Once I've picked a location or a grape I pick based on the label. This has nearly always served me well and while it is a little like spinning around and grabbing what ever your hand lands on I only ever buy one bottle of something so if I don't like it oh well no big deal it can go into a soup or something instead and I'll open a different bottle.

Hmm, good question! Since I currently live in Washington State, I've been mostly buying local WA wines...I prefer reds, but other than that, I might pick a bottle based off price, or, I'll admit, a cool-looking name or label : ) I rarely look at origin unless I am looking for a very specific wine, and I rarely get the same wine twice, unless I absolutely loved it. There's just so much variety! So I guess overall my choices are somewhat random, unless I'm trying to get something nice for a party. I am rarely let down!

We've been buying based on grape lately - a lot of Tempranillo, Albarino, and hopefully some Viura soon too. So obviously that limits us to just one or two regions. After that, price is probably the next consideration.

And honestly Mary, can we add your recommendation to the list of criteria too? :-)

I save labels of wines we enjoy and will try to stay in the area or with that grape. We love reds, so we will try almost anything once. If it's a good buy, price wise and is nice to drink, I'll go back and get several bottles to store and enjoy.

We stopped at Lakemont in Florida and while most are sweet wines, they will make nice fruity sangrias this summer.

After finding what works, it's price and label. I can be lured into a purchase with a wonderful label.

I usually stick with a Cabernet or Merlot or a blend of the two. Sauvingnon Blanc or a Riesling if I'm in the mood for a white. I've had both good and bad wines from particular regions, so that isn't so much a deciding factor. If I was rolling in the dough I would primarily buy organic wines, locally sourced if possible, but we go through alot of wine so I tend to only buy what's on sale. It gives me a chance to try different wines and won't break the bank either.

Wow, I thought I would be the only one saying the label gets me. I am so clueless and not very picky about wine so I will buy whatever has the cutest label.

I tend to buy based on a combination of these considerations and maybe a few others.

Price is foremost: if I'm buying a table wine just to have on hand, I'm typically buying a 5L box for around $40. If it's the weekend and I'm preparing a nice meal, I'll get a bottle in the $10-$15 range - often from British Columbia because for the most part, those are the most affordable wines where I live. If it's for some special occasion, I may splurge and go higher than that, but that's rare.

There are a few regions that I'm more comfortable with - BC, like I said, but also Australia, California and Spain. There was a time when I was more adventurous, but I identified those regions as generally producing many of my favourite wines, so I tend to stick with them more often than not now.

The labels also help me pick - but not in the way you describe. I'll sometimes read the back label for suggestions on food pairings, and sometimes head right from the liquor store to the grocery store to pick up one of the dishes that goes with the wine I want to try!

Price, price, and price are my top three factors. I simply cannot afford to spend a lot on wine, because it's a total nonessential (that I really enjoy but still, a total nonessential). My dad taught me that the best way to get good, cheap wine is find a good liquor store with an owner (and/or employees) who like wine, set a price, and ask for a mixed case that comes in under budget. You get great selection from knowledgeable people this way. And then you find your favorites. I'll try any grape, any region, I'll even try something with a dumb label if the price is right. Though I admit, a bad label needs to come with a recommendation.

I pick based upon grape first, appelation second, price point third and a distant fourth is alcohol content. After I've narrowed down the grape type, I tend to stick w/AVA's that are known for a particular grape or style of wine, avoiding generic "California" appelations. That means nothing to me.

Just my two cents.

Oh, and yes, I'll always spend more on a bottle for a special occasion.

I agree with dzuunmod. I have one wine I keep onhand constantly because it's my favorite for the price (cheap). On special occasions, or if we're having people over for dinner, or if I've read about something or spotted a good deal on a grape I love, I'll splurge up to $12 or so for a bottle. Also, wine tastings will greatly influence which wines I buy. There are a couple of wines from a local winery that I use as hostess gifts and such because I know they're good from tastings, and they're in every store.

Although there are some really nice labels out there, the only time I've ever picked wine based on the label was when I bought a decorative wine rack, and needed pretty bottles to store in it. I guess I should be more adventurous!

I am such a girl when it comes to wines. I love wine and actually a tiny bit of a wine snob but the labels sometimes make their way home because they are just to funny or cute to pass up. I only do it if it looks like a good wine though.

Otherwise I go by price and region depending on what i am looking for. We live in PA so for the most part we only buy things that are on sale. In PA we don't get much in the way of perks so just buying cheaper wines on sale helps mentally. In fact I only go into whatever section i want and scan for the sale labels. In the end at least it makes the decisions easier as it is narrowed down!

One criteria. Sweet! But I do wine taste so I will try anything once.

