I completely agree with this post. You should drink what you enjoy.

My step-father was a wine collector. Back in the 1960s he would go to France and bring back French wines. We always had wine with dinner on weekends and I’ve been drinking wine since I was twelve years old. I have been fortunate to have had some great wines.

I am a Californian and growing up we drank mostly Californian wines. Because I have lived in Northern California most of my life, I have a decent knowledge of Californian wines (although there are now so many vineyards that few people could know them all).

The litmus test for the wine connoisseur tends to be French wine. As it turns out, I don’t like French wines much. I don’t know French wine as well as I know Californian wine. The only French wines that I really like are from the Chateauneuf de Pape region. I had an embarassing experience at a French restaurant in Montreal where I tried three different wines and didn’t like any of them.

I love Spanish wines, I like the Southern Italian wines (the Primitivos), Australian wines, but French, not so much.

My favorite wines are Zinfandels, especially Turley Zins. I like the Turley Cabernets too. These are Cabernets made by a Zinfandel vinyard and they are “big wines”. A lot of wine people denigrate “big” wines as “fruit bombs”. They loudly claim that these wines don’t match food, since their flavor is so strong. I don’t care. This is what I like.