Introduction

This is the first post, hopefully of many, on The Budget Cellar.  What is the Budget Cellar?  It is a goal, it is an end result and it is a focus.  No, this is not some cheap rip on Dr. Debs's Good Wine Under $20 blog.  I do not bring to the table the experience, depth or knowledge that she does. I've been drinking wine for 3 months.  Actually, I've been drinking wine for 8 years (legally) but I didn't purchase my first Wine Spectator or read my first wine blog until 3 months ago.  That's when I consider this wine journey to have started.  I have one man to credit for this and that is Gary Vaynerchuk.  Love him or hate him, he has been an inspiration and a teacher for me in my very young wine life.

Back to the question at hand, what is The Budget Cellar?  The Budget Cellar is a blog that has been created to journal, document, record, etc. my odyssey in the wine world.  A large part of this exercise is to help me organize my thoughts, feelings and tastes on everything wine, and, occasionally everything epicurean.  I've never been one for organization and The Budget Cellar is my opportunity to keep track of what I am doing; whether it is tasting notes, exploring new regions and terroirs or just writing down what I am learning about myself with respect to wine.

I mentioned above that The Budget Cellar is a goal.  I am not a man of significant means and if I spend more than $20-$25 of a bottle of wine, it better blow me away.  My goal is to build a cellar of amazing wines that fit into my budget and presumably, the budget of many people out there.  The most important factor for me will be how I think the wine tastes.  When selecting wines or writing reviews I will often reference the experts (Wine Spectator, Parker (and his clan), Gary Vaynerchuk, etc.).  I am not, however, a slave to those ratings and they will not be an influence on how I feel about the wine.  I will use their tasting notes to guide my purchases whether it be to encourage me to buy something because GV didn't like it and I did or to dissuade me because I didn't think Wine Spectator's tasting notes sounded appealing to my palate.  A palate, by the way, which is very immature but hopefully evolving and becoming more sophisticated over time.

Above all, this journey will help me become an expert in my own right.  An expert in which varietals, vineyards, etc. that I like, which I hate and which I think are good but are too expensive for my cellar.  Will I make mistakes?  Probably several.  Will I recommend and buy a case of wine that I end up hating 6 months or a year later?  Probably.  But, that is part of the journey and I'll be glad to have learned from the experience.  I hope that my experiences and my thoughts will help you learn a little something too.