Big News and Updates!

I was shocked to discover that it has been almost two years since my last update. I have tried many delicious wines since my last post, but I have sadly not recorded a single one. This makes me sad for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, it's difficult to remember what I've liked and what I haven't when I've been at the liquor store. I was keeping records here to help with future wine selection.

The second reason has to do with all of the untold stories. It's true, not every bottle has a tale, but each bottle has at least one significant event associated with it.

The third somewhat inconsequential reason has to do with my photography. I took some really awesome shots of wine bottles back in the day. I've focused more on the writing and editing side of my artful mind lately, so I've gotten away from photography. I'd like to get back into that, if only with wine.

So. I know I have often said I would return, but here's hoping that I will in earnest this time.

Because...the Scotch Man and I are going to Napa Valley for our honeymoon this fall!

Wait, I think I buried the lead there. Let me back up a second.

The Scotch Man and I are getting married! And our honeymoon is in California. We'll be spending four days at a haunted mansion writing retreat, drinking lots of wine and writing about our paranormal experiences. Then we're spending another few days at a bed and breakfast in downtown Napa. We'll be drinking lots of wine and making lots of memories. But I need to train for that trip! I need some practice. With wine tasting, with writing about what I try, with blogging with regularity.

So. I am going to try to post at least once a month from here until the trip. And then after the trip hopefully I'll be able to put together a really awesome post. Or maybe a series of posts. I like my event posts from years past.

I've got a good wine story for a recent bottle of wine, so hopefully I'll get that written and posted soon.

Oh...and reader beware...I might branch out and try some white wine this summer. The name of this blog will be a lie! Hope you don't mind.

ConQuest 44 Wines

Here we are in lovely Kansas City, MO, high in a hotel room right across the street from the Kauffman Stadium (and Arrowhead) enjoying the 44th instance of ConQuesT: the science fiction and fantasy convention put on by the Kansas City Science Fiction and Fantasy Society.

I'm on vacation with the Scotch Man on his birthday weekend. Every Memorial Day weekend brings another year of ConQuest, and since we're both aspiring writers and enjoy sci fi and fantasy, it's a perfect convention for us.

Unfortunately, we didn't come very prepared. Before we even left the hometown of Lawrence, KS, I realized we had forgotten two very important things: food and drink. When we first arrived at the hotel, we paid way too much at the hotel cafe for coffee and snacks. Later that evening, we ventured into the nearby city to stock up on snacks and alcohol for the rest of the weekend.

We drove by three cemeteries as the sun sank lower in the sky, and a nearly full moon began to rise. With the feeling that time was running out (we had just been to a panel about werewolves, vampires, and zombies, so that was still very fresh in my mind) we stopped by Save-a-Lot grocery. We put together a collection of chips, nuts, and other equally unhealthy munchies, and then made our way to the liquor section.

We decided to risk another trip into the oncoming darkness to find a liquor store than to settle for a $4 bottle of refrigerated red wine.

Between the liquor store and the grocery, I have never felt so white in my life. I think the only other white person we saw was a serious biker gang guy. I began to have more realistic fears than supernatural attacks.

Look! Blurry, but I really met him!

We managed to find two bottles of wine, though, one for each night, and a cork screw. We drank the Beringer Friday night when we got back to the hotel - it was young and grape-y and easy to chug - and Saturday night we busted into the Carmenere (almost literally: the cork screw we bought for $3 was poorly made and the cork VERY stuck. It took a sheer force of will and no small amount of cursing and grunting to pry it out so we could drink).

I don't feel like it's fair to judge the Carmenere, which I've never tried before, based on this experience with it, so instead I'll just say we'll drank it and enjoyed the buzz.

It's been an exciting weekend with too much rich food, bad coffee, long panels, two trips up fourteen flights of stairs after tiring of the sickening elevator rides, and brushing elbows with other writers and editors - including Patrick Rothfuss! - and we still have one day left to go. Who knows what tomorrow will bring, aside from Scotch Man's birthday.

My vacation is almost over, but I'm looking forward to going home, sleeping in my own bed, showering in my shower, and going on a diet.

But don't worry. My diet will still include red wine.

Rickshaw - 2011 Pinot Noir

This was one of Cork and Barrel's Wine of the Week picks. They do tastings from 4-6pm every Wednesday of their wine of the week, so the weeks I'm interested, I make sure to go down on Wednesdays after work.

I was hooked on this wine before I even tried it. The weekly email they sent out claimed it was one of the few true, 100% pinot noirs out there, without any other grape add-in (they say Shiraz is a popular one to blend it with). This made me curious, because I seem to enjoy the lightness of the pinot noirs. The woman doing the tasting said it was a a good summer wine because it was almost as light as a rose.

I'm not that fond of anything that light on the red spectrum, but I tried it, and she was right. Most people switch to white wine in the summer, but this one you could just as easily drink alongside your light whites. Sweet, tangy, and light are words I'd use to describe this. A very good flavor, not just of grapes like a lot of young wines, but of substance. I am curious how this one would age, but it was too delicious to save.

