How we buy wine

We have come to believe that walking into a retail place and blindly buying wine has led to relatively poor experiences. That is how we started and we found we often overpaid for mediocre wine.

We typically rely on experts for wine ratings and don't buy without some information. After you have been gotten to know how a critic scores wine and what they like and don't like, you can determine how they compare to your palates.

For advice, try:

Robert Parker, who publishes a magazine called the Wine Advocate but has an amazing site erobertparker where you can search by any number of criteria.

Stephen Tanzer who published ratings in a magazine called International Wine Cellar. The web site isn't nearly as good as Parker's but it serves the purpose.

To find wine:

We use wine-searcher. This site sits on top of numerous retailers so you can search by any bottle and/or vintage and drill down to places in the country selling it and their price. They have yearly nominal subscription fee (which is worth it) to get access to all the listings.

We have had great luck buying young and aged wines on winebid. This is one of the best auction websites. While there is risk that the wine hasn't been stored well, we have had no problems.