My wine journey started in 2000 when a ham radio buddy of mine from Perth (Oz) announced that "there were no good restaurants in London". Well, as a Londoner I'd read about how we were dragging ourselves up out of the dark ages of the greasy spoon and into fine dining, so we ended up going on a food and wine binge that's still going on to this day, and other than collecting test equipment unnecessarily, food & wine is my pastime.
Going back, I was frustrated that I'd buy a box of red wine one day in a supermarket, and then buy another of the same a few weeks later and they didn't seem to taste the same. Indeed, even the same box, one day I'd enjoy it, a week later I wouldn't. Well, other than it was in a box, I since learned that there's a lot more going on than the wine itself. Mainly it's what I was eating with it.
My mental wine list in those days amounted to "red". I disliked white, and really detested dessert wine. I just didn't get them. Then one day early in my F&B trip with my buddy, we had a Tarte Tatin paired with a Sauternes. That was it, I totally got it. Before, when trying dessert wine, half a dozen of us would sit around a table, all order different desserts from dark chocolate to a lemon tart, and think that one bottle of dessert wine was going to work with all of them. Well, it won't!
Ever since that day it's become a mission to achieve the perfect food and wine match, so I usually drink wine with food rather than on its own. I started collecting too, I bought a Liebherr cellar and started stocking it up, and I still have some awesome stuff in there. I always have four or five different bottles of white chilled, each one ready for the right time.
Even better, my other half, who's French, has a family vineyard in Alsace. I met her over food and wine, I turned up for a dinner party and knowing it was going to be spicy food brought an Alsatian Riesling and Gerwurtz. I didn't know she was from Alsace, it was purely coincidental, other than I knew that Riesling and Gerwurtz are a good match with spicy food, and Alsace is the home of those grape varieties. So forget internet dating, drink wine!
The most interesting part of the journey I found is that as well as understanding better what you're buying, your palate changes very noticeably. Things that you just did not appreciate before become alive and are appreciated. I used to hate big buttery oaky chardonnays, now I love them, especially with non-blue cow and sheep cheese. And unoaked NZ sauv blanc with a goats cheese, noms.
I started off largely on red Bordeaux, but I hardly touch it nowadays. I don't consider red Bordeaux to be value for money, and haven't for over decade. There is huge speculation on these and other classic wines such as from Burgundy and Rhone from the emerging markets of China and Russia, and there is extraordinarily better value from elsewhere. The white and sweet Bordeaux however seem to be largely unaffected.
My price point now starts at £7.50, but can go stratospheric on the odd occasion. In the UK there's about a couple of quid of tax on a bottle before you've even looked at the label, so a £3 wine has only cost £1 to make, transport and give the retailer their cut. So barely £0.30 has gone into that wine. A £7.50 bottle on the other hand will probably have about £3, or ten times as much effort, put into the wine itself.
My personal favourites:
Champagne: Krug NV, Bollinger Grande Annee, Giraud Code Noir
White: Te Koko, Petaluma Tiers (or any big buttery chard), any NZ sauvignon blanc, Alsace Riesling and Gerwurtz, white Bordeaux esp. Y d'Yquem
Red: Apothic Red (connoisseurs hate this), Russian River, Sonoma and Napa Pinot Noirs like Kistler, Big Calfornian Cab Sav bruisers like Modicum.
Sweet: Everything, but there is nothing like Ch d'Yquem, although Ch Fargues comes close.
I also enjoy sherries across the board, a much underrated drink, very good as a food drink, but admittedly an acquired taste for some.