drink more wine

I’ve found a shiraz that I can drink without getting knocked on my ass! For some reason shiraz has always thrown me for a loop, but the one we had the other night left me with no hangover and no real punch-drunk feeling whatsoever. I drank two glasses and probably could’ve had another two if I’d felt like it.

Hopefully another shiraz or two (or three) will present itself for my consumption now!

This is what I’m reduced to at the moment.

But, it’s drinkable, I’m not gagging, and it’s not turning my tongue green afterwards.

I quite liked Target’s cabernet, but the cab/shriaz mix left a lot to be desired. I don’t know what it is about shiraz, but three sips and I’m shit-faced for hours afterwards. At least I know what to avoid . . .

Well, I’m still not a fan of chardonnay.

I guess I just expect white wine to be sweeter because it isn’t red. I don’t know.

I guess this just tells me what I’ve been thinking all along: I need to drink more red than white . . .

Usually, the holidays are the time when I really do get to sample better wines and have a good time doing so.

Unfortunately, this was the year in which both my wife and I had bronchitis over Christmas.

I had part of one glass Christmas night, but it was very heavy, and since food wasn’t tasting right to me all day, the wine tasted like Robitussen.

By New Year’s I’d recovered sufficiently that I could down two Bloody Marys and some champagne, so I guess this means that I can now resume the wine-drinking as well!

This was part of our anniversary gift from my parents. Very good.

I’ve missed wine-haven’t had too much during the final weeks of my wife’s pregnancy just in case I needed to drive her to the hospital-but now I can start up again. It was so good that I probably drank a bit too much of it last night, but totally worth it!

It’s not just a case of drinking more wine, I’d also like to drink better wine. I have no problem with two-buck Chuck (or, in actuality, given this state and Cuyahoga County’s arcane alcohol taxation laws, three-and-a-half-buck Chuck), but I do want to expand my palette once my wallet allows me to. I really don’t want to be a sommelier or wine snob or anything like that—I know what I like and what I don’t like and I don’t need to know the official reasons for why I like and don’t like what I like and don’t like (whew). But I would like to try different varieties and expand on what I already know. One cannot live on two-buck Chuck and Rosemount’s riesling/traminer mix alone.