How do you choose what wine to drink when you are dinning out?  I find this a fun, yet, occasionally frustrating, part of wining and dining.  Here in California restaurants are overly biased to our regional wines but that doesn't mean I'll have heard of any of the wines on the list.  Or even if I have heard of them I may not want them because I generally like to try new wines.  So how to choose what wine to drink?

Most often Husband and I will look over the list and narrow down our possibilities based on the varietals we want and cost limitations.  Then what do we do?  Well if we've heard of a particular winery we will use that as an aid.  Sometimes we'll ask the waitperson but that isn't always very helpful.  More often than not we pick a random choice from our reduced list of choices.  This can give mixed results but if we're at a good restaurant usually we do OK because good restaurants tend to have good wines.  But other approaches to choosing wines can be more fun...

On those occasions when we are in a restaurant where they have a very large wine list we use the Sommelier to decide.  This is lots of fun.  We list off our preferences; the Sommelier asks a few questions about what we are eating and then makes suggestions.  Sometimes they will simply point to a few choices and describe them but when we have a really good Sommelier they will go back to their "cave" and bring us a few choices.  They will describe the wine, the vinter, the varietal, and why the wine will go with our meal.  Having the wine bottle in front of you doesn't really help but it adds to the fun.  And you get to see the label and the care the winery put into creating the final packaging for the wine.  The Sommelier will also decant reds and properly chill the whites.  As I said its lots of fun and whenever we've fully relied on the Sommelier we've had outstanding wine selections.

We've had even more success with dessert wine/port pairings for our cheese courses.  Wine and cheese go together amazingly well but it can be difficult to do this pairing with the limited information available on the menu.  Last year we had the Sommelier at Bouchon pair our selection of cheeses to dessert wines.  He chose a dessert wine for each of the three cheeses.  Each wine was from the same region as the corresponding cheese and they were not on the dessert wine menu - yet the costs were reasonable.  The pairings were the best I've had to date and just thinking about them makes me want them again - each wine perfectly accentuated the cheese.  

Using a Sommelier has definitely enhanced our wine enjoyment.  Yet we don't do it all the time - why?  As enjoyable as it is to drink the wine paired by the Sommelier, it’s also fun to pick your own wine, despite the occasional dud choices, and enjoy knowing that it not only goes well with your meal but that you picked it yourself!