Wow, interesting topic! I'd say for me it definitely depends on a lot of the factors you mentioned.

Price: very important, and completely dependent on the occasion. If I'm serving others, or giving it to someone, I'll go for something in the $15-25 range. Of course, a label that I know to be good. If it's just for me and my husband for everyday, I'll stick to the $10 range. If I see a label I love on sale for a good price, I'll buy it. If I'm at a winery and the wine is really great, I'll buy a couple of bottles in the $25-50 range. So really, I have a bit of a mix. I definitely align price and quality. If a wine costs more, it should definitely taste better. It doesn't always. That's why I like to find a good cheap wine for everyday.

Familiarity: I am ashamed to say that I totally stick to the usual suspects: Pinot Noirs, Zins, Chardonnays, Pino Grigios, and Cabernets. If I'm at a winery and they serve me a great Syrah, you bet I'll buy it. I tend to be more adventurous in restaurants, where I'm only getting one glass of the stuff if I don't like it, rather than 5. I prefer more elegant, medium-bodied wines for everyday, but when I'm tasting, or at a restaurant where the waiter suggests it, I'll totally go for something bold. I just find that bolder wines that aren't very good are far less drinkable than mellower wines that aren't very good.

Origin: For California wines, I definitely look at where in California the grapes come from. Napa and Anderson Valley are always good (the grapes, not necessarily the wine, heh). I live in Southern California, and have come to learn that Temecula wines are just not for me. The grapes are too sweet. Haven't had much the Santa Barbara area, but would like to. I have pretty much no experience with Australian wines, and I'm completely intimidated by French wines. I have had nothing but good experiences with wines from Chile, but I haven't worked out the different regions yet.

Green: This isn't a factor in my wine buying...yet. I have a feeling I'll jump on board as I become familiar with more green wineries..

Ethics/Social Responsibility: Again, not really a factor, though it may in the future. I'm overwhelmed enough by all the wines out there, let alone having to research who they got their grapes from, and whether they're stand up citizens. Unfortunately, the labels just aren't that specific...yet.

Label/Packaging: I am completely a consumer whore, yet for some reason I am unswayed by the snaz of the label. I appreciate a fun/beautiful/interesting label, sure. But if someone points me to a bottle with a boring label and tells me there's good wine inside, I'm going to buy that, rather than the one I know nothing about with a fun name and snazzy picture.

Usage/Occasion: Kind of goes with what I said for price. It completely matters what it's for. I cook a lot with wine, so I'll cute one glass-worth in a dish, then drink the rest. So I like my wine to be drinkable, but not feeling like I'm wasting it by cooking with it. That's probably 85% of the wine I buy. The rest is usually because we have company over, or it's a special occasion.

WINE REVIEWS!! Seriously, has no one mentioned this yet? Wine reviews are hugely influential to my buying practices: the combo of a good review and a good price are what make a particular wine go immediately on the shopping list. Every two weeks, I pick up a copy of the LCBO's Vintages publication, which lists the new upcoming releases (two weeks in advance) along with reviews and prices. I also pay attention to in-store reviews at the LCBO (our closest LCBO location has a particularly fantastic in-store taster with excellent handwriting I might add!)

By "review" I do not just mean the end score: I am also referring to the details of the wine itself (nose, body, notes, finish, I want to know it all!) A review that matches the tastes I enjoy, the particular need I have for buying the wine (dinner party, a specific menu, etc.), or a review that notes a good value or something special/intriguing about a wine are all the things I am look for in a review. Also, because I do not have a cellar nor a lot of appropriate places to properly age/store wine long-term, I tend to rely on reviews in order to tell me when the wine is drinking so that I don't end up buying something that is best kept 5 years.

As a born and bred French woman, i was raised to know enough about wines to get by in a supermarket (in France, you can buy wine pretty much anywhere).

But things are different in New York, so these are my ways of picking my wine:

- I buy mostly French, Italian or Spanish wines. I find "new world" wines to be very often pleasant enough, but very 'formatted', you don't really know what you're drinking. I like bolder, less overly designed flavors. In French wines, I go by the "terroirs" (areas) I like: Graves and Medoc for Bordeaux, Cotes de Nuits for Bourgogne, etc...

- I tend to go for Bordeaux in the U.S. for one simple reason: even if I don't know the wine, I can use 'les appellations' on the wine to guide me to quality. For instance, "Grand Vin de Bordeaux" means nothing, it's a marketing gimmick. But "Cru Bourgeois" is a proper designation from the French wine industry and not everyone can claim it, it has to mean certain criteria I ignore but that I know mean good things.

