{"id":1252,"date":"2019-04-30T18:38:20","date_gmt":"2019-04-30T18:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=1252"},"modified":"2019-04-30T21:06:02","modified_gmt":"2019-04-30T21:06:02","slug":"w-i-n-o","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=1252","title":{"rendered":"W.I.N.O."},"content":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s another in Power Tasting\u2019s irregular series on great wine bars of the world.<\/em><\/p>\n

Of course, you knew that W.I.N.O. (http:\/\/www.winoschool.com<\/a>) stands for the Wine Institute of New Orleans.\u00a0 Situated just outside the famed French Quarter on Tchoupitoulas Street (that\u2019s Chew-pa-TOO-las, in case you have to ask your way), W.I.N.O. is one of those places with a lot of bottles in nitrogen-filled dispensing machines.\u00a0 They refer to themselves as a self-service wine bar.<\/p>\n

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You get a plastic card, insert it into a slot and then put your glass under the spigot in front of the bottle of wine you want to taste.\u00a0 You can get one-, two- and four-ounce tastings at graduated prices.\u00a0 There are a few communal tables up front where you can sit and sip your wine, or you are free wander around with glass in hand.<\/p>\n

Many, perhaps most of the wines on offer are little-known.\u00a0 There are others that are quite renowned and are priced accordingly \u2013 rather steep for little servings.\u00a0 We\u2019ve found that trying wines we\u2019ve never heard of is the most fun.\u00a0 They don\u2019t cost much to sample and they\u2019re from all over the winemaking world.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t like it, you\u2019ve only spent a few dollars on an ounce of something obscure.\u00a0 And if you do like it, you\u2019ve made a wonderful discovery.<\/p>\n

But, you may well ask, what\u2019s so special about W.I.N.O?\u00a0 There are lots of similar tasting machines in cities across the US, and overseas<\/a> as well.<\/p>\n

For one thing, at W.I.N.O. you are wine tasting in New Orleans<\/em>.\u00a0 Maybe you\u2019re there for a convention or to listen to jazz or try the local cuisine.\u00a0 And drink (a local custom).\u00a0 Now, New Orleans has famous cocktails, like the Hurricane (ugh) or the Sazerac (not bad).\u00a0 It has some great local beers, specifically Abita, available at every bar.\u00a0 There are good wine lists at some of the better restaurants, but if you\u2019d like to go to a wine bar and don\u2019t want to travel far from the French Quarter<\/a>, W.I.N.O. offers you a wine-friendly oasis.<\/p>\n

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Another part of the appeal of W.I.N.O. is the sheer scale of the selection available to you.\u00a0 Their wine dispensers house 120 beverages (a few spirits are included as well).\u00a0 They have reds, whites, ros\u00e9s and dessert wines from the US, Europe and many other corners of Wine Country.\u00a0 The cost of the pours is based on the bottle price and runs from a dollar for an ounce of an obscure wine from a little-known source, to as much as $20 per ounce of Opus One. Careful: putting \u201cjust a little more\u201d on the card adds up quickly.<\/p>\n

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If you\u2019re looking for a quick education in the wines of a region you\u2019re unfamiliar with, W.I.N.O. gives you the chance.\u00a0 In our most recent visit to W.I.N.O., we looked specifically for Languedoc wines, just to see what they would have.\u00a0 In fact there were five or six, but we were familiar with all of them and had some bottles of them at home.\u00a0 We were amazed to find out also that there were two bottles from a really off-the-beaten-path cooperative in the Enserune region that we also had tried in France.<\/p>\n

You can get some fancy nibbles to absorb the alcohol, like cheeses, dips and olives.\u00a0 In New Orleans, though, if you come out a little woozy from what you\u2019ve been drinking, no one will notice. \u00a0This is the town with the motto Laissez le Bon Temps Rouler<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s another in Power Tasting\u2019s irregular series on great wine bars of the world. Of course, you knew that W.I.N.O. (http:\/\/www.winoschool.com) stands for the Wine Institute of New Orleans.\u00a0 Situated just outside the famed French Quarter on Tchoupitoulas Street (that\u2019s Chew-pa-TOO-las, in case you have to ask your way), W.I.N.O. is one of those places … Continue reading W.I.N.O.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1252"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1252"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1271,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1252\/revisions\/1271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}