A Tuesday Night Wine

Are you familiar with the concept of Tuesday night wine?

Unlike most things in the wine world, this is a very straightforward concept–a Tuesday night wine is a wine that you drink on Tuesday nights. Of course, there’s a little more to it than that, so let me back up to how I was introduced to the concept.

Almost 10 years I was working like crazy as a first year associate in a “Big Law” corporate law firm doing structured finance work (it’s just as glamorous as it sounds). After nearly a year without a day off, I took a much-needed week long vacation to Napa Valley. Napa is always an oasis of beauty, relaxation and pure happiness, but in my particular situation, it felt as close as one could come to heaven on earth, complete with the social norm that drinking wine at any time of day was completely socially acceptable.

I had been a wine drinker for a few years before this trip, but I credit this time in Napa with converting me into a true wine lover. I took full advantage of the days there, trying to squeeze in as many winery visits and tastings as possible; in retrospect probably too many! One of my favorite parts of these winery visits was engaging with the people working there, hearing their stories and how they fell into the passion of wine.

One of these conversations still sticks out in my mind–it was during a tasting at a smaller winery, and after we sampled a really enjoyable ~$30 bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, the low end of the range for that particular winery, the woman leading our tasting said “It’s a really nice Cab, a great Tuesday night wine.” “Tuesday night wine?” I questioned. “Yes, this is what I drink on Tuesday nights, no muss, no fuss, it’s delicious and you don’t need to think too much about it.”

Two things immediately crossed my mind: First, maybe I should consider a change of careers, because if a tasting room associate can afford to drink a $30 bottle of wine as their cheap wine, this is a much more lucrative career than I thought, and second, should I be drinking better wine on Tuesday nights?

Granted, I wasn’t always (or usually) able to drink wine on Tuesday nights, or most any weeknight, due to work, but the concept of Tuesday night wine stuck with me, and came to represent my go-to easy, not necessarily complex, but delicious and relatively inexpensive wine that I could open any night of the week without worrying about not finishing it or “wasting” it on a frozen pizza. It also made me realize that it was probably worth it to put the grueling research in to find a wine that fit this bill that I truly enjoyed, rather than just buying the most heavily discounted wine whose label happened to catch my eye at Whole Foods. I realized you didn’t need to be a sommelier, wine snob, or really rich in order to invest in drinking better quality wine, which was probably the most important realization of all, as it empowered me to start exploring wine on my own, despite the intimidation factor that often comes along with the wine world.

Now, of course, maybe you’re curious as to what my Tuesday night wine is, but that’s a very complex (and extremely personal) question. It changes as my tastes, life situation, and location change. My first was a California red blend called Flo, and my most recent was a red Burgundy from Sylvain Loichet. There were many in between, and the best part is not knowing which will be next!

Tell me–do you have a Tuesday night wine?