Excited about receiving some wines but not all...

Well...Got my six-pack of Copain's 2005 Harrison Clarke and Eaglepoint Ranch Syrahs today, along with a 4-pack of wines I acquired from winecommune last Sunday. It's funny how sometimes you're more excited about some wines than others despite the fact that you like them all.

Take the Copain...probably my favorite California Syrahs by a wide margin, yet I couldn't get excited about receiving them today when I was looking at 2 bottles of Barbaresco, a bottle of Brunello and a bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape.

Why am I so much more excited about these last three wines than my precious Copain Syrahs? After giving this question much thought, I believe I have found the answer...I love European wines because they better fit my wine drinking needs. I usually drink wine with dinner, and most of the time after dinner, but not usually before. For this purpose, wines that go well with food and don't intoxicate you quickly serve a better purpose than many California wines that are both high in alcohol and fruit concentration, rendering them more difficult to pair with food, at least when young. In other words, I drink European wines more frequently than US wines, and that shows in my cellar. Fully 75% of my cellar these days is devoted to the wines of Europe.

Now, I often have the jitters for good CA Pinot or Syrah and I am glad to have enough of them to satisfy my needs, but it is getting increasingly rare that I pull a CA wine over a European counterpart.

Are you more excited about some wines you receive than others? Clearly you must have liked them enough to order them...