Oh Wine, How I Love Thee (in moderate amounts!)

It's no secret to those who know me well that I enjoy wine. Now, I don't know as much about wine as some folks, but I know what I like and why I like it. And I'm learning more and more all the time about how wine is made, the grapes it comes from, how to taste it, etc. Since I never really had any wine (or alcohol, for that matter) until I turned 21, I've had to increase my knowledge exponentially since then!

I first started drinking wine on a regular basis (like once a week) with my roommates in my house in SC the last year that I lived there. We cooked dinner together once a week or so, and would open a bottle of wine to go with it. At that point, my knowledge of wine/food pairing was limited to red with beef and white with chicken and seafood (which, while it's somewhat accurate, isn't so much a hard and fast rule like I thought). We would get a $6 bottle and have some with dinner. Oddly enough, you can buy wine in the grocery store in SC (unlike in MD where you have to go to a liquor store), so we would pick up whatever was cheap at the store. I'm such a wine snob now that I don't think I could drink much of whatever we had then!

My current roommate Maureen knows a lot about wine, and has taught me a lot as well. I read stuff about wine, and my boyfriend (can I still say it's weird to write that!) knows a lot about wine as well. So, I'm surrounded by folks who like good wine. Maureen and I go through a couple of bottles a week with dinner, post-work, etc. So, when our local wine store has their dollar days sale (a dollar over cost...so no retail mark-up), we often buy a case or two since it's a good deal. This time, we went a bit overboard and bought about 4 cases.



That is our table once we took it all out of the boxes. Yikes! This time, I also bought mostly higher end wine (like $15-$20 a bottle normal retail). Maureen averaged about the same. Since we have a lot of parties where we just tell people to grab a bottle off the rack and open it, Mo decided that we should write the price we paid for the wine in paint pen on the bottom of the bottle. That way, we can say, "Pick one under $12!". Parties are not the place to drink really nice wine...that's best for a good dinner!

Wine rack in the kitchen

I also got another wine rack for the basement to store "extra" wine (the bottles that won't fit on our rack in the kitchen) and wine we are storing to age and and drink in a few years (or ten).

To be super-organized, I put tags on the bottles that are aging with the name of who owns it, what it is, and if I knew, the price paid for it on the back of the tag. Cool, huh?

Here are a few of my favorites that were purchased:

These two are kind of a pair (from the same producer but different vineyards) and will live on the rack for about 10 more years



This is a nice dry rose that will go well with a seafood grill night on the deck

This went into my homemade red sauce yesterday...and the rest went into my tummy with a spaghetti and meatball dinner. Yum!

A nod to my Charlestonish roots


For a nice Italian dinner

Aging on the rack for awhile

A Spanish Rioja...a nod to the Spanish branch of my family (Hi Jeff and Sara!)

Tasty port.

This ought to last us until summertime, I hope! I prefer red wine in the winter, so we'll have to consume that first..and try the whites once we hit summer!