An email from Hamilton Russell Vineyards this week brought an item of interest. The star South African property has begun putting a small amount of its fine estate chardonnay into small, 160 liter clay amphorae.

The amphorae, seen at left, are lined with clay from the estate, which is located about 70 miles southeast of Cape Town. Vineyards lie close to South Africa's Atlantic coast.

The idea is to ferment and age fruit from the property's oldest chardonnay vineyards in clay with a view to achieving the same amount of air exchange as would be provided by barrels, but without infusing the wine with either wood tannins or the flavors and aromas that come from toasting. 

While the use of stainless steel achieves many of the same objectives, inox doesn't insinuate the minute amounts of oxygen that promote a wine's even, natural evolution.

The press release says that juice from Hamilton Russell's older vineyards ripen to much lower alcohol levels than that from more recently-planted sites, often struggling to reach 12 percent. "These vineyards produce wines that are all too easily overwhelmed by newer wood, or lack vibrant freshness in older wood," it reports.

Experiments with pots fashioned by local artisans have been going on at the property since 2005. The 2011 chardonnay is the first to incorporate a component of amphorae-conditioned wine in its assemblage. Eventually, winemaker Hannes Storm and owner Anthony Hamilton Russell would like to see around 10 percent of their estate chardonnay fermented and aged in clay rather than barrel.

Clay amphorae were ubiquitous in the ancient Mediterranean world. Greeks and Romans stored and shipped wine (and many other commodities) this way. A typical Roman trade ship might carry 10,000 or more.  The shift to barrels came as winemaking migrated into the heavily-forested lands of northern Europe, where wood, not clay, was the standard means for storing and moving goods and cooperage was well-understood.  For some fun, watch Dan Unsworth of Ingleton Pottery in Yorkshire throw a Dressel 1 style amphora here.

I'm looking forward to tasting HRV's 2010 and 2011 chardonnays side by side later this week.  As a longtime admirer of Anthony Hamilton Russell's wines, I'm not expecting to notice any dramatic difference between them, but you have to be impressed by the close attention paid here to making incremental improvements to what is already world class pinot and chardonnay and the genuine (as opposed to merely rhetorical) commitment to elegant, traditionally-proportioned, classically-structured wines.

If you haven't at least heard about the natural wine movement, it's likely you haven't been paying  attention.  If you have been paying attention you probably know that it's an amorphous phenomenon with heroes but no real leaders, that it's fueled by a good deal of rhetoric and earnest manifesto-making, that it frequently marches in step with the agricultural theories of Rudolf Steiner (biodynamics), that it's obsessed with the particularities of place and with regional, sometimes hyper-local, vine varieties, that it has a bone to pick with the use of sulfur, and that while some of the people pleased to be associated with it are of the talented and reasonable variety, some appear to be neither - or so it strikes me. 

The whole business has become rather contentious, to the point where to merely suggest that contention exists is now considered a contentious statement.  

I don't plan to say anything contentious here. I merely wish to point out that at its base, the natural wine movement rests on a series of assumptions about the natural world and our place in it that received their classic formulation in the works of poets, painters, dramatists, and musicians whose work we have long used the art history term Romantic to describe and that these assumptions inform every meaningful aspect of this school of winemaking.  

I was thinking about all this yesterday while reading a recent post on Alice Feiring's blog The Feiring Line.  Feiring, whom I have met and respect, has emerged as an important advocate of natural wine and an interpreter of the movement associated with it. Her recent book Naked Wine  as an extended meditation on the natural wine movement, its history, personalities, and approach to winemaking. In her post, California winemaker Hank Beckman responds to a Feiring request to explain his process in vineyard and cellar. He begins this way:

I use pretty common technologies: hands, feet, brain, and a really nice, gentle pneumatic press. Some of the folks from whom I buy grapes also use tractors. Specifically, I prune in the late winter (using a device called pruning shears), and then watch what happens. After a time, I may go back into the vineyard to remove some excess shoots to allow some sunlight and air into the vine's canopy. I rarely remove any fruit. Then I watch some more, and wait. When the grapes taste good, and they still have very nice acidity, I pick them, stomp on them and let whatever yeasts are around do the alcoholic conversion. When that is complete, I press the new wine into tanks or some old barrels, and leave them alone. I do taste the wines occasionally, just to see where they are "at". I rarely rack any of them off of the lees, as I find the lees protect and nourish the wines. When I think the wine is ready, I'll rack it into another tank, add a very small amount of SO2 (often its first encounter with a sulfur compound), and bottle straight from the tank.

