Start Your Wine-ing: D.C. Vino Lessons

IT'S 9:57 AND you have three minutes to grab a bottle of wine for that dinner party where your coworker is setting you up with her roommate's bocce teammate.

Complicated?

Yes, but so is the wine choice.

Row after row of varietals: Chardonnay, Malbec, Petite Sirah, Riesling. The options are endless, even in that corner store that sells potato chips, bananas and chunky earrings.

And then you see her — the pride of your youth, welcoming your purchase with seductive curves. She makes it easy to hold her with that perfect little loop to slide your index finger through. And right there sitting on her jug, your long lost friend, the comforting old man with an exotic, yet authoritative name.

Say hello to Carlo Rossi.

He features familiar grapes and can be bought for pocket change.

But you've graduated college; it's now time to move on from wine bought for quantity rather than quality. So you choose the Pinot Noir, more or less because Paul Giamatti and Virginia Madsen in "Sideways" sell it to you so well, that you'd drink it even if it reminded you of bong water.

And as you leave that corner store, late for dinner and unsure of the purchase, you vow to actually learn about fermented grapes.

Luckily, if you live in D.C., learning about wines can be as easy as Albarino, Barbera, Chianti.

Veritas Wine Bar, located where Florida Avenue meets Connecticut Avenue NW, calls itself "the only true wine bar in D.C." because "every other place is a restaurant that serves wine. Serving wine at 80 degrees and with no preservation system is like being served moldy bread — it won't kill you, but it tastes terrible!"

Veritas offers only cheese and charcuterie, but sells 24 wine flights (tastes of three different wines) with clever names such as "So Fresh, So Clean, "Three Deadly Zins" and "Sideways" (the last, all Pinot Noirs, natch). Ambitious students may fit in here.

Then there's the wine program at Vinoteca, which involves 80 selections from a variety of countries and regions, including more than 10 champagnes and sparkling wines. This around-the-world feel also translates to restaurant's food. Founder Diego Cerezo says chef Russell Jones calls the menu "American contemporary with global influences." This Shaw neighborhood joint welcomes the novice and snob alike.

If you want to explore on your own, Glover Park's Ceviche just installed a self-serve enomatic wine system where guests are in charge of their pour. The current focus is on Spanish, Argentinean and Chilean wines, and tastes can be bought by a wine debit card and distributed at the touch of a button. If you want to try as many as wines as possible without the hassle of a bartender, this may be your way to explore.

But if you're more comfortable learning about grapes, vintners and wineries by yourself, on the couch and in pajamas, your friend the Internet has some options for you, too.
You could go to YouTube and simply type in "wine tasting" and learn about the joys of tannins from this young lady.

But you might be better off with a more focused site.

Cue WineTasteTV.com.

If you want a corporate feel and videos just shy of full-blown press releases, head to the D.C.-based Web site. WineTasteTV aims to be the YouTube of wine information. On-demand videos range from cellar tours, to wine festivals to interviews with vineyard owners. The features are semi-awkward, a bit cheesy, but definitely informative. And you can count on the Fox News paradigm of journalism: "correspondent" Bonnie Graves adequately fills the cute blonde woman niche but actually has the cred, working for wine programs at Jean-Georges, Union Square Cafe and Spago Beverly Hills.

With multiple blogs, plenty of wine-101 information and a partnership with Zachys online wine store (viewers receive 15 percent off wines featured in their videos), WineTasteTV works nicely as a self-help guide to the ways of wine.

For those responsible D.C. residents who don't spend their disposable income on massive flat-screen HDTVs, you can still catch the MOJO HD channel's reality show "Uncorked" with Billy Merritt online. Merritt is classically trained in the way of improv comedy and now spends his time drinking wine and cracking inappropriate jokes around the world with everyone from wine snobs to Anthony Bourdain-like chefs. It's like learning how to play basketball from the Harlem Globetrotters.

Whatever learning method you choose, you do want to drop the Carlo Rossi habit.

» Veritas Wine Bar, 2031 Florida Ave. NW; 202-265-6270.
» Vinoteca, 1940 11th St. NW; 202-332-9463.
» Ceviche, 2404 Wisconsin Ave. NW; 703-225-8823.

Written by Express contributor Stefanie Gans
Photo by Daniel Shumski/The Washington Post