Having never actually read a blog, let alone written one, I find that, much to my own surprise, I've just sat down a created a blog. I think part of my aversion to this point has been largey the word: "blog." It sounds like a word from a B-level sci fi film ("Look out, Jim! There's a blog approaching at 3.4 nanometers per second; and boy does he look angry!"), or possibly the sound of someone being desperately sick after eating too much pudding.
But, in the end, I find that I have things to say that fit the format of the blog quite well, so here we are.
The purpose of this blog is to talk about wine, in any of its various aspects: the making, the drinking, the serving, the pairing. This time last year, I might have had a bottle or two of Little Penguin or Yellow Tail tucked away in my cupboard, but for the most part I didn't give wine a first thought, let alone a second. I've enjoyed it, and been able to tell drinkable from disgusting, but that was about it. Until I took a flight from Denver to Boston that changed my life. That sounds trite, even to my own ears, but I can't think of a better way to put it.
I was on my way home, after a lovely Christmas with my family, and was staring vaguely at the "in flight entertainment" (usually to be avoided at any cost), where a woman was sitting at a Parisian cafe, sipping a glass of red wine, about which I assumed she was discoursing. Lucky duck, I thought. Imagine it being your job to travel and taste wine. And it took only a moment before I realized there was no reason why I couldn't learn a bit more about wine, and maybe - someday - know enough to impart my wisdom on cross-country flights everywhere.
So when I got home, I enrolled in a class that surveyed all the different grapes and wine regions, and began purchasing and tasting wine at an unprecedented rate. I had no idea whether malbec was a grape, a wine region, or a brand of designer shoes, but I bought it and drank it and liked it.
I'm now in my second class, a much more intensive study of wine analysis, vinification, as well as marketing and sales. I'm interviewing for a part time job in a wine shop. And I'm buying as much wine as my bank balance will support. I'll try anything once. (I've even tried sherry once. I don't need to try it again. If I want to replicate the experience, I'll go dump some rock salt on a decomposing mushroom and suck on it.) And while my wallet and my liver are suffering, I thought perhaps I could share my experiences with an audience (provided someone stumbles upon this thing and acutally reads it).
So here is my wine blog. There will be wine reviews, for sure, as well as commentary on my adventures in the wine trade. As I practice my ability to analyze and communicate wine to others, I also hope to provide readers with some useful recommendations for wines of good value, pairings with food that have worked (and, as a cautionary tale, those that haven't - the California cabernet sauvignon that I'm currently drinking while eating a bowl of Cheerio's, for example), and perhaps a chuckle or two to those of you who will be amused to learn that last night I mistook an Alsatian riesling for a New Zealand sauvignon blanc in a blind tasting. I blame the tropical fruits on the nose.
So....here we go!
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