I'm trying to get into wine after a friend gifted me a bottle of stuff he makes.  He gave me a bottle of cherry berry red wine and it was great.  

I'm trying to keep under $10 a bottle.  I bought a few to try and I like Arbor Mist blackberry Merlot but I hated the wild Irish rose.

Thanks for any advice and I look forward to the suggestions of Dom Perignon from the 1800s.  

Wild Irish Rose, Arbor Mist?! Are you serious?


Chateau Ste. Michelle and 14 hands both make a decent wine at or under 10 bucks a bottle

It’s made from grapes

And you have to step on them a lot.

Under $10?

Have you tried Night Train?

I don't know shit about wine only that the bottle I was given was red and I liked it.

Kirkland in a box.  Under $5/L.  Or you could try feeling good about yourself by spending perfectly good ammo $ on expensive bottles.

wine = tastes like crap.

What's to "get into?"

Buy a box of the shit, drink it, repeat.

Good call, but 2016 chateau ste. Michelle cab is about $16 around here, but worth it

MD/2020 Orange Jubilee.

Guaranteed blackout-in-a-bottle during my teen years.

The stuff your friend gave you that "he made" called "cherry berry" sounds like a homemade country wine. I like them but you won't find one like it in a store.

Have your friend teach you how to make it. Its fairly easy.

It doesn't sound like you're ready to learn about wine.

Oh, I don’t know, give OP a bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill and he’ll be happy. Just because wine can be stupendously complicated doesn’t mean that it has to be.  

like sweet stay at 9% if you like not so sweet 12%

Go to local winiers and do tastings to get an idea on different wines

Also oak leaf from wally world is a cheaper alternative, that is what I take when we go camping, just grab a misc case, after 1st bottle no one cares

Big fan of the "headache drunk" huh?

The names you mentioned are flavored fortified wine, not actually real wine, bottom shelf stuff also known as bum wine best consumed while homeless under a bridge. Pass out shit your pants type stuff.

There are ok box wines nowdays, Black box, Bota box etc. if you're looking to keep it inexpensive.

How old are you?

There are way too many options out there to say they all taste like crap - I say that as someone who thought like you until I turned 40 y/o.  I've lived in California wine regions almost my entire life but it took a while to develop a taste for wine and appreciate it.

Thanks for the suggestions.  I guess I need to go live under the over pass now.  

Yeah. I'm out.

Having not drank so much as a beer in 9 years, I decided to try Wine.
Reading all the hoidydoidy horse shit about sniffing, letting breath, swirling and palate  in the Booze section here, I endevoured to find atleast one $10 and up bottle that I liked.
I have yet to find that bottle.

There are two open bottles in the fridge right now that I am going to dump together just to try and get it down somehow.

Why the Wine fucks think their shit is better than the Wiskey or Beer fucks I'll never know.

Someone a long time told me

"If you don't KNOW wine, then what you like is good wine."

I cant type the way he said "know wine" but it was dripping with sex and lust.

Eta.  The right wine can make a good meal an EXCELLENT mea.

Learning about wine was interesting and pleasurable to me, and a good way to fall down a rabbit-hole in search of knowledge. Pairing wine with foods, learning about terroire and the effect it has on flavors, and a million other nerdy facts is what made an otherwise snooty endeavor enjoyable. ‘The large Native guy can speak semi-intelligently about west coast vs. French reds, Provençal rose wines, and Montepulciano D’aBruzzos’, imagine that. And I didn’t even have to pour them down my neck, though that sis sometimes happen.

I used to use the line Macho Taco whenever referring to pairing wine.

I loved that show.

The first thing I would recommend is seeing if there is a wine shop in your area that does some kind of tasting night. Most of them do some kind of weekly event, and they aren't usually expensive. Many of them will offer tastings of four or five related, but very different wines that will allow you an immediate opportunity to compare and contrast styles. The wine community seems kind of pompous and intimidating for a beginner, but if you think about it, those shops are dependent on bringing in new business to survive. The absolute majority of wine shops, wine wholesalers, and wineries are going to be very happy to patiently introduce a beginner to their passion.

The next thing I would do is find a good "wine guy" at a store with a good wine selection. This could be a grocery store, wine shop, or anywhere with a broad wine selection. The first "wine guy" I found was at a Cost Plus World Market. I went in and humbly told the first associate in the wine section I saw that I needed some help. I explained that I had just gotten interested in wine after doing some travel abroad, and wanted to explore more styles. I was in college at the time and was on a super tight budget, and he was totally cool with that. Every time I went in, he gave me recommendations in numerous wines within my price range with zero judgment. That's the kind of guy you want. But, since I'd also gone to some tasting nights, I had a basic understanding of wine vocabulary. Dry, sweet, mineraly, tannins, bold, delicate, etc.

After that, find a place to buy wine within your price range and explore. Trader Joe's has some awesome wines under $10. Costco also has a lot of great wines in that price range. Taking advantage of the "10% off 6 bottles" that most grocery stores offer also helps. I think you pay a slightly higher price for wines at a dedicated wine shop, but they usually carry a good range or prices and love talking about wine, so the bottle comes with some free education.

