This group of wine bibbers I’ve fallen in with is serious about wine and very knowledgeable. Yikes! I like wine — it’s fun and the more I know, the more I like — and also the more I can appreciate my choices. But I am blown away and chagrined by what I don’t know! A few years ago I took three wine courses — two here at the university (UNLV) and one at the (then) Community College. Of the three, the Community College was more in-depth. The first two were fun and interesting and I learned a lot. The third one was scholarly and sort of a prep for the Court of Master Sommeliers test which I never got around to taking. So last Saturday I joined 25 other people at a beautiful home in Northwest Las Vegas for a blind tasting. We tasted 12 wines side-by-side over the course of… Read More »
Blind Wine Tasting
Brazilian wine
Several people asked if I went wine tasting when I was in Brazil on vacation. The answer is, unfortunately, no. My friend Jean, with whom we were staying, had come across a Groupon for a wine tasting. (Jean loves Groupons and finds the most intriguing things to do such as the boat tour of the harbor at Rio de Janeiro. A huge harbor!) Unfortunately, it was for the very night we were leaving to go home. However, we did have some Brazilian wine and although it was perfectly fine, it wasn’t any different from what one would pick up in a supermarket back in Las Vegas. In fact, we’d picked it up in a supermarket in Rio de Janeiro. Chile, of course, is a famous wine producing region of South America and Argentina makes great Malbec — and at very good prices. Brazil also produces wine and Urugray does, too. But when one thinks… Read More »
Last Year at This Time
It just doesn’t seem possible … last year at this time I was looking forward to Phyllis Diller’s annual Dustbiter’s reunion. The first one she had was on her birthday, July 17, but she quickly realized that everyone was showing up with presents which had not been her intent, so she changed the reunion, decreeing it would always be on the third Sunday in August. In 2012, that was August 19. As it turned out, I was on vacation in mid-August. I’d gone with my friend, Lois, to the country home of her brother & sister-in-law in rural Washington. I would get back to Las Vegas just in time to fly down to L.A. for the weekend. There was so much to do in Washington — golfing, hiking, river rafting, wine tasting and shopping in the quaint town of Winthrop — that checking my e-mails went by the wayside. It wasn’t until two days before we… Read More »
