll probably embarrass myself but I know nothing about wine except that the big red ones make me happy.

I said the most important thing to know about wine is that you should drink what tastes good to you.

It's your mouth. If it doesn't like what you're putting in it, try something else.

She liked the idea and asked what she should do to learn more about wine and how to figure out

what she would like. I gave her a card and invited her to our seller tasting. In the meantime,

go to all these. The Winking Owl has some good examples. They are simple and straightforward.

If you like something from there, try some other ones and if you hate it, well, you're only wasting

$4. Learn what you're interested in then branch out. Karen yells from across the table, you're wrong.

Winking Owl is terrible. My conversation partner looks dricken. I raised an eyebrow, you're welcome

to your opinion. Drink what you like. Karen was pretty wasted already and we were only on the first

poor. Clearly she had pre-gamed. She was not having any sass, I guess. You don't know what you're

talking about. I have a wine fridge. Nice deer. I have a wine fridge, a wine seller with nearly

100 bottles, 37 years of visiting wine regions in Europe and the US and a whole winery.

At least that's what I wanted to say. I said instead, I'm sure most people here have one.

We're talking about how to introduce new people to wine without breaking the bank.

It's perfectly fine for learning and just sipping while you watch dumb TV.

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