Beckman's casual tone reinforces what he presents as a casual approach. A sequence of events unfolds of which the winemaker is mainly an observer, not an agent. He watches, he waits, he sees, he allows things to happen, he leaves things alone.  Grapes have their own ideas about what sort of wine they ought to become and the winemaker has no intention of providing direction. Grapes have no house style to hew to, no reputation to maintain, no target market to please, no objective at all except that, at the end of the day, there will be wine - and grapes knows best what that wine should look, smell, and taste like. This is the absent-minded method of winemaking. At least, that's how I read it. 

The sentiment expressed by Beckman sent me rummaging for my copy of The Prelude, William Wordsworth's autobiographical poem and canonical Romantic source document. You don't read far before hearing the familiar chord struck:  

"I look about, and should the guide I choose
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
I cannot miss my way . . ."  

The online version of my column in the Food pages this morning has the headline "Among wine lovers, the word is minerality."   

For SEO (search engine optimization) reasons, editors routinely alter the headline when they are posted to bostonglobe.com. In the physical newspaper the  column appeared under the headline "Waiter, there's a rock in my wine."

A reader who's eye was caught by the original hed decided there were many other wine stories that needed to be written along these lines. He suggests:

1. Waiter, there's a stock in my wine: Another major domaine sold to AXA
2. Waiter, there's a frock in my wine: Fashion industry sets up World HQ in Bordeaux
3. Waiter, there's a sock in my wine: John Henry buys Chateau Latour.
4. Waiter, there's a bock in my wine: Beer and wine industries amalgamate.
5. Waiter, there's a knock in my wine: Dig baby dig policy produces continuous petroleum odor in major world vineyards, not just in Germany.
6. Waiter, there's an Ewok in my wine: George Lucas buys The Cote de Nuits.
7. Waiter, there's a flock in my wine: Donald Trump says he'll start a vineyard on the salt meadows at le Mont St-Michel.
8. Waiter, there's a glock in my wine: NRA lobbies for guns to be sold in 'packies', giving that store a whole new meaning.
9. Waiter, there's a hock in my wine: German wines finally get some respect.
10. Waiter, there's a lock in my wine: Lo jack device in every bottle.

I'll add another:  Waiter, there's a clever reader in my wine.

Stephen Meuse can be reached at bytheglass@globe.com

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In his relentless campaign to build the reputation of California wine, Robert Mondavi liked to set Napa Valley against Europe in comparative tastings. According to witnesses, he would badger guests into conceding that while European wine was often good - California wines were "just a bit fruitier" -- and, by implication, just a bit better.

Influencing Americans to privilege fruit above all else gave Mondavi an edge since the ripeness that came naturally in California was hard to replicate in most of Europe. As his views gained ground, the range of flavors and aromas considered acceptable in wine diminished.  Secondary flavors, the kind that experienced tasters often describe in earth, soil, and mineral terms were either deselected in the vineyard or, if present, hidden behind stout walls of primary fruit. 

It may be premature to announce the dawn of a post-Mondavi era, but there’s no question that a backlash against fruit-driven wines is gathering force. A cadre of young sommeliers infatuated with the scent of rocks, stones, and dirt are packing their lists with mineral-tinged wines and and cajoling diners to take them for a spin.  

