The Joy of Wine

I recently talked my wife into starting a wine blog, which I've linked to.

Danielle developed a love of wine when she spent a year in Belgium during high school as an exchange student. One of her host families had a real wine cellar and her host dad introduced her to a real appreciation for wine which she has cultivated since.

I came into this story much later when we met at the beginning of my junior year of college. Even before we started dated she began introducing me to wine. At the time, I still though Rolling Rock was good beer so she had her work cut out for her. She started by introducing me to sweeter white wines, like Rieslings. Gradually, she got me into Chardonnes and other whites.

It was when we made the jump to reds that she had me hooked. Merlots, Zinfandels, Syrah, I love them all. Now, a decade after first meeting Danielle, I count Port amongst my favorite drinks. I have a favorite wine, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, a mixture of Grenache, Cinsault, Mourvedre, Muscardine, Syrah, Terret Noir and Vaccarese grades growth in the southern Rhone region of France. Opening a new bottle of wine is exciting for me, something I never would have guessed 10 years age.

Sadly, I don't have the palette to describe in flowery terms what I like about each variety. To be honest, the variety seems to have very little to do with whether or not I like the wine. For this reason, I probably wont post much on her site. I guess I'm not classy enough.

The Wonders of the Internet

I haven't been posting much lately. Part of this is because I'm lazy, but there's also another reason. Lately, I've found myself spending a lot of time on a few blogs of interest to me. The first is "The Mighty Middle", the second is "Donklephant". They're both have a fairly large readership and opinions on anything to do with politics in the US.

This is important to me because I've been starved for a good political debate. My wife and I see eye to eye on virtually every issue when it comes to politics and religion. In fact we see eye to eye on almost anything in general (yes, we're boring). Also, my wife doesn't keep up with political news. Three kids under three will do that to a woman. So these sites serve a very important purpose: Reviewing someone else's opinion, and deciding it's wrong (or not).

The writers for both these sites are very reasonable and their posts are well thought out. So I usually don't have much to object to. Like the writers, I am a moderate politically. I support a conservative fiscal policy and a liberal social policy. In other words the government should spend less money and butt the hell out of my life. If I have an issue with something these writers put forward, it's usually a matter of degrees rather than outright disagreement. It's the comments that are really interesting.

For some reason Blog comments don't seem bound by the usual standards of accuracy, relevancy and courtesy that would bind normal conversation. Reading the comments is like listening to a discussion at a party were everyone is drunk and opinionated. People will go on tangents to defend their views, get angry over "attacks" that didn't actually happen and generally make online spectacles of themselves. It makes for good theatre and it's occasionally informative.

So that is why I haven't been writing, that and the fact that I'm trying to actually work at work now that I'm sleeping at night again.

Random note: My wife tonight confessed that she'd rather be the American Idol than the American President. I'm not sure what to make of that statement but I wanted to record it for future reference.

Random note 2: I think BC's loss tonight against Villanova ended any hopes of my wining the office bracket pool. Why do I always set myself up to be disappointed by BC teams? Sure, they used to hook my youth hockey organization up with free tickets to BC hockey games. Does that justify the pain and suffering their football and basketball teams have inflicted upon me as a fan? The irony here is that I went to BU in part because BC rejected a good friend of mine, and I still root for them. There must be a 12 step program for this.