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Wine Improvements for the New Year

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  Pet peeves. We all have them. One of mine is this thought of the new year making everything right. Year after year, I cringe at the endless “good riddance to the past year, now things will be different” rants that seem to spew out of mouths and across social media platforms. Seriously, how is the clock turning from 12 a.m. to 12:01 a.m. going to make any difference? Then, there are the New Year’s resolutions…               As someone who works out every day, this has always been one of my least favorite things about the new year. Starting at the beginning of January and continuing until Valentine’s Day, the gym is stuffed to the max with people taking up the equipment, hording in on mat space, and making sign up for classes near impossible. Then there are the endless social media pictures of healthy food, people giving a daily breakdown of all the good they are doing and just begging for praise, and this Dry Janua...
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The Holidays Start with Donuts and Wine

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  The Christmas season is upon us. That means cheer is in the air and calories simply don’t count.               For my family, the holidays have always officially started the day after Thanksgiving. Year after year, we would wake up on that Friday morning to find tubs of Christmas decorations lining the driveaway and filling up the living room. Holiday movies were turned on and cheese and crackers set out as we would help mom put up the tree, marvel at our ornaments and Christmas books, and spend endless hours trying to figure out which bulb was burnt out on the light strand. Through all of this, the occasional cuss word would filter inside as dad created the outside display. The day would end with us basking in the glow of the twinkling lights. It was always such a magical time, and something I looked forward to every year.               As we got ...
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The Cork Conundrum

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  As I stared at all of the beautiful wines in my chiller that would go perfectly with my dinner, I grumpily snagged the one sporting a bottle stopper and sighed. Thanks to the winery’s need to encapsulate their wines with a synthetic cork, my Coravin system would not work on it. This meant I was resigned to this one particular quaff for the next four days, whether it was a perfect pairing or not. In this case, not. Sipping and scowling, my thoughts drifted to the notion of how a wine bottle is sealed, and all of the various options that go with it.               I know I have mentioned my Coravin system before, and will do so again, simply because I love it. Created to allow consumers the opportunity to savor and enjoy wine on their own terms, wine is pulled out of the bottle through the cork by using a large needle and Aragon gas, a noble gas already used in winemaking. The cork naturally reseals the tiny hole and...
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Lessons Learned Through Wine and Halloween Candy

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  I love Halloween. The whole spooky season. Ghosts, goblins, ghouls, and goodies, I can’t get enough of it. Come mid-September every year, my husband and I pull out the Halloween decorations and start to plot out all the ways in which we will enjoy this most haunting time of year.               A few months back, in preparation for some incredibly long flights, I had combed through the archives of a podcast I listen to, downloading myself a nice entertainment library. While doing this, I discovered an episode from last October on Halloween candy and wine pairing. During my time at Blue Mountain Vineyards, one of my favorite events I developed was an evening of Halloween candy and wine pairing. It had always intrigued me what pairings we would end up finding using our wines and traditional trick-or-treat goodies, so I was excited to see what tasty treasures the podcaster discovered. I tucked the episode away and exc...
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Misconception Magic

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  We live in a world of misconceptions. Lies, mistruths, words taken out of context; we are bombarded every day with these falsities. Many of us have the common sense to research and get the whole story before taking something at face value. This is something I personally strive for, but every once in a while, I misstep. A recent excursion humbled me and reminded me to not form a bias without all the facts.               My husband and I enjoy taking a yearly trip. He was kind enough to agree to a shorter, closer to home adventure for this year’s travels, as the epic voyage my mom and I took to Scotland and Ireland this summer was my primary focus. When planning on a place to go, we look for somewhere that is not a large city, has some fun shopping, preferably with antique stores, boasts a weird or unique experience, and an extra bonus is a winery nearby. Strangely enough, these trip requirements led us to North Pla...
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An Ode to a Vintage and a Dog

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  Vintage has been on my mind a lot lately. The way certain factors align in any given year can make or break a wine. The same can be said for humans.               As in all things in life, there is a cycle. For winemaking, it all starts in the spring with those first buds on the vines, and ends in the winter with the wine fermenting and the vines pruned down for their long sleep. The achievements, joys, stresses, and heartaches of each season will determine the quality of the final product, the bottled wine. Again, the same can be said for humans.               I recently had to say goodbye to my 14-year-old Boxer-Pitbull mix, Corona. The shining light in my life, my heart shattered as she took her last breath, and it continues to do so every time I walk into a room and expect to see her there. This, along with a few other bumps and bruises that no...
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Wine Knowledge 101

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  Knuckles clutched around the arms of my elliptical, I found my heart racing, and not just from the exercise. For the past two days of workouts, I had followed the journey of four guys preparing for the Master Sommelier exam in the 2012 documentary “SOMM.” Commonly referred to as the most difficult exam in the world, the Master Sommelier test is so involved and hard that only 279 people have earned the title since it started in 1969. I was about to find out who, if any, of these men, whom I felt like I now knew, had passed. I could not believe how nervous I was.               Wine education has been on my mind a lot these days. I recently completed Wine Folly’s Bordeaux 101 course and found myself torn on whether or not to frame my certificate and place it with my WSET (Wine & Spirit Education Trust) Level 1 and 2 certificates. As I contemplated to frame or not to frame, I was inundated with the following quest...
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