Start your-self a wine club.

Ok, so you have your regular place with your regular wine guy, you have read some books, and now your lazier compatriots defer to you whenever you are out. They look to you to know where the value will be, they look to you for little gems like the Albariño cheap little garlicky shrimp at a tapas place, or that a Cabernet Franc from the Loire will pair well with the chicken livers coming in the middle of the meal and keep you out of a white rut. Now it is time to put them to work for you. Start a wine club!
At some point I realized I had about six friends all of whom were drinking at a level above mine financially, and I was frustrated by them not sharing their experiences with me. Even if I hadn’t had the wines I could get a grasp for what to expect and could make a better-informed choice if I had the means or chance. Their excuse was always something like “I don’t know what to say,” or, “I can’t taste as well as you,” so I decided the solution was to help them find their voice and if, in the process, I could put them to work teaching me stuff I didn’t know? Bonus.
I started the 5th Ave. Wine Society (admit that sounds way more fun then Augie’s Wine Club). I invited Wife plus six other people, figuring having much more than the eight of us would get distracting to conversation. I set up a basic structure for the meetings and brought together the first grouping at my house.
    1.    We would meet once a month, rotating between each of the member’s apartments.
    2.    The schedule would be such that odd months would be about a grape and even would be about a region.
        a.    In the tastings that were grape-specific, a price range would be set and all the wines of the world would be allowed, as long as the featured grape was 70% of the blend, comparing apples to apples.
            i. These wines would be tasted blind, and wrapped by the host either in brown paper lunch bags or foil upon arrival.
        b.    In the regional tastings the wines could be from anywhere in the region, of any variety, and         any price.
    3.    The person hosting would get to decide which grape or region that they would host and, in the     case of grape-specific tastings, would set the price range.
    4.    The host could invite a guest.
    5.    Each of the eight or nine people would be responsible for bringing a bottle of wine that fit         within the parameters of the tasting.
    6.    Each person would research the wine they had chosen, maybe with the help of a shop clerk maybe on the web, before attending. For every wine, after it was tasted and discussed, the person that brought it would be responsible for giving some back-story on it.
    7.    We purchased a set of pocket notepads in which each person would write their thoughts on color, nose, flavors, and mouth-feel. This kept people from talking while discovering their own response. Everyone I know is very susceptible to the power of suggestion while his or her nose is in the glass.
    8.    When all the wines had been tasted, and discussed we would judge them based on two               separate criteria: which wines we preferred, and which were worth the price for which they had         been purchased.

The group that formed was awesome because it was just my friends who loved wine, even though very few of them knew each other previously. They were from very different financial situations; some barely starting in their careers and others earning well into what would be called upper-class salaries. When these people agreed that, for example, a certain wine from the Malbec tasting was worth $35 dollars while another was not worth $30 it was significant. In their wine shelves at home one of those votes had Yellow Tail and another had some DRCs.

All in all, the wine club met for about ten months. Sooner or later, as always happens with singles, one or two people found a significant other and couldn’t be dragged away from those they were smitten with. By that point, the rest of us found ourselves drinking together about four nights a week anyway and it just seemed easier to let it devolve into a bunch of people hanging out. But while we were still running strong, we learned a couple of really cool things. That wines made of Grenache in the $40-$50 range seem to want stew, and that the Sardinians call the grape Cannonau. That on the whole we feel that the wines of the North Island of New Zealand are over-priced by about 25%, no matter how promising their publicity machine finds them, and that Love my Goat is horrible swill that, “tastes like, what I imagine bums drink.”
Every now and then I have people over for wine nights and we pretty much follow these same guidelines, give or take, and I have to tell you it is much easier to learn about wine discussing it while drinking it. The notes help you remember what consuming the equivalent of one bottle per person inherently loses. Get to it!