I'm wondering..
Do you buy wine just to cook with or do you use leftover wines?
If you buy, what is your favorite QPR cooking wine?

I don't know what leftover wine is.

I buy wine expressly for cooking. Marietta Old Vine Red and a good Cotes-du-Rhone are the ones I most commonly use. That way, if I don't need the whole bottle, the chef has a glass or two whilst cheffing. I don;t use white wine much for cooking, but I'd look for a St. Francis Chardonnay or similar.

The only wine that seems to be leftover is the stuff that was no good to begin with and as they say, don't cook with what you wouldn't drink ( i.e., what you wouldn't serve the cook!)
I tend to buy wine just to cook with and Marietta is also a staple for that purpose. Toughest is finding a burgundy that has enough oomph but doesn't jack the price of your meal up so high you might as well have gone to France....

I prefer most other red varietals to PN fopr cooking. If you must use one, maybe one labelled Bourgogne from a good producer would be the way to go.

I tend to cook with a nice wine. Sometimes I even add it to the dish.

Depending on the dish, I use leftovers or buy a QPR type wine for cooking. In general, I think low oak, low extraction, and defintely low residual sugar wines are best. The problem with using some inexpensive wines is the RS.

-Al

Maybe that is why have trouble just reducing a whole bottle of wine. I'm using chateau el cheapo.

El cheapo import is often better than el cheapo domestic.

-Al

I always have leftover bottles of the "good stuff". I have used Rafanelli Zin, Neal Zin, Melville Syrah, etc. to cook with before. Usually when you are cooking with wine, I don't recall a recipe in which you need more than a cup of wine.

There's always a $15 Zin somewhere in the cellar.

I know... I could go to the store and pick up something for $4.99 but when I do that the damage is more like $50 by the time I am out of there.

I buy just for cooking but wind up drinking a fair number of them. I agree with Al: low oak and low sugar are key.

I usually compile enough gifted bottles of wine that are drinkable, but which I won't drink, for use in my kitchen. I use both white and red. When deglazing and trying to dissolve fond, alcohol and acid are the most important ingredients, so the color of the wine is not particularly relevant. But when making a pan sauce for scallops or fish, only a white will do.

Keep in mind that the adage: "Only cook with wine that you would drink" has been twisted and misconstrued over the years. It does not mean that you should only cook with wine that meets your high standards of table service. Instead, it was intended to differentiate suitable wine for cooking from bottles labeled "Cooking Wine" which has salt added (thought to keep the staff from drinking it, but I'm not entirely sure about that). So the old adage really means "Never use a bottle labeled "Cooking Wine"". In fact, many White wines that would be lovely on the table would simply be too oaky for a dish. In many ways, a bottle of Beringer Founder's Estate or Woodbridge Chardonnay would be superior for cooking than a bottle of Peter Michael. But I wouldn't want to drink the former.

My favorite white cooking wine is an unoaked chardonnay from Toad Hollow. ~$9 per bottle.

I agree that people go overboard on cooking with a fine wine they should drink while cooking. I thought the salt in "cooking wine" was to avoid the taxes applied to wine intended for consumption as a beverage.

-Al

I keep wines that I buy specifically for cooking cheap -- around $6-10 depending on what's handy.

I also have been using a blended red bottle that I keep on hand for residual red wine. Basically, It's usually a full bottle of the dregs of many bottles. Whenever I have some new leftover wine, I pour the current dregs bottle in to the new dregs bottle and discard any overage of the old dregs bottle. We cook with wine regularly enough even for every day stuff that I don't mind using this dregs bottle for just Mrs. TJ and I. But for specific recipes or such, I will always break out a 'new' cooking bottle.