Always Time For A Fine Wine
While we are steeped up to our necks in the holidays and the party season is upon us, I paused and noted that most of my friends have all turned to drinking wine. Ah, wine, the nectar of the gods. Current diet and gourmand wisdom is that wine is lower in calories and will not make you as fat as beer. Sigh. I do I love my beer. But I also love my wine. I have been known to keep a box of Franzia Chianti around the house for sipping on. "Heavens, No!" the crowd roars, "Not Franzia! Not wine in a box!" Well, yes it is true. And Chianti is Chianti, is Chianti. I can pay $60.00 for a bottle of Chianti, but why? Well, I have decided that if wine is the spirit of this spirited season, I should learn more about it. The Periodic Table of Wine is a good place to start. A nice chart that guides you through the grapes and varietals of wine. I don't know the prudence of buying wine online, but Wine.com is a good reference site for reviews and information on wine, serving suggestions, tips tricks and all that. There is also some good educational information at The Wine Spectator's online site. Wine Searcher is a nifty search engine that helps you select a wine. I haven't played with it much, but my wine drinking friends might enjoy it. The good folks at The Food Network have a nice wine basics archive and a food/wine pairings section to help serve the right wine with the right food. And if your budget won't allow a Mouton Rothschild then you can always turn to Bum Wines a clever, funny and perhaps frightening review of the low end "fortified" wines : MD20/20, Thunderbird and Night Train, to name just a few. These suggestions just might get me past my love of Franzia Chianti in a box. But then again, maybe not. And because we have been taught for many years that "(everyone sing) The More You Know" For further reading:
posted by majikwah @ 12/26/2003 11:48:00 AM
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