Wannabe Wino Wine Blog

About a month ago, Josh of Pinotblogger issued a challenge: write a post about two things, one, why are you passionate about wine and why you blog about it and two, take a bottle of wine and talk about what a wine writer’s responsibility is in the realm of prescribing how the wine is made or is the responsibility simply to review the wine in the bottle?  You can read all the details here.

Now, I have no interest in being entered to win myself, but Josh has a rubric of how much others may win based on how many people enter, so I’ve decided to write a post to up the number of entries so a fellow blogger will have a chance to win more money!  The money is split—half the pot goes directly to the winning blogger and half is to be used to pay for that blogger to attend some course that will further their wine education.  Awesome, and good luck to my fellow wine bloggers.

I started Wannabe Wino Wine Blog a little less than 3 years ago. It’s a passion in and of itself.  As I’ve stated many times, I don’t make money from writing this blog and I don’t intend to. I write it for myself and for anyone else who may stumble upon my little wine blog world and wants to know more about the wines I love.  Wine has been my drink of choice since I pretty much knew what wine was, though at the time I certainly wasn’t drinking much of anything I would consider worth the calories these days.

As I detailed in my last WBW post, wine and love are intertwined in my mind, and every time I share a glass with my husband, I’m reminded of all the good times we’ve had together and all the good times yet to come.  But what actually inspired Wannabe Wino? Ultimately, it came out of a desire to share information about the small family wineries in California that we discovered on our honeymoon.  While my scope is a bit broader today, though California probably still makes up about 80% of what I write about, the blog was born of a dearth of information on the internet about the David Coffaros, the Mounts Family Wineries, the Mauritsons, etc.  When we arrived home from our honeymoon with 12+ cases of wine, I immediately headed to the internet to find out what I could about what I was drinking.  And it just wasn’t there.  Even today, nearly three years later, I often I find I am the only one, or one of the lone voices writing about the wine we cracked open that night.  So it drives me on because I think more people should have the joy that comes in a glass of finely crafted Zinfandel.  Or Pinot Noir. Or Grenache. Or, or, or…well, you get the point.  But I also recognize that many folks are simply looking for an inexpensive decent everyday wine, so I look for those as well, because let’s face it, most folks aren’t cracking open the $20+ bottles every night!

Now, onto the next part of the question…is it a wine writer’s job to prescribe how a wine is made or to just review what’s in the bottle.  This is an easy one for me, I don’t even need to open a bottle to talk about my thoughts on this one.  But I’ll tell you about a sparkler I really enjoy that we opened last night for a Ribs and Rosé tasting I hosted.  I proved a bottle of the Louis Bouillot Cremant de Bourgogne Rosé that I’ve picked up multiple times at Total Wine for $16.99.  Now, I’m no expert (really, at all) in French wines nor in sparkling wines.  But I love this wine, I think it’s a great bargain, and I recommend it all the time.  It’s crisp, dry, and refreshing, and goes great with everything.  I’d drink a bottle a day if I didn’t crave variety in my wine selection.  But I’m not a winemaker.  I don’t think it’s my place to decide how this wine or any other should be made.  I’ll happily tell you what I found in the bottle and what I enjoyed or didn’t about a particular wine, but I’m not here to impose my palate or tastes on anyone.  Everyone’s palate is different, and wine is art.  I’m not a huge modern art fan (I’ll admit, I don’t get it) but others love it and some artist took the time and care to create it.  So I’ll tell you a wine is not my style (NMS) if I’m drinking something that’s not to my taste, or I’ll tell you I think it sucked if I honestly think it’s flawed, but a wine with too much oak and butter? Simply not my style…but you may like it.

Filed under: Misc, Pinot Blogger, Wine |