Wines with advanced degrees in geology are winning shelf space in edgier retail shops, too. In  Wednesday's Food section we take a look at the phenomenon, chat with some local somms about what they're up to and why, discuss what science has to say about how flavors of gravel and granite make their appearance in wine (hint: it's probably not what you think), and suggest a few rock stars for you to try on your own

Resolved: I will taste comparatively, in context, with others.
The photo at left appeared in a recent Globe Food pages story on how a North End wine shop overcame daunting bureaucratic hurdles to stage a pop-up wine bar in the dining room of a neighborhood restaurant. Kerri Platt, co-owner of the sponsoring Wine Bottega said she didn't intend the event to be a money maker. The idea was just to create a forum where people could gather, taste several wines together, and discuss them.

While the event didn't have the tone of a formal wine tasting, a traditional structure was nonetheless evident: the wines were someone's conscious selection rather than a random assortment; pouring multiple wines meant comparison was possible; conversation was, if not mandatory, at least hard to avoid.

I'm not sure what makes it so difficult to make progress in understanding and appreciating wine  when operating entirely on your own, but I know it's very hard indeed - and it's not just because it's nice to have other points of view. 

Wine is both something we drink and something we think. The drinking part involves the sensory impressions wine provides; the thinking part involves information about where a wine comes from, what physical conditions and winemaking traditions are in play there, the opportunity provided  by a given vintage, and so on. 

Making progress in wine means making progress on both these fronts. Without the drinking part knowledge is mere theory; without the organizing construct provided by the thinking part  drinking can be no more than a succession of fleeting and unrelated impressions. Tasting events, to be worthwhile, even the most informal ones, need to address both aspects - that's why tasting comparatively, in context, with others, is a habit worth cultivating.

Tasting comparatively involves sampling more than one glass of wine at a time. It makes it possible to book related sensory impressions iteratively, in real time, rather than after the fact by the operations of memory. The difference is dramatic. Vintage variation may seem something only experts can discern - until you taste it for yourself in the two glasses right in front of you. 

Tasting in context means that some rationale has been applied to the selection, for example: new and old world variations on sauvignon blanc; chardonnay raised in stainless steel and old barrels; multiple vintages of a one producer's Cote du Rhone.  Tasting without context is tasting without purpose and makes it unlikely you will arrive at conclusions you could actually make use of later.

Tasting in company means access to ideas you couldn't self-generate, and imposes the obligation to articulate and defend the ones you do.  

Make good on your resolution by connecting with a local wineshop that regularly offers tasting events such as I've described here. Or opt to join in a private tasting group (search for one in your area online) or organize one of your own.  

And if you see me at the next pop-up, be sure to introduce yourself.  

Stephen Meuse can be reached at bytheglass@globe.com

The conscientiously footnoted, 25 page paper bears the title Too much of a good thing? Causes and consequences of increases in sugar content of California wine grapes. In it, the authors apply themselves to the strange case of rising alcohol levels in California wines over the last couple of decades. Was the deed done by Mother Nature, in the vineyard, with her little heat index?  Or was it done by Mr. Winemaker in collusion with Mr. Vineyard Manager, in the chais, by means of a doubled-barreled roto-fermenter? 

The article is replete with heavy-duty mathematical formulas and sentences such as: In models with lagged dependent variables we could not compute Newey-West measures and so we report the OLS robust standard errors (Thanks for the heads-up, guys).  However, the core argument isn't hard to follow.  

The table below tracks a more or less steady increase in sugar content (measured in degrees Brix) at harvest for California wine grapes over a recent 20 year period (N.B. grapes with higher sugar content when fermented to dryness result in higher alcohol wine).

The data shows that the sugar content of all California wine grapes at harvest increased from 21.4 degrees Brix in 1990 to 23.3 degrees Brix in in 2008 - an increase of 7% over 18 years and 9% over the last 28. Since sugar converts directly to alcohol, a 9% increase in the former corresponds to a roughly equal increase in the latter.   

Now have a look at the weather during the same period.

The weighted average heat index for places in California where significant amounts of wine grapes are grown during the period 1990 to 2008, does not show a substantial rise in temperature during a period that corresponds to the rise in degrees Brix. 

Ergo, responsibility for rising alcohols in California wines can't be laid at the door of Mother Nature - even Mother Nature acting at the behest of big-time carbon emitters.  

No, the data strongly suggests that heightened levels of alcohol are the outcome of deliberate decisions made by winemakers in the vineyard and the cellar in an attempt to give the public what they think it wants: bigger, richer, fatter, riper, more powerful wines.

Arriving at such a clear conclusion no doubt cheered the authors, but it hardly addresses the more compelling question: namely, why would wine drinkers have a preference for wines  whose alcohol levels (and general scale) push the classical proportions to the breaking point?

My own sense of this is that justification for higher and higher prices has to be pegged to something, and that elegance, finesse, and poise are very much harder things to quantify and valorize than ripeness, density, weight, and sheer richness of material - all of which can come only from super-ripe grapes harvested at historically high Brix levels.   

In this scenario, high alcohols become a marker for quality (and bragging rights) in the same way that horsepower once served as an unrivalled benchmark for quality in American automobiles, megapixels for digital cameras, and thread count for bed linen.    

The problem with this is readily apparent. Each is a culturally approved and historicized marker of quality, not quality itself.  We've long left behind us the idea that more horsepower in cars is invariably a better thing - and anyone who has shopped for a digital camera recently knows that megapixel counts above 10 or 12 are now essentially irrelevant.  

Experts in bed linen will tell you it has always been a matter of the quality of the cotton, not the thread count of the sheet that matters. But so long as most of us remain ignorant of how to judge fineness in a fabric, we'll continue to count threads. 

Somehow consumers have caught on to the idea that it makes no sense to apply our technical skills to making 500 hp automobiles. Why then does it make sense to deviate so dramatically from what wine cultures have for centuries recognized as appropriate proportions and build the wine equivalent of muscle cars - just because we can? 

Stephen Meuse can be reached at bytheglass@globe.com

I will find myself a great little wine shop . . . and I will be loyal to it.

It's indisputable that there are more ways to buy wine today than ever before - and it isn't just because of the Internet. Even if the Web and the e-commerce it enables had never happened, there would still be warehouse discounters like  Costco and B.J.'s, direct sales from wineries (where legal), and wine clubs mostly managed by third party behind-the-scenes fulfillment companies like Signature Wines. 

The way most of these operators try to set themselves above conventional brick & mortar retail outlets is by offering - or pretending to offer - more choice and a better price. What they're surely not going to tell you is what they won't be providing: namely, any appreciable amount of the color, romance, humanity, and context that add - or ought to add - so much to the pleasure of buying and drinking wine. 

To derive this not insignificant added value you need to look elsewhere.  To one of those (probably) small, (perhaps) struggling local wine shops where every bottle on the shelf is there because someone on the knowledgeable, passionate staff thinks it's worthy to be; where the owners use their vacations to travel to the places where wine is made; where customers are invited to taste the stock on a regular (at least weekly) basis; where winemakers who come through town stop in; where they honest-to-god know your name and what you bought last week/ month/year; the sort of place where familiarity with a foreign language isn't, you know, a foreign concept. 

Now here's the thing. To be a regular at a place like this offers benefits that go way beyond ambience.  At a smallish, independent wine shop that knows and values your business, you can bet they'll be buying wine with one eye on what you (and their other steady customers) like best.  You'll be among the first to know when a special opportunity comes along (a steal of closeout deal, maybe), and when there are a limited number of seats at a winemaker dinner, you may get preferential treatment. 

Of course, buying all (or most) of your wine in one place, should also mean that you'll get the largest volume discounts they offer. Wine shops take on the personalities of their ownership and clientele, so you'll want to find one that feels good to you. We know some where skinny jeans and facial hardware seem to be de rigueur and others frequented by one percenters. One even has dog on the staff -- mostly, I'm told, for the quality of his nose. Sometimes the back in the day way is the best way. 

Stephen Meuse can be reached at bytheglass@globe.com

In the introduction to his comprehensive and endlessly useful book "Brunello to Zibibbo: The wines of Tuscany, Central, and Southern Italy, Nicolas Belfrage maintains that correct pronunciation "is an important tool for understanding Italian wines" since "once you get the sound, the flavors too fall into sharper focus."

Though I can't go very far in explaining why this should be so, I strongly endorse the theory - primarily because I find it true in my own experience. Not knowing how to pronounce a foreign place name or obscure grape variety makes the thing all that much more alien and remote. Learn to say it like a native, and you are immediately on intimate terms with it.

The thoughtful and lively Jeremy Parzen, who blogs at dobianchi.com must understand this too, since he has recently undertaken to provide a video glossary of Italian wine terms, spoken not just by by natives - but by natives who are also in the wine business.

The Italian Grape Name and Appellation Pronunciation Project is enormously entertaining to scroll through - and there were some surprises in store for me. Among the wines whose flavors will now fall into sharper focus because I've had a lesson in elocution is aglianico del vultura, as articulated by the sweet-faced Sara Carbone, below.

I confessed to a secret fascination with wine maps here a couple of months ago. At the conclusion of the post "In love with wine maps?" I noted that it seemed long past time for some one to stir a database of vineyard information and some other technology into a pot of  Google Earth and provide us with interactive, 3D maps of the world's wine regions we could readily access online.

The project seemed to me to be a perfect fit for an imprint like Mitchell-Beazley which specializes in wine-related titles, or Dorling-Kindersley, as an online extension of its "Eyewitness Companions" series, perhaps.

So I was a little suprised to hear from the people at Frederick Wildman and Sons, a national importer and wholesaler of fine wines, who told me they were about to launch a series of Google Earth-powered vineyard tours/tutorials, accessible to the public via their website. 

The "Terroir-Genome Project" as they call it currently consists of tours of regional vineyards in Spain, Italy, France, and Argentina.  

The very brief promo video below gives you some idea what you can expect, though in it the camera moves very quickly and there is no voiceover . . .

The complete videos proceed at a more stately pace and mix some atmosphere-inducing (though occasionally distracting) music with the voices of winemakers describing the location, extent, history, and character of the vineyards you seem to helicopter over. Hitting pause allows you to manipulate the image as you would in Google Earth - panning, zooming, tilting, and scrolling across the scene. There are also places where you can pick up 360 degree ground-level views, although these don't appear everywhere and can be hard to find (you have to look for a little orange figure at the right and drag him into the window).  Though unvoiced, the tour of the Valtellina in the foothills of the Italian Alps is quite spectacular. (UPDATE: VOICEOVER ADDED FEB 10)

At this point the thing is a little buggy and if you're not familiar with Google Earth, a bit tricky to operate. After a few frustrating minutes you'll learn that unlike a simple video file, each program here has to be loaded before it it can play and that it's best to shut off the feature that reproduces the shift from night to day.

A minor drawback: since the project is designed to promote the Wildman portfolio the focus of each video is limited to properties the company represents.  But there's an awful lot to be learned from visiting the vineyards this way -- and honestly, the T-G Project is a grand start.  

The Wildman people assure me more tours will hit the site in the next week or so.  

Stephen Meuse can be reached at bytheglass@globe.com

I haven't yet been able to find a free to view English translation of this work on Google Books, but you can access a complete French version  from 1623 (in all its funky renaissance orthography; title page at right) and another from 1804 that's quite a bit easier going.

There's lots on vineyard management and winemaking that's of real interest - including a striking reference to the use of wood chips that appears to anticipate what I have long thought to be a thoroughly modern (and perhaps slightly dubious) technique for getting oak flavor and aromas into cheaper California and Australia chardonnays.

In Book 3 of his treatise, de Serres describes how to add wood chips from the carpenter's plane as a means of clarifying murky wine - then adds this side note: By these means, not only will the new wine be clarified, but will acquire, in quite a short time, a very agreeable smell. 

He notes slyly that the tavern keepers of Paris were all too familiar with the technique - meaning, I suppose, that they may have practiced it themselves on barrels of wine stored in their cellars to make cheap wine a bit more agreeable to their customers.  

