Friday, January 9, 2009

Noble Resolutions

I've really never been one for New Year's resolutions.  The dead of winter does not seem to me to be a natural time to get your life together.  Who wants to start eating healthy food and working out when the weather dictates that you should be hunkering down and eating food that will provide you with insulation?

But that said, I do have one...let's call it an aspiration rather than a resolution:  to be more thoughtful about the wine that I drink going forward.

Now I was actually given a bar a few years back (a wooden table thing with wine shelves, I'm not referring to a bar bar here), along with a few sets of Reidel wine glasses.  The bar can accommodate 24 bottles of wine (and the glasses).  However, at any one time it holds an average of two bottles.  What this means is that I never have what I'm in the mood to drink (want a minerally white?  well, I have a dusty bottle of chianti over here), and if I go out to buy wine, I just swing by whatever store is near, blindly pick a few bottles (sometimes based on little blurbs posted) and generally am vaguely dissatisfied with whatever I have bought (except if I've bought it at Winesby.com of course)

But I have a plan.  I will make wine decisions outside of the store, based on the musings and recommendations of oeniphiles whose taste I respect.  But where might one find these experts you ask?  I have two sources that I have become very excited about of late.

First, the blog Good Wines Under $20.  I love this guy.  There's something quite compelling about the way that he writes, but beyond that, I'm always excited to try whatever bottle it is that he's featuring.  Plus I'm very into his wine book club idea.  If the library had his latest selection, I would have been all over it.

Also, I have recently rediscovered a newsletter that I used to receive (and apparently still do receive, I just hadn't checked my old email in quite some time...several years to be exact).  Laura Holmes is the woman behind Gourmet Grrrl, and although she also writes about food (and does it pretty well), I think she really shines when it comes to wine.  I fell a little in love with her after reading her "bubbly for the holidays" issue a couple of weeks ago (I am such a sucker for pink champagne it's just ridiculous) and have been hooked ever since.

And, as if Wine.com had read my mind with regards to my new wine purchasing habits, I just got an offer in my inbox for unlimited shipping from them for $49 per year!  $4 a month...even if you're a very moderate wine drinker it seems like quite the deal to me.

So I'll see how this little experiment goes...I'm hoping that I have sufficient emotional strength to stick with my very strict drinking schedule.

4 comments:

Terry at Blue Kitchen said...

This sounds like an excellent resolution, Laura! Another way I've had luck finding good wine is going into a wine store I like, finding a salesperson and describing what I like in wines and how much I want to spend. That pretty much always works.

Laura said...

True, that definitely works in my favorite stores. But I live far from those stores and can't usually just pop in. I think I need to start buying in bulk or something. I just never have anything good sitting around the house and it's starting to depress me!

Laura said...

How are you feeling by the way? Has the cold subsided?

Terry at Blue Kitchen said...

Thanks for asking, Laura. Still pretty lousy, but I've almost made it through the work week now and can properly collapse tonight after dinner out. The place we're going is a tiny cafe literally under an el station stop on my way home, so minimal energy will be required.

Regarding the wine buying situation, get one of these handy dandy wine totes from Trader Joe's. Makes it relatively easy to haul six bottles at a time. Well, except for the part where it makes one arm longer than the other if you don't remember to keep switching hands.

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