Brad and Jenny's Virtual Wine Cellar
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Jenny and I maintain a small wine collection for drinking purposes, i.e., not as an investment. We will drink most of the wines within one year of purchase although a few are being held for aging. While we attempt to have a good selection, we do not try to have some of everything. Looking at our collection and our tasting notes, you will see a strong emphasis on West Coast, Australian, and Chilean wines. We like good red Bordeaux and Rhones as well as German whites but they are rarely available locally in our price range. We find that we are drinking more and more shiraz/syrah wines, now if only the local selection were better.

Most of the wines we buy are priced in the $10.00-$15.00 range. For most varietals, $20.00 is our upper limit. We will go to $25.00 on Shiraz, Zinfandels, Cabernet Sauvignon and Bordeaux reds, and yes, we are aware that limit puts a lot of great wine out of our reach. Unfortunately local distributors have very small selections in our price range and a lot of wines we would love to try simply can not be found here. Lately we have been experimenting with lower priced wines in an attempt to find something we can afford to drink more often. We were lucky with the red, the Walnut Crest Rapel Valley Merlot 1996 is an extraordinary value! We are still trying for a similar quality white.

Local wine advice is somewhat limited so we tend to rely on reviews, especially from Wine Spectator and Wine & Spirits. As a rule of thumb, we do not buy wines rated at less than 87. But our palates are always the final judges. We have and will continue to purchase wines we have tasted and liked regardless of their ratings.

We are very interested in wines from less well known wine producing states. Many of these are American/French Hybrids, a few are from native American species and of course some are from vinifera grapes. We have visited wineries in Michigan, Colorado, Kansas, Indiana, and Missouri with more extensive visits still planned for the latter two and Ohio as well.

Our collection was to be around 24 bottles but has slowly grown and now hovers around the 70+ mark. Below are listed our current holdings. The number preceding the wine is the number of bottles we have, followed by the producer/vineyard, vintage, the WS= Wine Spectator rating (or Wine & Spirits (W&S), Wine News (WN), Wine Enthusiast (WE), or Smartwine (SW) especially if Wine Spectator did not review it), and the price we paid, rounded to the nearest dollar. Following the Virtual Cellar are links to my suggestions for Wine Novices and to our tasting notes. We drink 3 or 4 bottles a week so new tasting notes are constantly being added. Please check back from time to time.

Our Virtual Wine Cellar


Our tasting notes have outgrown this page, they now have their own pages as listed below.

Suggestions for Wine Novices!

Brad and Jenny's Whisky of the Month Page

Wine Links
. A large page, please be patient.

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Revised: January 4, 1999
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