Yes, Winery-Sage.com is a site dedicated to wine, but we like beer too. For the Super Bowl, here are some useful tips to help you decide whether wine or beer will be your beverage of choice.
Old Vine Zinfandel
So what does “Old” in “Old Vine” really mean? While on a recent tasting trip, we were in the Alfaro Family Vineyards tasting room, a winery in the Santa Cruz Mountains and the subject of Old Vine grapes arose with another couple with whom we had struck up a conversation. After agreeing that Old Vine was an ambiguous term, one of our new found drinking buddies suggested that we blog about it. I suppose I should try and be more creative and come up with my own topics, but this seemed like a good one and, finding really good blog topics can be difficult, so I have no problem tapping into others’ creativity!
Old is a relative term depending upon the reference. I suppose there’s lots of ways to try and arrive at a meaningful definition. I halfheartedly tried a few in an effort to apply some sort of scientific method but really didn’t expect them to contribute anything meaningful. Sadly, I can now attest that they were even less useful than I thought they might be – quite a feat when your expectations were virtually nonexistent to start with. Here are several that I tried:
It’s the Night Before Christmas and you’re a busy host,So grab a Barbera, Pinot Noir, or Tempranillo,
And enjoy our holiday treat next to the fire’s inferno,
It’s a Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good naught,
Unless the present you brought us is a Sauvingon Blanc!
Every wine lover can appreciate a nice bottle of vino as a gift for the holidays. In lieu of actual wine, a nice wine accessory can even work in a pinch. Gifting a unique wine rack, wine charms, a fine new decanter, a new wine cellar in the basement (if you’re lucky …) can put a smile on any wine spectator’s face. It’s not too hard to get someone a great wine gift!
However, there are SOME wines you don’t want to surprise someone with during the holidays, or really, any time during the year. To help you avoid giving out a poor wine gift this season, Winery-Sage has produced a list of the top five wines which should never be gifted. Hoping to provide a little humor during your holiday shopping, you can use this to guide your gift buying and avoid shocking your hosts at a holiday party. You’ll thank us later! Read on for the suggestions.
What does one do when your youngest kid goes off to college leaving you and your wife as empty nesters for the first time in your marriage? Aside from referring to yourself as “one,” likely a sure sign of impending senility, apparently you start a reference site for wine. Isn’t that what every couple with backgrounds in Math, Business, and Retail Sales does? No? Damn … we should have realized that sooner then.
When we got married, my new wife, Karen and I each brought “a little something extra” to the marriage. She contributed a 7-year-old boy; I contributed a 3-year-old black lab (we still debate about whose contribution was better behaved). On our first anniversary, almost to the day, our youngest son came along, so pretty much since we’ve been married, life has revolved around kids and dogs. Time quickly flew by and the 7 year old turned 25, the old dog lived to 14 and passed away and the newborn hit 17 so it was time for the obligatory College review trips. He had made it abundantly clear (roughly on a daily basis) that he wanted to be far enough away so we couldn’t drop in on him no matter how many assurances we gave that we didn’t particularly want to because we planned on having a life too.
Most of the schools that he wanted to visit were at least 3 hours south of our home in the San Jose area (California for the out of state readers). On the way down, we’d be passing through Santa Lucia Highlands, Paso Robles, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Barbara. The light bulb went off – hey those are all good wine areas. We could stop and do some tasting but we didn’t have a lot of time so I wanted to do some research to find the type of wineries that we like. Now, I love living in the 21st Century – the Internet is the repository of man’s accumulated wisdom, all available at your fingertips. It shouldn’t be that tough to find just the type of winery that we wanted to visit so I started my search.