Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

vino, vidi, vici

Victor and I went up to the Maryland Wine Festival today. It was a new experience for me; until I started drinking with Victor I was pretty much a beer person. I said I didn't drink wine because it gave me a headache (and it did. I drank plenty of bottles of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill when I was young, and I always had a headache the next day.)

Anyway, though I have always been a beer person, I am a lot more discriminating with my beer than I was with the Boone's Farm. During the microbrew boom in the early '90s my husband was a brewer (we are no longer married and he no longer makes beer, although the two are not connected) and I learned pretty much by osmosis how to characterize different beers. That turned me into a snob on the one hand, but on the other, guys seem impressed by a woman who orders (and actually drinks) porter.

But back to wine. A couple years ago I took Victor to an Italian restaurant for his birthday and he ordered a bottle of cabernet sauvignon (Beaulieu, I think). I'm not a big Peroni fan, so I joined him in the wine. No headache the next day.

I also started reading the wine column in the Wall Street Journal. (I get it from AvantGo on my PDA.) It struck me then that tasting wine was really no different than tasting beer...or coffee, for that matter...or black cherry Kool Aid. The Kool Aid is just a bit less complex.

I'm a big proponent of "Think globally, eat/drink locally." With beer, you actually want to drink it as fresh as possible (best beer I ever had came right out of the Brite tank at Dixie Brewing Co. in New Orleans...oh wait, I'm back to wine) but since wine ages, it can travel. Still, I like to support local farms and local businesses, so drinking Maryland has plenty of appeal.

There were twelve wineries at the festival this year. My favorites were Boordy , Elk Run, and Deep Creek, but I admit I relied too much on my memory as we went from tent to tent doing the tastings. When it came time to go back and buy bottles, I couldn't remember everything I'd had that I'd liked. Funny how that happened...

One I know I missed was a raspberry dessert wine. There was a reason for the Boone's Farm; I do like the sweet stuff.

Another funny thing happened at the wine festival: I saw one of the company VPs. Apparently he's a woodworker on the weekends, and he was set up there selling his work in the craft section. He told me that the power in my building is back on (we have four buildings) but two others are still out. Looks like I'm back at work on Monday.

That's fine. There's still a whole day left of this weekend, and I have a case of nice wine.

Posted by Nic at September 20, 2003 04:50 PM | TrackBack