Wine on first date

[davidclay123]

Hi guys,
I'm going to have a date with this girl and I really want to impress her. I've booked a table at a fancy restaurant but I'm not a fancy restaurant guy. What kind of wine should I order?
Many thanks!

[Caleb]

I like drinking rose in a few various settings. One for example, when it comes to ordering a full bottle of wine at a restaurant, but I am eating meat and my date is having fish. In that case, we'd have to order two separate bottles or order by the glass. Since a bottle is a much better deal than ordering by the glass in most cases, having rose is the most sensitive choice.

I also prefer rose for lunch, because a red seems too heavy. Some foods it goes well with are burgers, sandwiches, salads, etc for which white is too light, but red is too heavy. Rose has that nice happy medium, which is why so many people like drinking it for casual wine. It also goes quite well with pork, especially ham or salami. It is acidic enough to cut off the fat but not so strong that it completely distorts the taste of the meats.

Rose wine is also very good for picnics and warm summer months if you do not like white wine. It is much lighter and goes down easier than a strong full bodied red.

[Clinton]

Order a bottle of something that your date popped open with her girlfriends last weekend, and you may as well also get a low-cal entree, skip dessert and go home alone to watch Sex and the City. This is a trap that too many men still fall into: They’re struck weak with fear upon opening the wine list, and rather than take a chance on something unfamiliar or risk looking somehow weak by asking the sommelier for advice, they simply stick with the same mediocre juice lining retail shelves all over the country. Don’t be this guy. He is invariably lonely and drinks pretty poorly to boot. He consumes things like mass-produced pinot grigio, cheap over-oaked chardonnay — wines whose producers spent more time and effort on the label art than they did on the juice itself.

What to order instead: To avoid this fate, buy a wine whose flavors you’ll recognize but whose grape variety or region of production you may not, like a juicy, peachy albarino from Rias Baixas in northwestern Spain, or a crisp, fennel-flecked Grenache blanc from France’s Roussillon.

[David]

if you’re interested in something with unmistakable elegance, French Champagne is always the best (recommended brands are Taittinger, Moet & Chandon