Random Oenophile

The most educational type of wine tasting is the blind tasting, where, stripped of preconceptions associated with type, you can really get into the characteristics of the wine itself. You can also find out how much you really don’t know. This was my experience at Java Monkey’s most recent tasting. 1. Martin Hugl Gruner Veltliner, …

Greetings, fellow Oenophiles! Apologies for the slow blogging this week — it’s been busy, and then my computer decided to crash out on me. Thanks to tech support (i.e., computer genius husband), it’s working again. Last Saturday, we had the pleasant surprise of a visit from my parents. They got stuck in Atlanta thanks to …

ABC’s stands for “Anything but Chardonnay or Cabernet,” and this is what we got. Jess and wine rep Chuck (who will introduce himself as “Sacajawea,” but don’t be fooled) put together an interesting and tasty program. It could also be dubbed as the night for “Wines that are hard to spell.” Minini Orvieto 2006, Orvieto …

Meinhardt Vineyards and Winery, located in Statesboro with a tasting room in the Downtown City Market of Savannah (according to their brochure), makes only one kind of wine: Muscadine. Hubby speculated this before we went into the tasting room, but as the Random-Oenophile who eschews snobbery and pretention, I felt it my duty, nay, obligation …

Saturday morning we woke up to the smells of breakfast: the salty tang of ham, the mouth-watering fruit topping for the waffles, and coffee, which, sadly, was nowhere in reach until we got dressed and went downstairs. The Foley House offered a choice of one of three breakfasts, the Basic Foley, which was typical eggs/grits/breakfast …

As most of you have probably noticed, it’s Monday. The blog entries are on a slight delay due to the lack of laptops while traveling. I was on vacation from both careers, writing and my day job, so I decided to go tech-free except for cell phone in case of family emergencies. We had hubby’s …

Greetings, fellow oenophiles! Just arrived back from a romantic weekend in Savannah with the hubby, who scored major husband points with the whole trip. I’ll spare you the mushy details that I’ll use to make my female co-workers jealous tomorrow, but I do recommend the Romance Package at the Foley House Inn , although the …

I apologize to those who have obsessively been clicking “refresh” since Thursday evening in anticipation of my review. Before I talk about the wines themselves, it’s important to operationalize our terms, which is a fancy way of saying, let’s figure out what these things really are. Syrah: aka Shiraz, a red grape grown in France’s …

I had a few moments to relax when I got home from work today, so I picked up the paper and went immediately to the Living Section to catch up on the hijinks of Garfield, Cathy, and the like (I get my news from NPR). The Jumble, which is a word puzzle that’s solved by …

With today being President’s Day, I thought it would be fitting to honor one of the founding fathers of both the country and viticulture in America: Thomas Jefferson (1743-1846). Granted, the founding of the United States went a little better than the whole wine thing due to the sensitivity of the European grape vines (Vitis …