Dee Dee, when I was first getting into wine sometime back there in the
early 60's, myself and another guy went to a wine bar in DC to sample
some good wines. After an hour, we had run up a tab of $180 and remember
this was in the days when La Tour was to be had for less than $18/blt.
What we learned was that we could taste the same wines at home a lot
cheaper. Once we formed a group of 6 guys, we also found that we could
learn infinitely more because we could focus the tastings to compare
similar wines. Each month one person would be totally responsible for
the tasting. He had to do the research, shopping and hosting. We divided
the cost at the beginning of the evening. We soon adopted a rule that
all the wines tasted had to be currently available and the
corollary was that no cellar wines be part of our tastings. It is easy
to learn a lot this way.



Dee Dee wrote:
> I went into Whole Foods to get a one-ounce taste of a Y'quem at $20 an
> ounce. (shot)
> They didn't have it, so I tasted a Barolo 2000 Monprivato at $5 per
> shot.
> Then I tasted a Chateau Pavie 1982 Valette St. Emilion 1st Grand Cru
> at $10 per shot.
..