Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Understanding Wine

One thing I would like to know a lot more about, but hardly know anything, is wine. I do know that I love drinking it, but I would never, ever consider myself anything close to a connoisseur.

My wedding shower is 2 weekends away (yay!), and the theme is a "Wine and Cheese Tasting." My maid of honor (my sister) knows me so well! :) Obviously, I don't need to show off my wine knowledge at the shower, but it would be nice to know at least something about wine! I'm not even sure if I have down the basics! So, I am looking for suggestions on how to increase my general knowledge of wine. I realize that there is a ton to know about wine and a lot of the learning comes from tasting, but any recommendations of books, websites, blogs, and other resources would be greatly appreciated! Even personal tips, tricks, stories, etc. would be helpful. Has anyone ever taken a wine course?

Ok, onto the food...

My afternoon snack is an orange and Fage with raisins and a packet of honey (Starbucks contraband). Sorry that there isn't a photo of the Fage, raisins, and honey all mixed together. I'm not hungry quite yet for my snack, but wanted to make sure that I got an afternoon post up today. (Don't worry-- I ate lunch yesterday! I just was super busy and lunch was boring!)


Lunch was leftovers from last night's dinner... still yummy 19 hours later!


Up close and personal with lunch...


Lunch also included a Van's Organic blueberry waffle with peanut butter spread on top. The waffle flavor was just a light taste of blueberry. I don't like that strong, artificial blueberry flavor that some frozen waffles have to them, but these Van's blueberry waffles had just the right amount.

6 Comments:

Jess said...

Try a couple of wine tasting as different vineyards and ask them to tell you all about the wine. It's super helpul! I live in Virginia, vineyards are everywhere and so much fun!

RhodeyGirl/Sabrina said...

before I went to my first wine tasting I did a google search and read as much as I could. Here are a couple of sites I found helpful:

http://www.2basnob.com/tasting-wine.html

http://www.wineintro.com/basics/

After living in Florence for a year and going to about 50 different small vineyards my best suggestion is to just go with what you like! Smell the wine, taste the wine (let it linger on your tongue), swallow and see if you like the aftertaste. If you are going to have someone there you can surely ask tons of questions, and if not maybe the hostess could type up a sheet with a little blurb about each of the wines you are going to taste? If you google the actual wine you can usually find a really good description!

Anonymous said...

Irbas,

Thank you for the links!!!

LizNoVeggieGirl said...

What a fun theme for your upcoming wedding shower!! Can't say that I've taken a wine course, considering I'm only 20, haha :0)

Pasta ALWAYS tastes better the next day - yum!

Anonymous said...

mmmmmm now i want a waffle!

i read a couple books last year when i "made" wine at a local wine room with my co-workers... but unfortunately i dont remember what they were... your wedding shower sounds so neat! love the theme!

Anonymous said...

I heart wine!!! I like this site a lot. On the left sidebar there are links for "White Wine" and "Red Wine." It seems kind of basic but I definitely learned more upon reading about each grape individually:

http://www.2basnob.com/wine-introduction.html