One of the lines in my “You know you’re a wine nut if …” is “You are endlessly amused by the fact that people confuse Semillon and St.Emilion.” When I wrote that (a year or two before I was actually certifiably a wine nut) I thought that it would have to be a common mistake. After all, the names look a little similar. Since I wrote that, I’ve made a few further discoveries.
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As my wine collection started to grow, I began to be concerned about the quality of my storage facilities, by which I mean the closet in my office. You see, I read somewhere that if you allow a nice Cabernet to spend any time at all over, say, 20 degrees Celsius, you might end up with a not-so-nice Cabernet. This concerned me quite a bit, since I tend to like my house a little over 20 degrees most of the time. In fact, what I read was that you should really store wine between about 10 and 15 degrees, which, unless you happen to have an actual cellar, means you have to buy one of those wine refrigeration units. Not real cheap.
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Each time I open a bottle of wine, I try to save three things – the cork, the capsule, and the label. While most folks know what the cork and the label are, most people seem to not know what the capsule is – it’s that little doohickey that gets put onto the bottle over top of the cork. These are usually plastic or some type of metal foil, and often have the logo of the winery on them.
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I’ve alluded to it a bunch of times so I suppose it’s time to tell you what I’ve been talking about. I live in Kentucky, the state that Prohibition forgot. Apparently, Kentucky and Utah are the only two states left in the country that have this sort of restrictive laws when it comes to the sale of alcoholic beverages.
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Several weeks ago, an active owner of Tuscan winery Fattoria di Petroio Pamela Lenzi confessed to me that the sale of Italian olive oil (no fooling, excellent), they sometimes earn more than the export of wine. “Especially hard in Britain. We tried to find partners there, and at first everything seemed to went well, but then they – bang! – And closed “, – said Pamela.
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Well, my pictures did not turn out very well, but the wine was great!

Last year, at the Jessamine Jamboree (the county fair in Jessamine County, Kentucky), we discovered Chrisman Mill Vineyards. We had heard rumors that there was a vineyard in Nicholasville, but we were a little skeptical. How can you grow grapes in a state where the weather changes more in a month than it does all year in some states?
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It seems that it’s been more than a year since I wrote anything for this web site. Why that is, it’s hard to say. It’s been a very busy year, and some things end up taking lower priority than others, which is a shame. To be, for a year, in a state where a large number of things take a higher priority than wine, is sad indeed.
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Sage advice, when traveling to certain parts of Mexico, and then there are always the Margaritas. They are smooth, and they say that if you drink enough of them you will see diamonds on the rim of the glass. Of course, this is just before you keel face first into your chili verde.
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They are sharing a drink they call loneliness, but it’s better than drinking alone.

For reasons that are largely none of your business, I find that this evening I am drinking alone. This is actually a good thing, as it means that I might get some writing done, if I don’t get distracted by writing about wine for too long.
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The other night we went out the farm of some friends of ours, and, with dinner, we had a good wine, and a not-so-good wine. We were very glad that we had taken two.

We started the evening by opening a Pinot Noir rose. Yes, a rose. Sorry, I don’t seem to be able to type accented letters. It was a wine from Toad Hollow, which I actually got as a door prize at a wine tasting I attended several months ago.
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