Those of you with an itch to try this at home can start right here.   

In 2012, I will create a wine cellar.

One of the reasons you resolved to start buying wine by the case (see Resolution #2) instead of the bottle is so that you would have an inventory of wine always on hand. Now to the practical part: your little stash of wine has to live somewhere. It's time to establish a cellar.

Let's deal with the semantics first. In this context,  cellar simply means a dedicated place where wine can be stored safely for the period of time you are likely to hold it. 

Storing wine safely means putting it in a place where it won't be: (a) damaged by extremes or swings of temperature; (b) disturbed by vibration (from a nearby washing machine or dryer, for example) or being frequently shifted around; (c) contaminated by smelly things (paint, paint thinner, pesticides, cleaning fluids); (d) liable to become wet; (e) in proximity to activity that could cause breakage.

In general, you're looking for a quiet, out of the way spot where the temperature tends to be steady, on the cooler side, and with some humidity.  In New England, such conditions are often to be found in home basements. Places they are very unlikely to be found anywhere include attics, porches, unheated detached garages, stairways, the nether regions of kitchen cabinets.

As you can see from the photo above, once you have a good spot the actual facilities don't matter much. In this hoary, cobwebbed arrangement it appears the bins were created by pouring concrete into forms. Stacking hard plastic milk totes works; or you could buy something bin-like from Ikea or The Home Depot- so long as the units are really secure in place and not too light duty. You really need bins rather than just shelves, but baskets on shelves work. Alternatively, you make use of an an old refrigerator. If it runs, set it to hold a temperature of 50-55 degrees Fahrenheit.

How serious you need to be about the conditions of storage is really a function of how long you intend to hold the wine. If it's only for a few weeks or months, less than perfect conditions matter much less since the effects of sub-optimal storage only become serious with time. For example, the arrangement I describe here is not suited to laying down expensive bottles for the purpose of maturing or aging them - just for storing more or less everyday wines for a little while before you drink them.  

Of course once you get your passive wine cellar established, you'll want some cobwebs, too. You get those here.

Chef-owner Chuck Draghi's charming restaurant, Erbaluce, is tucked away on Church St. at the edge of the Bay Village neighborhood. Its existence is hardly a secret anymore (the Globe named it one of the city's best new spots in 2011) although regulars may wish it were so.

Beginning Sunday evening February 5, and for subsequent first Sundays thereafter, Draghi is hosting wine and food "tours" of Italy, presenting six wines accompanied with small bites typical of the region in question. The cost is $75 per person. Details are on the restaurant's website. For reservations call 617.426.6969.

"After we were well frozen we went to eat oysters, with Sillery, to warm ourselves again, and after that we went from one casino to another, not intending to commit any debauchery, but for want of something better to do."  

In the field of playing the field, Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798) was a giant who gave his name to generations of pygmies - guys who couldn't who couldn't pretend to attain the lofty standard he set for both quality and quantity.  For The Original, the highly intelligent, well-educated offspring of an Italian actor and actress, no effort, ingenuity, or gold was to be spared in pursuit of a date - or "asssignation" as it was then styled. 

Casanovas aren't what they used to be. Such is the conclusion I've arrived at as I near the end of volume 2 (of 12!) of the work, one of the authentic literary monuments of the eighteenth century and a real trove of detail about the pursuits, politics, clothing, domestic arrangements, and, of course, gender relations of the Europeans who lived it. Food and wine figure prominently here either as accompaniments to seduction or the actual instruments thereof. Remind me to tell you the one about Emilie, Armelline, and the one hundred Venice oysters.

With the aid of an electronic version of the memoirs (courtesy of Project Gutenberg) I was able to note each instance of wine mentioned in its 2679 pages.

