Avoid the stuff labeled "cooking wine"
When it comes to cooking with wine, avoid bottles labeled "cooking wine." Cooking wine isn't anything you'd want to cook with — it's loaded with preservatives, sweeteners and salt, which can make your final dish taste overly sweet, salty or even metallic.
Abide by this rule of thumb:
Cook only with wine that you'd drink. Your first tipoff that bottles labeled "cooking wine" aren't fit to drink is that they're usually shelved near the vinegars and salad dressings in your local grocery store. Your best bet is to select a bottle from the wine section of your grocery store, or better yet, your local wine shop.
"The quality of cooking wine is so low … you have to remember that you're putting that in your body and in your dishes, so it's well worth it to spend the extra money to get a wine that'll really represent the dish," says Maria Rust, the wine director and founder of Somm Time Wine Bar in New York City. "If you really want to cook well, it's worth [making] a trip to the liquor store and getting a proper wine from people who do proper winemaking."