I also really like the app Vivino. It allows you to take a picture of a wine label and look at an average rating, reviews, tasting profile and more for the wine. You can even scan a menu at a restaurant and see scores for all the wine. The reviews are generated from whoever has the app, so you kind of have to take into account that not everyone else is an expert either, but I've found the reviews to be fairly reliable and the information is solid. I also use it to look back and remind me of the name of a wine I had that I really liked if I want to buy it again.

There are some good wine documentaries on places like Netflix. I really liked Somm: Into the Bottle. The fist Somm was interesting from a super wine geek perspective, but the second, Into the Bottle, I felt did a really good job of exploring the history and romanticism of wine throughout the world.

My last advice is to drink a lot of water before calling it a night. Wine definitely produces a uniquely piercing hangover if you over-do it.

Migraine in a bottle. Tastes like shit. Decent for cooking marsala.

I could be a sommelier.

Arbor mist?  Save your money, mix up some hi-c and vodka.  

Wine geeks no different than gun geeks in the way that they LOVE to talk about their passion.

Ahh, vintage wine, Annie Greensprigs made some of the finest a few decades ago. Also, in Cali in the 60s there was Red Mountain, we bought that in the gallon size, expensive stuff was $ 1.25 gallon. Gone are those days......

I have a particular strategy when it comes to wine.

Kroger and Publix generally have okay selections of inexpensive table wines.  You're not going to impress a true wine snob when you whip out that 2019 vintage Washington State Cabernet Sauvignon, but who cares?  It all gets dranked up in the end anyway.

Any time I go shopping, I look for a bottle wine that's normally in the twenty-something dollar range, but is seriously on sale.  Like, a "Buy One, Get One" sale.  I'll grab up a couple of those, and take them home.  Guess what?  They're usually pretty decent.  If I really like them, I snap a pic of the label, and if I don't, I don't bother.  I've tasted tons and tons of different vintages from different areas of the world, and I've gotten more of a handle on what I prefer vs. what I don't.  And since they're really on sale, I haven't wasted a ton of money.  Just don't uncork a bottle, sip from it, put the cork back in, and put it in your fridge for a month.  That's how the stuff goes bad.

Thanks man, I genuinely appreciate this.

Robert Mondavi has offerings in the $10 range that are very tasty.

Had a buddy in the 8th grade (yes, 8th grade...I know) who bonged not just one, but TWO bottles of that crap in one go.

It was ugly, but he didn't die.

I've been getting into wine more lately as well. I like expensive whiskey and beer, but when it comes to wine find myself really enjoying cheaper red blends, Apothic and 19 Crimes area couple I like.

The best wine I ever had was made by Creole Williams

Can't go wrong with any of the 19 crimes in my opinion.

No problem. I’m no expert but feel like I have a pretty decent base of knowledge at this point. Feel free to PM me if you have have specific questions.

One lesson I took away from that first wine guy is that their are gems at every price point. I think a wine wholesaler on here posted years ago that he had a basement full of collected wine and he had enjoyed some ridiculously expensive stuff, but what really excited him at this point in his career was searching for the truly excellent sub $20 bottles.

I don't mind spending more but if I need to sample 100 bottles before I get a beginners understanding then it becomes too much.  I have a wine shop in mind in spring hill I think I'll check out.  Again, thank you!

I drink cheap wine because they sell it by the gallon (or larger) and they still get you crunked.  Mainly Carlo Rossi Chianti jugs or Lambrusco 1.5L magnum bottle.  They have an amazing crunk-per-dollar ratio.  Occasionally I splurge on a $40-$80 bottle of good chianti... and I can't really tell the difference between that and the Carlo Rossi.

I love wine recipes that call for red wine because I can get the 1.5L bottles, use 1/3 of it in the recipe, and then house the rest of it while cooking.  

No.

I know wine, but not the under $10 stuff. I would suggest going to Costco or totalwine. Costco gives numeric scoring with expert objective descriptors and total wine has knowledgeable employees that have tried everything they sell.

This here. Steer clear of grocery stores. Go to liquor stores or wine shops.  Vivino helped me define my likes and dislikes quickly.

Boone’s Farm or Arbor Mist are my go to. I’m not joking.

Spaceboy, I'm going to assume your friend's wine may have been on the sweeter side but I may be wrong too.  Anyhow, try a German red wine called Dornfelder.  It's classified as semi-sweet.  It has a great flavor IMO. Even though reds are not to be chilled, my wife and I like this wine cold.  I'll even add ice to it and drink it pretty quickly.

FYI The label is red with gold lettering.

pic here

So far out of the Apothic line, RedCrush blend has been the best.
Local store had a display with Apothic brand on sale for $9.99

For beer I have a new thing for Lager type beer.
That Canadian imported Lager has been the best shit. moosehead molsen ect
Also found a beer out of Boulder co from the Avery brewing company called the Kaiser that I thought was great.
Course it was almost two beers in one 12oz can.

Most of what you'll find in that price range is going to be pretty awful, but there are some exceptions.  Look for Witching Hour, Crimson Thread and Apothic red blends.  They're all dry reds, but they're very drinkable.

Never admit that you enjoyed Arbor Mist.