More Tipsy Musings — California Central Coast, Day Two

I wrote this on Tuesday and am posting this from our hotel room in San Francisco. We’re headed north today to Healdsburg, and then to Sonoma tomorrow. I really did mean to post this earlier this week, but I was busy being a psychologist rather than an oenophile. Okay, I was drinking wine as well

California Dreamin’: Central Coast Trip, Day One

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My brain is weird. I never have stress dreams about work during the week, but just let me have a long weekend or vacation, and three to four nights in, I’ll have work-related dreams. Typically it’s some sort of scheduling problem, like three new patients show up at once, or like this morning, a particularly

Product Review: NewAir AW-181E 18 Bottle Wine Fridge

When we were first approached in January about reviewing the NewAir AW-181E 18 bottle wine fridge, Hubby and I had two reactions: 1.  Is someone really going to send us a wine fridge? 2.  How the heck does one review a wine fridge? Well, the answer to the first one was yes, rather quickly, and

Pasta Project Parts 2 and 3: It’s About More than the Dangly Bits

I’m making turkey lasagna tonight.  We ended up with a little extra homemade sauce and not much room in our freezer for it, so the next logical step is, of course, to turn it into something yummy.  I have a confession, though…  I will be using boxed noodles. “What?” you say.  “You were off to

The Great Pasta Project: Attempt One

When making pasta, be sure to have plenty of booze on hand. For those who are wondering, being half Italian does not automatically confer pasta making skills upon you.  My first couple of tries at fresh homemade pasta resulted in thick lumps of chewy dough with sweet potato in the middle that I euphemistically called

Last-Minute Holiday Gift Ideas: Wine! (Yes, you have to share)

Luckily these bottles were empty before the SEC Championship. Typically picking up Holiday gifts at the grocery store is considered, if you’ll forgive the pun, in poor taste.  What could grocery store shelves hold of any value beyond the tan and gold boxes of candy with maybe two edible pieces in them?  Okay, I’ll always

Book Review: The Curious World of Wine

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On the eve of the Decatur Wine Festival, I brought Richard Vine’s The Curious World of Wine (Perigee/Penguin, 2012) with me to Café Lily in case I had time to read the end of it before meeting a friend.  Allen Sanders, the wine expert, noticed it, and we had a great conversation about Zinfandels.  So,

Winery review: Youngberg Hill

As always after a wine bloggers conference, I sit back and ponder what kind of wine blogger I aspire to be and how to make that happen.  The first thing that comes to mind is, “more consistent,” and believe me, Hubby and I really appreciate our readers who stop by to see if we’ve posted

2012 Pinot Smackdown at Purple Corkscrew

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As we learned last week at the wine bloggers’ conference in Oregon, Pinot Noir grapes tend to reflect where they’re grown down to the soil type and the weather.  In 2010, a couple of oenophile friends of ours decided their lives needed a little excitement, so they pitted Pinot Noir wines from around the world

Georgia Wineries: Visited, Revisited, and Reviewed

Mountains Pair Well with Wine In anticipation of this year’s Wine Bloggers Conference, Hubby and I drove through Georgia wine country last weekend to pick up a few bottles to share and more to drink ourselves.  We had been to several of the wineries before and decided to try out a few new ones.  I