Summertime and the drinking is Rosé

With the onset of summer, it is time to put the case for this much maligned style of wine. Many people consider rosé to be unsophisticated, and not for serious wine drinkers. It is all too often associated with slightly sweet wines lacking in flavour and made for easy drinking. Perhaps it is because for many people, their first experience of rosé wine was drinking Mateus rosé back in the days when this wine was produced in a sweeter style than it is today. In fact some of the rosés of southern France and Spain are very complex wines and far removed from the light styles often encountered in Portugal.
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Napoleon Madeira

Morning of Aug. 7, 1815, Napoleon was not super. He slept badly, he was fed up with the sea, and the future seemed to him the same gray as the color of his trousers nankeen, that hold her stomach tight circle as if it were no trousers at all, but the combined forces of the Allies in the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig . “Northumberland” (the ship, vezshy Emperor’s about. St. Helena ) made a stop on the island of Madeira, to replenish food stocks.

Orchardson. Napoleon on the way to the island of St. Helena

Orchardson. Napoleon on the way to the island of St. Helena


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Bacchanalia zero

HISTORICAL CHARACTERS AND WINE, RECREATION AND ENTERTAINMENT

That comes to you son, and asks: “pa, and tell me about the orgy” – what you tell him? But parental authority depends on the little things, like awareness of the ancient orgiastic cults. “I had a friend … So here it is, if what his father asked – always got a full, no discount on childhood response. Ask why airplanes fly – in response to a lecture on aerodynamics. Wondered why the snow white – gets excursion into the visual system of mammals and the physics of light. I’ll try and I in the same style to tell about the orgy (no, not his, but those old).

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Chrisman Mill Vineyards

chrisman_smallWell, 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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Mead

meadsIt 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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Don’t drink the water

main_mexican_wineSage 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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but it’s better than drinking alone

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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One good, one not so good

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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Zinfandel tasting

Wine & History No, this is not yet another treatise on the history of wine. That’s been done enough times. This is just an outgrowth of my random musings as I drink wines.
When I am drinking wine, I tend to think about the fact that when this wine was put into this bottle, the world was a rather different place.
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The wine tasting

Last Sunday, we had the first of what is hopefully a long series of wine tastings. There were several of us – I think that there were 8 of us in all. We gathered at one couple’s home. Each person, or couple, was to bring two wines – one to share, and one for the host. The idea is that we will rotate hosting these, and each time around the host will be able to build their cellar.
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