Some will be familiar to the 21st century reader, namely: refosco, muscatel, muscat, Champagne (lots of this), red and white Burgundy including Chambertin ("Truly Chambertin and Roquefort are excellent things to restore an old love and to ripen a young one."), Bordeaux, Malaga, Tokay, Rhine (or Rhenish), alicante, Cape (South Africa), La Mancha, Montepulciano, Montefiascone, Languedoc (as Beziers), Orvieto, Hermitage, Gatta, Neuchatel, aleatico (as "Oleatico").

Other varieties cited still exist, but are scarcely the stylish sips they used to be. Among these: Madeira, Malmsey, Cyprus (assume this is the sweet, luxury wine known as Commandaria), Sillery (a kind of Champagne, perhaps still rather than sparkling), Ratafia (a wine-based cordial), and Canary (Canary Islands wine now in process of making a comeback), Samos and Cephalonia (from islands in the Aegean and Ionian seas, respectively).

Still other wines seem consigned to oblivion. Who today knows what Cerigo, Scopolo, or generoydes were or tasted like?

Gem-quality anecdotes and quotes are thick on the ground here, and even the occasional remarkably sound admonition. For example, who today, beset by claims of winemakers that their wines are pure, natural, organic, biodynamic, more pristine than Adam and Eve before the Fall, could fail to be tickled by this indignant outburst:

You stupid fellow," I exclaimed, "how can you ever be certain of the purity of wine unless you have made it yourself?"

Stephen Meuse can be reached at bytheglass@globe.com

In 2012, I will get on the case. 

I haven't worked in the wine trade since 1998 when I began writing about the subject for the Boston Globe, but I learned lessons during my time in a wine shop that continue to color my take on wine buying. 

Everyone on the staff at the big, busy place where I labored knew well that the customer buying one or two bottles at a time was going to be the most challenging to deal with and difficult to please. The one-bottle-at-a-time type was almost invariably a casual wine drinker with scant knowledge, little experience, and - this is the strange part - equally nervous about making a mistake and taking your word for anything. By contrast, the people we loved to wait on - the knowledgeable, confident types - habitually made their purchases in case lots.

Ah," you're thinking, "it's fear and inexperience that underlies the by-the-bottle approach." Not at all. To understand the phenomenon turn the reasoning it on its head. Ignorance, inexperience, and anxiety are outcomes of bad buying habits, not their causes.  Buying a bottle at a time is one of those bad habits. Here's why.

• You can't build on it. Buying one bottle at a time implies drinking one bottle at a time, and drinking one bottle at a time means tasting wine within what G.W.S. Trow famously described as the context of no context. It almost guarantees that you will never be able to organize these separate experiences into a coherent base of information that can eventually mature into a reliable fund of knowledge and good judgment. 
  
  
• It's inherently risky. Buying a bottle of wine for dinner in with another couple tonight? Good for you. But what if it doesn't meet expectations, clashes with the food, or (worse case) turns out to be frightfully corked?  The one-bottle-at-a-time approach means you're always operating with no backup and no plan B.     
  
  
• It's rather boring. A great part of the pleasure of wine drinking comes in exploring its myriad variations and the ways it plays with food. With no more than one or two bottles on hand you'll never be in a position to just start pulling corks, compare performance, and engage in a lively and entertaining conversation on the relative merits of this one and that.      
  
  
• It gets you no respect.  My experience in the wine shop is pretty typical, I think, of how staff people view the buyer of the odd bottle.  It certainly doesn't imply that you'll be treated badly, but I guarantee that  as a casual one-offer you won't get a high level of consideration and attention - and it's a cinch you'll never get a shot at their pet wines. They're saving those for you-know-whom.
       
• It's far more expensive.  Discounts of ten percent are routine when buying by the case and fifteen and twenty percent are not unheard-of. You'll generally pay least when buying a solid, intact case (12 750ml bottles delivered to you just as it came from the winery); a little more if you're asking for a mixed case (12 bottles of varied provenance that has to be assembled and packed up). Pocket what you save or, better idea, use it to drink a little more richly. If you're use to paying $12 per bottle, use your case discount to get a $15 wine for the same outlay. Will you notice the difference in quality? You bet.