1. Make it fun
Wine is to be enjoyed not just drunk. Make having a bottle of wine an experience! Cook a great meal. Invite friends over. Select the best wine to go with both the meal and the friends who are joining. Visit a winery on your travels. Have fun with you local wine shop owner. There are so many things you can experience with wine. You don’t have to buy and drink the most expensive bottle of wine all the time, because all wines deserve to be experienced. When you look back on an evening it will be remembered for the experience, not just the wine, but we all know the wine helped.

2. Take in the wine
Wine is complicated. From varietal to varietal and from region to region there, are as many different types of wine than cars, electronic gadgets and blogs on the subject combined. Each wine brings something different to the (dinner) table. Experience and understand the wine. Learn about its value to you. The more you try, the more you will know. The more you know, the more you can experience. Then you don’t need to rely on the silly ratings other people put on wines and make your own decisions.

3. Wine is a commodity
Wine is produced from an agricultural process. The conditions the vines grow in (terroir) is the all important key to making a good wine. At the same time the sun needs to shine, rain needs to fall and frost needs to say away at all the right times for the grapes to be ideal. Then there is the winery and wine maker, who decide on the process the grapes will go through. All this goes into the bottle of wine you find at the store. All these environmental and procedural considerations create the value of a wine. If done right, the value of the wine will grow as it matures – when stored correctly. So pay the right price for it, enjoy it when the time is right and most of all don’t waste it.

4. Everything in moderation
Now this can go for just about anything in life. Over consumption does not help you experience wine any more than a glass or two. Have enough to get the most from the wine, but not too much more. As we all know, wine contains alcohol and does get you drunk no matter how nicely it goes down. Above all, never drive after drinking. Take public transport. It’s better for you, other people on the road and the environment.

5. Be open minded
If someone’s taste in wine is different to yours, it is just that – different, not better or worse. Everyone has their own taste and they have their right to be different. Rather than turning your nose up at it, understand why they enjoy the wine, you may learn something. Don’t bore other people with your knowledge about a wine if it isn’t fun for them. Let’s face it, there are far more important things going on in the world than fermentation techniques and filtering processes. Talk about the world and common interests, wine will help these conversations more often than not.

Please share you maxims/guidelines with us, we would love to hear more!

With all the lists around I have decided not to do one. There are some great contributions among the blogs I have listed here. I am a big believer that wine is about experiences. To list and rate an experience is very difficult, so I will just share with you a few of the many enjoyable wine experiences I have had in the last 12 months. So in no particular order here are some of my memorable wine experiences from 2009:

Touring in the Alentejo region in Portugal

There is little not to like about the Alentejo region, if you enjoy food, wine and spectacular landscapes. In May, I travelled around this region once again, this time I tried to view the wineries, restaurants and landscapes as if I were seeing it for the first time. It is difficult to do when you know there is another fantastic view over the next hill.

The trip this year was very special however, because I took more time with the wineries to discuss their wine. I find the more you are interested in a winery the more you get from the owners or the staff working there. In the 3 days there, I managed to visit many wineries, but the best experience was settling down at the end of the day with some local hams and chorizo, cheese and olives, olive oil and bread and enjoying a great bottle of 2006 Red Reserva from Herdade do Esporão.

It helps that the Alentejo region has had a huge influence on my choice to move to Portugal in 2010. I hope to share this region with people and hope they have a fantastic experience too.

Cofield dinner in Melbourne

When I visited Australia recently, I was lucky enough to be able to attend a dinner given by the Cofield Winery. I didn’t know what to expect. I knew we would have good food and wine, which is always a good start. The rest of the experience I was not sure about. Would we have only a few of the wines to taste? Would we have a big sell to get the attendees to buy some wine? Would there be stuffy people there who wanted to show off about how much they knew about wine, but had little to say apart from sound-bites from tasting notes they had read earlier? Well obviously, as this experience is being shared with you, I had none of these negative expectations.

The pre-dinner drinks were an experience in themselves! Damien Cofield who was hosting the dinner, disgorged some of his sparkling Pinot Noir-Chardonnay. This was rather spectacular to watch. Tasting the ultra-dry result was quite refreshing after another day over 35°C. Following this was the Sparkling Shiraz, which would have been a highlight in itself if I had just come and tasted this great wine.

It was then time to eat. The company was very pleasant. I was there with my parents who were happy I was there, and the others on our table were very interesting. Damien came and talked about his wines with our table a couple of times and the food was better than I expected – and I was expecting some very good food. Over all it was a great evening and well worth it for me and I would like to thing for the winery also.

Lunching in Ribeauville in Alsace

The Alsace region in France is another place I have visited a couple of times before. This year however, I was there in the summer when The Tour de France was near by. Seeing the tour whizz by was something I have always wanted to see in the 8 years I have been living in Europe. The spectacle and sense of theatre was great as the approach of the peloton drew closer. The sponsor’s cars giving out free samples create an expectation among the thousands lining the streets. Then the helicopters tracking the cyclists come into range and everyone gathers in anticipation on the footpaths. We were lucky enough to have a break-away form just before the rider approached the small town we were in. The only negative to that was the break away of 5 riders, as well as the peloton, were at full speed. They went by so quickly it was over very quickly.

After the excitement of Le Tour, we visited the town of Ribeauville in the heart of the Alsace region. Before visiting the likes of Trimbach and Metz Frères in the small town, it was time for some lunch. A simple café in the main street was decided upon and I enjoyed an onion tart with a local Sauvignon Gris in the afternoon sunshine. It was a special experience, not because of the opulence of the meal, in fact just the opposite. The simplicity of the food and wine matching so naturally in the town where the same meal would have been served to rich and poor alike for hundreds of years.

New Year’s Eve in Paris

My last experience I wish to share happened just a few days ago. Technically half of it happened in 2010, but who is checking? We decided to visit Paris for the New Year this year. The 31st of December started with a trip to see the Eifel tower, Gallery La Fayette’s food section, the Latin Quarter and a street market with exceptional food on display. The end result was an accumulation of fantastic food and a few bottles of wine. The end result of this was the ingredients for a perfect pre-New Year’s meal. We decided to have our dinner in the hotel room due to the excessive prices for a meal on New Year’s Eve in Paris. It turned out to be a great meal with more variety and a better quality wine than we could afford otherwise.

After a rest from too much food, we headed out for the evening. It was pretty cold in Paris, so we were pretty well rugged up. We found a place in the Champ des Mars near the peace monument. We had a bit of cover from the wind, a perfect view of the Eifel tower and even a small group of people with some music playing. The park got busier and busier as the night progressed. By 11pm it was a montage of people all the way to the tower.

At 11.30 it was decided to put the beer away and get the champagne open. I had brought a 2003 Louis Nicaise Champagne from my last visit to the Champagne region (another great experience but in 2007). Thanks to the natural fridge that was the Paris night, it was a perfect temperature. It went down very well during the count-down to 2010. When the Eifel Tower changed to it’s sparkling finale at the strike of midnight it was cheers, fireworks and bonne annee all round. A fantastic experience of Paris at it’s best!

There you have it. A selection of the best experiences I have had during 2009. I wish you all the best in 2010 with great experiences with wine, food and friends!