So I ate it with dinner the night we had BBQ outside. The first truly summer-feeling evening we've had. Spring came really late this year.

But as sweet as this wine was, the evening was bittersweet. We are losing the Jedi, the Scotch Man's son, at the end of this week. He will leave to be with his mother for the summer, and then come back to us for two weeks, but then go back to be with her for the fall. We'll get him again in the spring.

The Scotch Man and I are heartbroken and doing what we can to enjoy the few evenings we have left with him. By the time this post goes live, he'll be gone.

And we'll be working hard to fill my new wine rack, and empty it again. Hopefully that will mean more posts. Although they may be melancholy ones.

So probably see you soon, friends. In the meantime, enjoy your wine.

Mollydooker - The Boxer: 2011 Shiraz

Hello, fellow wine lovers! I'm back! For a few posts anyway.

I bought a fancy (used) wine rack off of Craigslist a few weeks ago (for the record, Craigslist is a pain in the ass, but at least I have a wine rack to store my wine and my glasses on now), so my interest in wine has been rekindled. Not that I ever stopped loving wine, but with the brutal, cold, endless winter months, I've suffered with one illness after another and an endless array of cold medicine, antibiotics, and steroids for the last four months. So finally, the weather is turning  and I'm feeling a little better, so we broke open some wine.

The very first bottle we opened from our last wine run was the Mollydooker. When we bought this bottle, the guy at the liquor store warned us that we had to go to the Mollydooker website and learn how to do the Mollydooker Shake before we drank it. For that reason, we had put off drinking it the last time I was feeling better. We thought it was going to be an actual dance, not a way to aerate the wine. Oh, spoilers and all of that.

Anyways, we dutifully watched the video, did the Shake, and drank our wine while watching Doctor Who. I wasn't overly fond of this particular bottle, though. I think it's less the Mollydooker brand and more the Shiraz variety that I didn't like here. It was too dry and biting. I've had Mollydooker before - compliments of my sister's boyfriend, who happens to be a wine rep (and that's another, old story I always meant to tell here and may someday try to recreate) - and enjoyed it, so I think I might have to temporary give up on Shiraz for now.

And focus on my new favorite, the Pinot Noir. Stay tuned this Sunday for another post, in which I talk about a fabulous pinot noir I drank and very much enjoyed.

Thanks for reading! See you soon.

Long Time No Wine

I'm sure what readers I had at one point are long gone, but I wanted to make an attempt to start this blog back up again. I've been drinking wine still, but nothing that inspired me to write. I regret not making notes for some of the bottles, because every bottle comes with a story, even if it's not a profound one, but life is what it is sometimes.

But tonight, the Scotch Man and I were child-less, so we went out to dinner (Italian) and then explored one of our newer wine spots, the City Wine Market. Their selection of wines are always very top shelf and also very interesting. We've bough titles called Book Mark and Fiction in the past, and Lunatic and The Crusher on our outing this evening. It's a little more expensive than my favorite liquor store, Cork and Barrel, but it's fun to branch out a bit. And it's on his side of town.

Soon to be my side. I'm officially moving in with him this summer. A lot has happened since my last blog.

At any rate, we ended up with six bottles at around $120, so not too bad. All the Scotch Man had left on his rack was the bottle of Scotch, so we filled it all up tonight.

When we got home tonight, we decided to try the Orin Swift Palermo Cabernet Sauvignon. The Scotch Man bought it because of the bottle. We tend to buy wine based on name and label design. The wine seller said it was a fantastic choice, and that all of the designs for Orin Swift are like that. It was a little more than I usually spend - $35 - but the Scotch Man purchased it, not me.

We drank it while we watched Seven Psychopaths. Good movie, and good wine. Very full-bodied, dark, with a strong nose and kind of a bitter finish. It was very aromatic when we opened the bottle.

The bottle itself is definitely a keeper, although I'm not sure I'd personally buy this one again. A bit too much for the flavors inside.

November has Come and Gone

Hello, wine lovers. My apologies for dropping off the face of the Earth during November. Turns out trying to do NaNoWriMo, my online class, spend time with the Scotch Man and the Jedi, and overall keep my sanity, I did not, in fact, have time to do my wine blog, as well.

This weekend I am working on the final exam for my online class, but then for the next month I will be free like the wind. Once free, I will write lots and lots of wine blogs.

I am excited to share my stories about my Election Night wine tasting, the new wine store the Scotch Man and I found, and tell you about all of the bottles I've tried since my last post.

Look for me to make my full-fledged return next week! Hope to see you then.

Red Wine Reminiscence

Thanks for your Patience!

Hello, Readers. I haven't posted the past couple of weeks because I haven't been drinking much wine. It took me awhile to finish both bottles from the wine tasting, and I've still been trying to watch my calories for the Scale Down Challenge.

However, it is now November, which means it's National Novel Writing Month. I usually drink a glass or two of wine in the evenings while I'm writing, so I will have new bottles to review soon. I hope to be back to my regularly scheduled weekly posts every Sunday starting next weekend!

If you want to know how Nanowrimo is going, feel free to pop over to the Confabulator Cafe. I post every Tuesday morning.

See you next week!