foodwineclick

A little over two years ago, I decided I would really like to learn more about appreciating wine.  I had spent my whole adult life at the level of “I liked it” or “no good”.  However, I could never tell you anything about what the wine smelled or tasted like.  My wife and I drank maybe 4 bottles of wine in a year.

A favorite food writer of mine, Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl, wrote a beginner’s guide to wine two years ago.  The book is “Drink This – Wine Made Simple“. So I asked for the book for Christmas.  The most expensive Christmas gift I ever received (in hindsight)!  Today, we always have a couple of bottles of wine open.  We drink a glass of wine with our dinner meal every day of the week.  From 4 bottles of wine a year to 4 bottles of wine a week!

Dara walks the reader through one grape at a time.  Chapters are dedicated to teaching the reader about one grape, but all versions: New World, Old World, inexpensive, premium.  Perhaps her best advice in the whole book is to ignore every other grape when you are studying one.  Walk into the wine shop and say “this store sells Syrah, and things that are invisible to me.”  By concentrating on one grape at a time, you break down a big challenge into a manageable one.  Perfect!

I studied the book, marked it up, and we have tried most all of the grapes/chapters.

After two years and 500+ wines in our database, I’d like to share some of what I have learned.