- The label, to some extent, for non-classed wine. But not the label in the sense that it's cute, it's actually the opposite. If a label has a cute animal or bold colors on it, I take it to mean money has been spent on remarketing it for the foreign market. I take that as a bad sign. So the more traditional, no-frill labels that look like they do in their native markets are much more inspiring to me.

- Mis en bouteille a la propriete vs. Mis en bouteille dans nos chais. The first means bottled on the chateau's premises. The other usually indicates this is wine from a wine coop, which usually means a decent but lesser product. Important to know: it was possible 30 years ago to buy truly dreadful French wine. It's become rarer. Co-op wine is very drinkable but, kind of like 'new world' wines, it's got a much bland, overly designed flavor.

- and, of course, price.

Price - $10 and under for everyday drinking, $15 and under for special occasions.

Label - a strange, funny, colorful, artful, irreverant, label in my price range - regardless of type and origin - will get me every time.

I like to keep it simple as too many other things in my life are complicated - the wine I drink doesn't need to be.

Region comes first - I drink local (ish!) - when I was in the UK this meant French/Spanish/Italian; when in Italy, whatever the speciality of the region (often the house wine too - frequently rough as guts, but somehow suited the food!).

I'm currently living in Australia, so the vast majority of wines that I drink come from Aus (the odd exceptions being at restaurants of certain cuisines, if they have something good from the country of the cuisine). In fact, a great deal of them come from no more than a five hour drive away, and of those, a lot are fetched ourselves on tasting weekends - these wines are $20-35, with the odd super special $60-70 bottle, and we know for a fact that we like them because we try them all the day before buying. Others in the $20-35 range are from winery schemes that we're part of, where the winery sends packs that they choose several times a year (currently doing this with two wineries, one we've requested a 'red' box, they send six wines quarterly, with a mix of drink now and keepers; the other winery I usually call and have a chat with, to make sure we get a mix we like, again mostly red, they make a fantastic vintage Brut rose too - champagne style, as opposed to sweet sparkling rose).

Day to day & cooking wines we buy cleanskins, which are usually in the $5-12 range, and bought by the case. Cleanskins here are pretty good value - basically any winery that has a glut of grapes can sell them to a cleanskin company, who then sell them as generically labelled, e.g. "South Australia Cab Sav 2004", so you know roughly what you're getting. The $15 cleanskins from our favourite shop are actually pretty damn good wines - we're not going to cellar them, but happy to pull them out for a casual dinner.

We also go to as many tastings as we can, to gain familiarity with the different regions, and to try different grapes - a Coonawarra shiraz is a vastly different beast to a Yarra Valley one (Yarra Valley good for whites, not reds; Coonawarra fantastic for *big* reds!). And if we're caught out needing to grab a bottle to take somewhere, we'll usually go with a winery we know.

Green-ness isn't a major consideration yet - many wineries here in Aus are smart with water because they have to be - other issues such as pesticide use and etc we're starting to ask about when we have the chance.

Grape first, then price, then region.

I tend to gravitate toward light to medium-bodied wines, particularly Chiantis. I've definitely purchased my fair share of $15-$20 bottles, but then my boyfriend and I drink a lot of wine and generally keep a cheaper bottle on hand for everyday. I typically purchase wines from Italy or France, but I'm also partial to Pelee Island wines (I'm from Southwestern Ontario) and certain ones from Chile.

My favourite value wine is definitely Spinelli. It's $7-$8 and tastes much more expensive IMO. I don't necessarily think paying more for a bottle means you're getting a "better" product, but yes, this is sometimes the case. I pick wines based almost exclusively on the description or a wine review (or a rooster!), though I'll pick up a bottle and consider it if I find the label aesthetically pleasing.

Varietal and taste
Local
Biodynamic
$$$'s
and if it's an adventurous winemaker I'm more likely to try something off my list and for more money

Price is my #1. Nine times out of 10 I buy a bottle that is under $15. Only on special occassions do I ever buy anything that costs more.

Familiarity is my #2. If what I bring home doesn't taste good, I feel cheated. To avoid disappointment, I buy what I know and like.

Local is my #3. The first place I go is the "British Columbia" section in my liquor store. This strategy failed me when I was recently in Alberta...so, the second section I look for is "Australia" and the third is "France". Familiarity weighs heavily in this category (I have specific wines I like from producers in these countries).

Hey, how often does everyone drink wine? Some people have mentioned "everyday" bottles. I buy only one bottle a week...but I admit I would drink (a little bit) more if it was culturally acceptable where I live.

We buy wine in lots of different ways. Most of our day-to-day wine comes from the supermarket where we have favourites which we buy only on 50% off sales, usually around the £6 mark (after discount). We stock up when sales come around, and try new things with familar regions, or grapes.

