Plaidophile

I've never understood the wine snob mentality. I figure if it tastes good and I enjoy it then there's nothing wrong with it.

Hey, a real journalist recommends the particular one I bought too! Yay!

Wine snobs are like audiophiles or ricers or whatever. They want to be the best at something, even if that something takes no actual skill and is just about "appreciating something more."

The thing about the first generation of box wines (Franzia) is that they were sort of the McDonald's of wine... great for cheaply providing a lot of wine at an outdoor party, for example, but not so good as an everyday drinking wine. But this new generation of box wine premium casks seems to actually be really good everyday wine which just happens to come in a superior packaging which is best known for inferior quality.

Similarly, a lot of high-end wines are moving to screwtops, which I'm also all for. They're better for the environment, better for the wine (lets less air in, doesn't let fungus grow in the wine even if it's unopened, etc.) and a hell of a lot easier to open, compared to corked wine.

By the way, it's been about a year since I went to Target last, and I'd forgotten how much I'd missed it. I got a bunch of clothes, various household goods that all of the grocery stores in downtown Seattle charge WAY too much for, throw pillows for my futon, and a few kitchenwares that I couldn't find at Bed Bath and Beyond for some reason. It's a little bit out of the way, though, but now I don't need to worry about finding stupid things like paper towels which don't cost $2/roll and so on.

Also, this Target is two stories high. Though strangely it didn't seem to have any better of a selection than the one-story ones in New Mexico. Odd.

Yup, I know a few wine snobs who are still in an uproar about the whole screw top thing. But why let common sense get in the way of blind ideology, right?

But I live in Pennsylvania where I have to buy all my wine thru the state owned stores. Bastards.

Yeah, actually, this is the first place I've lived where Target's even sold wines. I think they could in NM if they were to get a liquor license but NM's liquor licenses are pretty expensive and scarce. In New York only registered liquor shops can sell wine, and in Virginia only state shops and supermarkets could (and supermarkets couldn't sell hard liquor). Though I think Target might classify as a supermarket now because they carry a lot of food items too.

In WA it's really easy to get wine though. Not only do even the little corner market shops sell it (including the one on the bottom floor of my apartment), but there's also fancy wine shops all over the place. In NY I had to make a special effort to get wine, and it was always way overpriced so I never did unless I was going to someone's house for dinner (though I bought plenty of hard liquor, which I took to WA with me). Wine was very accessible in NM but I was on a grad student budget and it'd always go bad before I got around to having a second glass, so I'd almost never buy it.

Speaking of the liquor I brought with me, another thing I bought in NYC which I never got around to using is a very cute cordial set, with a beautiful blue decanter, six assorted and colorful pieces of stemware, and a gold-leaf tray. In NY I always kept it in a cabinet "for later" since I had no spare counter space and never got around to buying any suitable furniture, but when I moved here it was finally really easy to find a place to display it and so I've also filled it with a very nice cordial - 2/3 blue curacao and 1/3 white creme de cacao. It tastes great and it also looks rather magical to have a blue liquor come out from the blue decanter.

Eventually I'll finish putting organizing my stuff and so then I can show off my neat home.

I demand Wine Spheres.

Also, on the subject of 2 story Targets, they put one o' thems in just outside the Loop in Chicago, close to where I went to school. Does yours have the Magic Cart Escalator? Those may be the coolest piece of retail technology I've ever seen. So far I've not tried to ride in a cart going up one, for fear of being kicked out forever, but the temptation is definitely there.

It has one, but that's old hat to me, since they're in a lot of places in NYC (such as the Bed Bath and Beyond I spent so much time and money in).

While I have purchsed and enjoyed two-buck Chuck, and I'm willing to accept that Target wine-in-a-box is drinkable, there is a huge difference between a $10 bottle of wine, a $20 bottle of wine and a $50 bottle of wine.

Sure, just as there's a difference between $20 speakers, $100 speakers and $500 speakers. That doesn't mean that most people will give a damn.

i took a wine tasting class last year, and the teacher's recommendation was to teach us how to taste the wine, and then:
the best wine is the one you like.
-bill

fluffy: well, define "give a damn". I suspect most people would like the $50 bottle better, and could tell the difference.

Four months later and it's still drinkable. WTF.

I fixed the formatting. HTH.

Oh, even better.