BottlesOfWine

Or maybe-

Ten GreenBottles? sitting on a wall, Ten GreenBottles? sitting on a wall and if one should accidentally fall, there'd be Nine GreenBottles? sitting on a wall.

White wine

Liebfraumilch

Cheap sweet white wine. Available from most supermarkets.

MoonShadow: I've yet to come across someone who drinks wine and actively dislikes Liebfraumilch.

Memphis: I'm glad i could bring your quest to an end...

(PeterTaylor) It's sweet. 'Nuff said.

SunKitten: Liebfraumilch is nice

Mjb67: Liebfraumilch is horrible

''Garbled: Yick.

''Doesn't Liebfraumilch mean free woman's milk or something?  Sounds a bit dodgy.  Of course, it is quite a long time since I've done any german, so I might be wrong...  --FR

(PeterTaylor) "dear" rather than "free" according to TheFish?.

Muscat / Moscatel

A very very sweet dessert wine, usually comes by the half bottle.  Definitely one to sip and savour, not gulp.

Asti Spumanti

Sweet white wine, sparkling, bubbly. AlexChurchill's preferred wine for toasts. PeterTaylor once bought a bottle for 85p, and when he tried it wished he'd bought a few more. (Note to other people: this is an exception to his general taste for paint stripper).

Hock

Cheap sweet white wine. Available from most supermarkets. Tastes similar to Liebfraumilch, but slightly sweeter.

Mjb67: Very horrible

Riesling

Generally dry, available from most supermarkets, I think. (I usually buy it in Luxembourg). PeterTaylor's top preference for wine is dry Moselle Riesling.

Champagne

There are lots of different ones, but often dry sparkling white. made from three grape varieties: Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay, which is slightly odd as two of those are red wine grapes...

Memphis: but all of them are from the Champagne region of france, as the name is controlled (see [this]).

MoonShadow: Eastern European champagnes and sparkling wines tend to be quite good, in my limited experience.

(PeterTaylor) Hard to get a cheap bottle in this country. Buy it on the Continent, where you can get non-brand names which are really quite good for less than a fiver.

Prosecco

Essentially, Italian champagne. Just as nice, somewhat cheaper. Traditionally the alcoholic part of a Bellini.

Lambrusco

Cheap sweet sparkling weak white wine. Available from ALDI. Tastes like sparkling grape juice, basically.

Sauternes

Sweet, strong (13%ABV) pudding wine, though the french like it with a FoieGras? starter... unusual in that the grapes are harvested late enough that they have started rotting (and fermenting by themselves). absolutely gorgeous stuff, good with chocolate.  This technique is used to make quite a few dessert wines.  It originated in the Sauternes region, where the misty valleys help promote the 'noble rot', the special rot that is the key to the whole thing.  The rot makes the grapes contain alcohol, which kills off the yeast more quickly, which means there is both more sugar and more alcohol in the end (about 14%).  Technically the group of wines produced using this technique and not coming from the Sauternes region are called 'late harvest botricised wine', after the fungus involved.  IIRC the Sauternes region is rather small - only a few square miles IIRC between the two rivers. Even then, the crop has to have been a good year, and of a certain percentage alcohol to be called Sauternes itself. Of course, you can buy wine from other vintages, from the same vineyards, but it won't be labelled 'Sauternes' and not up to the standard that the growers wish to promote. This depends upon the mist rolling off the rivers at the correct time of year, which somehow helps the 'noble rot'.

Sauvignon blanc

  White wine made from the Sauvignon grape.  Often oaked.  Usually not sweet but instead dry and crisp (And therefore nice, you heathens --Mjb67).

Red wine

Pinot Noir

A grape, not a wine; many kinds exist.

MoonShadow: I once got treated to a bottle of Pinot Noir, and have been trying to find one that tastes as nice since. All the cheap ones taste pants.

(PeterTaylor) So do the expensive ones I've tried. Just avoid it. Although I must say I'm not keen on anything beginning "Pinot". Pinot Grigio is acceptable, but I wouldn't buy it myself.

Syrah

Mjb67's favourite grape.  Makes lots of lovely spicy, fruity red wines.  Grown mostly in the Rhône Valley, although there are also some good Californian Syrah bottlings.

old name for Shiraz, but it may also be a different grape. Nope, actually, i'm wrong, Shiraz is a town in southeast Iran, where the stuff apparently originated, though the french normally use this name on their bottles

Cabernet Sauvignon

yet another grape, as are most names on bottles (at least for French and German wines). - stop making up nonsense.  Most Cabernet Sauvignons are aged in oak barrels, which imparts a distinctive oakey tannin flavour that Mjb67's Mum hates, but he quite likes.  Try Cab Sauvs from Chile, they have done good things with it down there, and they price far below wines of equivalent quality from France.

Rosé

Mateus Rosé

Comes in a short oval bottle. Not all that sweet, but very nice, in MoonShadow's opinion.

White grenache

Sweet but really tasty --Garbled

Non-wines

College Port

MoonShadow has tried Christs and Trinity ports, and thinks both are good. (Strictly speaking, Port is a group of fortified wines).

AFAIK, all college ports are identical, up to Ruby-or-Tawny, except for labelling. --CH

Port

I'll ignore white port for a minute, since that's something different. Now, red ports come in many varieties. The cheapest (and least interesting, though often perfectly palatable) ports are the bog standard ruby and tawny ports. These are blends from several years usually, and are usually quite young tannic wines, which will not improve with age. Tawny port is usually a little older and slightly less "in your face" than ruby port. Of the fancier ports, there are several different types:

• Aged tawnies (these are blends of wine which have been kept in wood for a long time - a 10yo aged tawny will be a blend of wines at least 10 years old at bottling, similarly 20, 30 and 40 yo. The 30 and 40-yo tawnies are very expensive, and only really good ones will be worth the cash. I had a really nice Sandeman 20yo Tawny in Portugal, but it was 30UKP a bottle even over there. 10yo aged tawnies are becomming easier to come by),
  

• Colheitas (these are signal-vintage wines kept in wood for at least 7 years, often longer. They throw a sediment and will improve with a little age; quite subtle and interesting wines, but hard to find outside of .pt),
  

• Vintage Ports (these again are from a single vintage, but only spend 2 years in wood, which means they start out as very tannic wines, hopefully with plenty of fruit. In the first few years they're like better-rounded rubies, then go crap between about 7-10ish years old, and hopefully start to bloom at about 20 years old (I have a 1987 vintage bottle which I'm planning on having for my 30th birthday, for example) by which time they cost a bomb. Generally, avoid these if you don't know what you're doing, or don't trust your wine-seller; if you buy them young, then you have to be prepared to keep them for years in fairly plausible conditions, and otherwise you need to avoid buying an expensive but crap bottle. Will throw a serious sediment), and
  

Trinity College sell a rather nice Ruby port. --DR

• Late-bottled vintages (which are from a single vintage, spend *mumble* 3-5 years in wood I think, and are very variable - you can drink them pretty young, and they can be quite inexpensive). What do you mean I'm a sad port narg? The very idea! Emperor
  

Does it really matter, as long as we actually like it, rather than just follow trends? -- NT