For better wine we go to the wine merchants and quiz the fabulous girl who works there are can remember what we like. Then we tend to spend around £8-£20 (for very special occasions!) a bottle. We then drink what goes with the food we're eating, or something we want to try or pretty often try one bottle against another of the same price/grape/region etc.

We used to take annual trips over to France and buy a lot of wine from their supermarkets and there we bought stuff we thought we'd like based on history (luckily my SO has an extensive memory of what we've loved) and also new things we want to try at all sorts of prices.

We like wine, a lot, and always have a stock on hand of upwards of 70 odd bottles. We drink wine with dinner most days - probably not good for us, but there we go!

I get easily overwhelmed in the wine store and I am very cheap so I hold myself to one criteria that facilitates quick selection with generally good results. I pick Portuguese wines. There generally are not very many to choose from and they are almost always affordable and drinkable. An added bonus is that it makes my husband swell with national pride.

I hav been doing wine tastings now for over a decade. Ihav learned soo much and still I am a fledgling as compared to someof those I am lucky to know when it comes to (spspsp I am sure lol) oeneophiles.

First of course you want to drink what you like so varietal (the "type" of grape ie: cabernet, merlot, chardonnay, etc) is important but to me, any varietal pretty much can be excellent as long as the VINTAGE is a good one.

Vintage, vintage, vintage! The year that the bottle was produced makes alll the difference! A good crop (the right amount of rain/sunshine, etc) produces and excellent wine. Maker is a strong factor as well. (I'd much rather hav a bottle of Premier Grand Cru Chateau Margaux than a bottle of :: shudders :: yelowtail!) but again.. if theres a ~terrific~ year of yellowtail versus a crappy year of Bordeaux..guess which one will moer than likely be better? (tho that was a heinous analogy).

Giving that we are talking of recognizable makers and who across the board pretty much know their craft relatively well.. I Must say Vintage. (Vintage! Vintage! VINTAGE! )

Lastly, I love jewelry, but I hav never been a "girly-girly" besides the jewelry thing. I don't care much about clothes (walmart, JCPenney) or shoes (payless, zappos) or handbags (OK I hav ONE Kathy van zeeland and I was over 40 years old when I got that..butI digress..) but my point is that I can now understand the old cliche' about the girl who has a closet full of clothes and yet "nothing to wear". I feel the same way about my wine! (I hav a 160 bottle cooling storage unit) and yet some bottles I don't want to drink because they are still "aging"..again others I don't want because it's just not the right "fit" for the meal.. and and.. well, you get the idea.. (in fact I initially kept buying bottles and hardly ever drank them and the unit was over-flowing.. I had friends and family telling me "you know you should drink more..") well, it struck me funny when it was said to me.. anyway, I DO now know why a girl can say she has "nothing to wear" because I hav been literally standing before my unit and hav had "nothing to open"!

Wine is like perfume, (which I also don't wear) but it is a very Personal thing..so if it's a bottle a you like, drink it! Everyone else be damned.. but I will tell you, that if you research a particular maker (one that you like) just a little bit..find out the better years (vintages) that they made and try those.. you will be in Heaven! This is also the same reason that some bottles will be a bit "disappointing" when you hav experienced a great bottle and then go back for another and it's not "quite as good". 90% of the time it's because it was made in.. a different year.

One poster mentioned food pairings. This is Excellent! You will almost always enjoy your bottle with food even a light, white quaffer will go better with some appetizers..maybe just some fresh cut up scallions, cilantro and mild cheddar cheese. (yum) but the flavor profiles in food really enhance just about any wine.

I saw on a page on this site in fact, a bottle of Ruffino's Reserva Du Cale... I wanted to yell "DON'T recommend the Tan label!" For this bottle (mostly a nice chanti esp 1997, 99 and 01) go for the GOLD label! For the extra $8-10 it is worth it.

Lastly (didn't I already say that?) remember advice is free and not always worth that. Yes I hav learned a lot from some very knowledgeable and well-traveled "experts" (but I am far far from that caliber for sure!~) but what "generally goes" just might not be right for you.. there are no rules and I hav learned you can find a $14 bottle that outshines an $80 one. (this is the exception) but yes I hav had that experience.

Wine is made to share and enjoy! (and that's all that matters, really).

Just my .02.

~MOMMY

Would the following idea for a pinot noir under $10 catch your eye and be a potential purchase for you?

Wine name: AXIL
On the Axil label, make the font look more like tree bark and the "X" to look like a tree (or branch) form a horror movie, no leaves, and kind of twisted up but look like an X?