"Wine is sunlight...held together by Water"
-Galileo Galilei
I'm going to start this off with admitting that I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. I've grown up with wine (I'm Italian...it's sort of the same as having a multivitamin every day), but I never really understood what it was I was drinking. What did they mean when they said this Pinot Noir had a light strawberry flavor with strong tannins, versus this one, which tasted more like plums with toasted nut aromas? Wine connoisseurs, as truly refined as they may be, always seemed to speak in this strange code..this vino-lingo that I was not privy to and thus did not understand. I lived most of my life just assuming that my phantom palate was either not there at all or, at best, was broken (if that is even possible).
It wasn't until I started working in restaurants--simple Italian places on up to fine-dining that I began to understand. I was, as it turns out, drinking the wrong wines.
In college, I was on a budget. Three dollar bottles of wine gave you a buzz and didn't make you full or bloated the way beer always seems to, and hell, I didn't know the difference, anyway! I knew from the movie Sideways that I wanted to like Pinot Noir...but I had no idea why. This was mostly because, regardless of what I was drinking, the tannins were too strong for my infantile palate, it was cheaply made, and I always wound up with a headache the next day, anyway. And yet--in my consistent attempts at pretending I knew what I was doing--I drank it anyway. Like so many novice vino drinkers, I swirled my glass, I looked with glazed eyes at the "legs" on the rim, sniffed whatever it was that I was supposed to be sniffing, and swirled it in my mouth until my tongue felt like it was on fire. Then I would repeat it, glance at the bottle for whatever flavors I was supposed to find, and agree or disagree with whoever I was with about what they detected from it.
I have, at last, grown up. I no longer buy three dollar bottles of wine (you're better off going for the cheap domestic six pack at that point), and I have started delving into other types of wine...reds...whites...even sangria (which I now know I hate). While I am certainly no wine-expert, I'd like to be. And the few definite things I've figured out about my preferences have encouraged me to seek as much information as possible--and god help the hangover that I'm sure will ensue.
This is a website with really no further purpose beyond talking about wine and (hopefully) learning more through people's comments on my various blogs. Think of it as a wine journal, if you will. I'll probably end up posting wine artwork eventually, but for the time being it's more of a collection of notes from a half-tipsy novice. I hope you enjoy. If you have favorite wines, tips, recipes, etc, please feel free to share them through comments.
Namaste!
Kara Adamo
Kara's Creations
Follow me on Twitter:
It wasn't until I started working in restaurants--simple Italian places on up to fine-dining that I began to understand. I was, as it turns out, drinking the wrong wines.
In college, I was on a budget. Three dollar bottles of wine gave you a buzz and didn't make you full or bloated the way beer always seems to, and hell, I didn't know the difference, anyway! I knew from the movie Sideways that I wanted to like Pinot Noir...but I had no idea why. This was mostly because, regardless of what I was drinking, the tannins were too strong for my infantile palate, it was cheaply made, and I always wound up with a headache the next day, anyway. And yet--in my consistent attempts at pretending I knew what I was doing--I drank it anyway. Like so many novice vino drinkers, I swirled my glass, I looked with glazed eyes at the "legs" on the rim, sniffed whatever it was that I was supposed to be sniffing, and swirled it in my mouth until my tongue felt like it was on fire. Then I would repeat it, glance at the bottle for whatever flavors I was supposed to find, and agree or disagree with whoever I was with about what they detected from it.
I have, at last, grown up. I no longer buy three dollar bottles of wine (you're better off going for the cheap domestic six pack at that point), and I have started delving into other types of wine...reds...whites...even sangria (which I now know I hate). While I am certainly no wine-expert, I'd like to be. And the few definite things I've figured out about my preferences have encouraged me to seek as much information as possible--and god help the hangover that I'm sure will ensue.
This is a website with really no further purpose beyond talking about wine and (hopefully) learning more through people's comments on my various blogs. Think of it as a wine journal, if you will. I'll probably end up posting wine artwork eventually, but for the time being it's more of a collection of notes from a half-tipsy novice. I hope you enjoy. If you have favorite wines, tips, recipes, etc, please feel free to share them through comments.
Namaste!
Kara Adamo
Kara's Creations
Follow me on Twitter:
