Today’s Monday Musings is about where to start someone new to wine. My nephew who is 21 did not grow up drinking wine. This year for the first time, he has become a little bit interested and recently I decided to buy him a bottle to celebrate his special day and also to teach him a little bit about wine. I also thought it would be good to show him a wine he could also buy on his own, remember the name of it, and maybe bring it to a party. I settled on Gruet for a host of reasons including that it is easy to pronounce, have a great price/quality ratio, and are made in the USA.

Their sparklers made from Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are very inexpensive as sparklers go. The winery was started by a brother-sister team from France, Laurent and Nathalie Gruet. They choose New Mexico because of its climate and soils. New Mexico has great diurnal temperature variation because of the altitude of many of the vineyards and the long hours of sunshine that the grapes get during the day followed by cool nights, the ideal combination for grape growing. Think mesas, brown and red earth tones, tumble weed, green shrubs, pueblos, adobe churches dotting the landscape, mountain peaks and rivers, chili. Remember those sand creations you made with different colored sand in the 6th grade? Kind of like that.

We had the bottle with hotdogs, hamburgers, and steak that we made on the grill together, our first time cooking. I was really happy to share my knowledge about wine with him in an easy manner. A beginning and I hope a help if he ever wants to bring a sparkler to a party.