1. OK. I know little about wine but want to learn. I know that experts
are here though I haven't bothered to use search tools to learn what they
might have said in the last several years, that's a lot of work, but I would
be grateful if someone could brief me. Completely please. You know, about
varietals, and Shiraz vs. Syrah vs. Sirah, and why Alsatian wines have so
many German names if they're actually from France (is it fraud?), and what
are all those numbers on German bottles, and why doesn't everyone put the
grape name on the label and use English like normal people. Also vintages
and stuff. Please be concise, I don't have much time to spare. I may need
to ask follow-up questions, if I have time for those. Oh yes, also, where
can I get exceptional well-aged but inexpensive wines that few people know
about but with high ratings. (Those will impress my friends.)

2. We have a bottle of Silver Oak Cabernet that my nephew gave us in 1999
after going to California for his high-paying dot-com job. He was new to
wine at the time but assured us that this wine was advocated by a newsletter
that was absolutely definitive. The wine got 96 points which means it must
be near perfection, yes? He said that in the old days people needed years
to learn about wine but that was obsolete now, all you need is to look up
the numbers in the newsletter (anyway that's what people did at his dot-com
firm). With his sharp clothes and the car and new wine vocabulary, he sure
was impressive. He had his new penthouse too then, and was buying expensive
wine with the advice of the newsletter. The bottle is unopened, it's been
carefully on its side behind our refrigerator and not too hot (except a few
weeks each summer), some stickiness outside the bottle but I can clean that
off, and still almost three-quarters full. I have heard that bottles of
this age (five years storage!) can be worth big money. What do you think?
I want to do something nice for my nephew from the proceeds. (After his
layoff and the trouble over payments, he was living in his car when we last
heard from him.)