One of the challenges I’ve faced since starting Uncorked Ventures has been a combination with my relative inexperience with fine wines (when compared to others, including my business partner Matt) especially when combined with the fact that I live in San Diego where we don’t have many high quality wine stores.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t especially enjoy paying retail price for wine any more, but occasionally there are bottles which I’d like to try, either for personal enjoyment or for possible inclusion in our wine club, without creating the pressure and sense of urgency that often can accompany free samples. Simply put, sometimes it’s easier to pay for a single bottle of wine instead of having a winery or winemaker feeling slighted because you didn’t purchase a couple of cases after receiving a free sample.

In that vein, my wife and I started to try out a few well known wine stores here in San Diego starting last weekend with a trip to San Diego Wine Company, which is located on Miramar Road about equidistant between the 15 and 5 freeways.

I noticed immediately that they featured a nice selection of Napa/Sonoma wines, including offerings from Vineyard 29, Larkmeade and Audelssa which I’ve talked about at length in this space previously. Very impressed with both the selection as well as their pricing when it came to northern California wine.

As for the central coast wineries, I wasn’t nearly as impressed as they seemed to largely be missing the outstanding wines being produced in Paso Robles and Santa Barbara County, with one offering from Tablas Creek Vineyards, but nothing else of note.

I hope to come up with a scoring system in the coming days.

Until then, I hope your week has been as enjoyable as mine already has.