Shared bottles are the best bottles.

It’s recycling day, and I’m embarrassed.

My blue bin is being dumped and it sounds like closing time in the back alley of a dive bar. Our neighbors know we haven’t thrown any parties lately, so it’s just us.

All this extra wine consumption can put a serious dent in your budget if you aren’t careful. Fortunately, there are many affordable everyday wines that taste great and are easy to source.

Here are some of our go-to selections. All of these wines retail for under $20, and are distributed nationally to Total Wine, BevMo, Specs, and most national grocery stores.

Sally and I dined at a winery, in a beautiful room with 30 guests seated at a long table. An award-winning chef prepared a delicious six course meal. Each course was expertly paired with a different wine, and the winemaker talked about her wines as they were served. An opera singer entertained us throughout the evening.

It was hard to believe we were in Escondido.

It's always fun to experiment with wine pairings. There are equally endless pairing opportunities with beer, too!

So we decided to take things up a notch and host a pairing party. We gave it a "Better Together" theme to acknowledge both the pairings and the friends we were bringing together.

Here's our step-by-step guide so you can host your own wine and beer shindig.

We're big fans of themed wine parties. It's a fun and easy way to enjoy some good wine with friends without getting too fussy or pretentious.

This wine party featured Cabernet Sauvignon, and featured bottles we had picked up on our travels. Each had its own unique story.

Our friends blind-tasted the wines, and we paired them with a cheese course and then a steak dinner.

Myles, the main character in the movie Sideways, famously uttered his contempt for Merlot in a classic scene. That reputation was probably well-deserved at the time, as the market had been flooded with a lot of cheap, crappy wine.

Not anymore. Our friends, Alisa and Ken, recently hosted a blind tasting that proves Merlot is worth a try.

It's fun to focus on one varietal.

You really don't appreciate how different wine from the same grape can taste until you try several examples side-by-side. This can make for a fun party.

Here's one way you can do it that's relatively easy.

Too many people are concerned with what wine should taste like.

That’s really nonsense. The only way to do it is to trust your taste buds. Focus on color, smell, and taste. If you like it, it’s good.

Blind tasting is a great way to strip away the noise. Your preconceptions can’t influence your perceptions. It’s just you and the wine.

Wine can be a lot of fun when you abandon all pretenses and trust your taste buds.

One thing we enjoy is blind tasting wine with friends. We like to pick a particular varietal to explore and serve several bottles to our friends without telling them the year, region, or winery. The only way to judge the wine is by is color, smell, and taste.

We recently hosted a dinner party to share some bottles of Zinfandel we had acquired.

There’s a reason you won’t find much written about Temecula on this blog.

Prolonged exposure to these temperatures permanently damages the wine. The delicious fruit characteristics disappear, replaced by raisin flavors. The wine changes color too.

Herman Story wines are impossibly huge, with well-integrated flavors. So you might be surprised to learn that Russell From, Herman Story’s winemaker and owner, is a huge Coors Light fan. Herman Story wine and Coors Light beer couldn’t be farther apart on the taste spectrum.

This got us thinking about what other winemakers drink. Is it wine or nothing? Or do other winemakers also enjoy the occasional break from fermented grape juice?

So we posed the question to other winemakers whose wines we really like: What do you drink when you’re not drinking wine?

Lots of questions swirl around wine aeration. What is it? Should you do it? Do you need a fancy gadget?

We’ll answer all of your questions with the results of our own at-home taste test. We subjected wine from the same bottle to three aeration techniques, and compared notes to the taste of the wine right out of the freshly opened bottle.

Sharing wine with friends requires a little more creativity during this time when we are asked to limit social engagement. We did some research, and found a way to put together a fun, engaging virtual wine tasting that doesn’t require much effort.

Wine tasting notes can be tough to decipher. Seriously, what the heck is cassis? Or pencil box? Or barnyard funk?

We’ve seen all of these included in wine tasting notes.

These weird flavors can confuse or even intimidate drinkers. Even folks with moderately sophisticated palates can have difficulty picking out the blueberry compote from the hints of leather, tobacco smoke, and wet concrete.

Wet concrete?! Yes, we’ve seen that one too.

It’s always interesting to try a favorite wine a second time. Last weekend, Sally and I shared a bottle of 2008 Halter Ranch Cotes de Paso. The last time we drank this wine, we gave it rave reviews and I lamented not buying a second bottle after we enjoyed it at a restaurant. Sally later surprised me with another bottle as a present, but it was a bit of a mixed bag the second time around.

We drank the wine with a wonderful feast Sally made comprised of some of my favorites: French onion soup for starters, veal brisket with root vegetables for the main course, and tiramisu for dessert. The meal was incredible.

The wine was very good, but it wasn’t on par with the first time bottle.

It's illegal to drink alcohol in public parks and on beaches in San Diego. As far as you know, Sally and I never violate the law by bringing wine to a park or beach. However, we thought you might like to know how to get away with it just in case you have a certain disregard for the law.

There are only three things you need to know to get away with drinking wine in public.

Don't let the term "table wine" fool you.

Sure, some people think of cheap, mass-produced wine that any self-respecting wine snob would avoid. For us, table wine is often tasty, versatile wine that pairs well with a wide variety of food. Wines that are marketed specifically as "table wine" or simply "white wine" or "red wine" tend to be blends of several grapes that the winemaker has selected for balance and flavor.