Since it's first in the title of the blog, I'll start out with a bit about wine.  Advice on how to appreciate it:

If it's yummy, drink it. If it's boring, cook with it. And don't forget to swirl and sniff!

Seriously, there are a lot of truisms you'll find in most good books on wine and wine-drinking---ones by Kermit Lynch, Robert Parker, Hugh Johnson, Jancis Robinson, and the lot, and most of them are true. Drink what YOU like. Share it with appreciative friends, when possible. (But don't be afraid to have a glass with some cheese and nuts if you're up late alone, or stuck on your own at a one-star restaurant in France, either...) Drink it with food, and give some thought to the pairing of wine and food. Consider two classic strategies for food/wine pairing: choose a wine with similar qualities to the food, that will harmonize with it (a velvety chardonnay with a soft, gently flavored white fish,like sole, for example, a fruitier, more acidic sauvignon blanc with a slightly fishier, firmer one like sea bass); or, choose a wine that will make a striking, though not clashing, foil to the dish. Don't be a slave to rules---if you like red with fish, drink it. If you like Lancers with something, drink it. When traveling, try the local wines, many of which will be much better when they haven't traveled far. (I've never had a really satisfying Loire red in the United States---what should be complexity and leafiness tends to become just a bit tannic and bitter, while the fruitiness never really takes wing---but I had three Bourgueils on a recent visit to France that were perfect with the dishes they accompanied, fresh, fruity, yet complex, some with leafy notes, or hints of coffee.) And---try aging the stuff when appropriate. It's a pain, it takes forethought, it can be a roll of the dice with wines whose ageworthiness has not been confirmed by decades (or centuries) of tradition, but it's worth it.

Above all, don't let a high price, or someone else's opinion, influence your taste unduly. If Parker thinks it's junk, but you like it, consider yourself lucky, and buy more: if he'd liked it, it probably would cost more. That doesn't mean Parker's an idiot, or a one-track fruit-and-tannin-bomb promoter as some would say; he tastes lots of wines, and will guide you to some stunningly good deals as well as some that may strike you as boring. (Okay, as boring fruit-and-tannin bombs, sometimes...).

With this in mind, I'll post an occasional series of notes on The Greatest Bottles I've Tasted, where greatest refers to the whole experience of drinking the wine, not to its abstract position in some hierarchy of the world's greatest wines. Such a hierarchy makes some sense, but it's far from the most important thing to keep in mind when enjoying wine. So, number one in my Greatest Wines Ever, is a plain old Cotes du Rhone whose name and vintage I've forgotten (it might have been something like Cuvee du Roi, but it was also one of the cheapest Cotes du Rhone around at the time). I drank it in Berkeley, in the mid or late eighties, while I was living in a bizarre one-person apartment on the south side, a few blocks Bay side of Telegraph. Bizarre because it consisted of a living/bed room into which the door from the landing opened directly, and beyond that, a small kitchen/dining area. (The bathroom, featuring a large claw-footed iron tub, was across the landing, though private, requiring a separate key for its deadbolt.) The area was classic student ghetto, with a pair of tennis shoes hanging from the phone lines out front whose possible significance escaped me at the time.

I drank this wine (not the whole bottle at once, of course), by myself, with nothing but bread and a country-style pate, medium-chunky, with embedded pistachios, and some decently chewy/flaky French bread whose source---Berkeley has a few---I forget. An absolutely perfect combination---the wine was devoid of complexity, medium-to-light-bodied, lowish in alcohol, only slightly if at all tannic, a bit on the watery side and tasting of nothing so much as grape koolaid. It was the perfect, slightly cool, fresh, grapy-tasting, thirst-slaking foil for the bread and pate. Probably there was also a hint of the typical Cotes-du-Rhone leafiness or smokiness---I don't recall with certainty, at this remove---but if so, it didn't overpower the freshness and fruitiness, though perhaps it added a little touch of complexity that nudged the whole experience into the category of Nirvana. This wine would be very unlikely to ever appear on anyone's list of the world's great wines, or even of the best Cotes du Rhone, but although I've had similarly memorable wine experiences with wines recognized as the world's greatest and most expensive, this experience was right up there with them. And that's what wine should be all about: enjoyable at the time, and maybe even providing a unique (because every bottling is different) and long-remembered experience....one of many vinous and non-vinous experiences that make up a life worth living.