Greetings, oh-so-recently-stuffed-to-the-gills gourmands!

Rather than hand out badges and ratings this long holiday weekend, I am taking a slightly different angle on the wine recommendations in honor of the most-dreaded of post-holiday excursions: shopping on Black Friday.

Today, you can head over to The Wine Crush Blog anytime after 9:30 AM CT and read my (acerbic) take on what wines to pair with your Black Friday shopping!

For those of you who are humorless (which in all likelihood are those of you who’ve stumbled onto this blog accidentally while searching for wine magazine subscriptions on Google), please note that today’s article on The Wine Crush Blog is not meant in any way to resemble any writing even remotely meant to be serious.

I hope you enjoy the edgy-but-humorous diversion as your body slowly purges itself of tryptophan!

Cheers!

I love Autumn (Fall colors & Football!), but I hate at least three things whose approaches are heralded by the falling leaves:

1. Raking those falling leaves
2. Thanksgiving / Holiday food & wine pairings
3. The Dallas Cowboys

Since I find numbers one and three above so unpalatable, let’s talk about number two.

Holiday wine pairings are one of those things that prove immensely divisive among wine geeks. On the one hand, when you enjoy a subject passionately you want to help people when they ask you about it. On the other hand, the topic is not only a culinary landmine (see “bottom lines” below), but it’s treatment is boringly repetitive year-after-year (though some year-on-year takes are done well); the attempts to make it interesting can backfire so badly that the authors attempts at making the subject creative end up looking more like obligatory acts of desperation.

The bottom lines with holiday wine pairings are a) your preference trumps any recommendations and so-called rules, and b) no one wine, variety, or style will match up perfectly with all of the tasty but crazy epicurean sh*t that will appear on your tables during the holiday season, because there’s simple too much variety.

Still, many folks just want picks to minimize their food-pairing risk during these adventures culinary months, an approach which I can respect. So I’m gonna let you all in on a little secret for maximizing your chances of holiday wine-and-food pairing success…

Read the rest of this stuff »

Just about every year around St. Valentine’s Day, I remind people that wine knowledge makes you appear sexier.

In the past, I’ve cited three (mostly) scientific sources to bolster that viewpoint:

According to a survey jointly sponsored by the Australian Wine Council and on-line dating service Match.com, having a healthy knowledge of the world’s most romantic beverage makes you more attractive, with those people preferring Italian wines being viewed as particularly “sexy” and “stylish.”

Wine X Magazine (as reported by autumnilia) backs up the “wine = sexier” conclusion in an interview with sexpert Dr. Ruth, who tells us that wine is an essential element of foreplay (she prefers Beaujolais Nouveau, gewurztraminer, and CA white, so those may be some of the sexiest wine choices, seeing as how she’s a sexpert and whatnot- just sayin’).

If you’re totally desperate on this most Hallmark of holidays, Yahoo! Answers has a thread about what wine choices make a drinking partner appear the most attractive. Chianti and Sake got the nods there.

Considering, however, that 1WineDude.com readers are smarter than the average bears and don’t even flinch in the face of heady scientific inquiry and statistical analysis, I offer empirical evidence in support of the above claim, from my own experience.

How else can you explain how a short, goofy-looking nerd like me scored this babe?  Inset is a picture of Mrs. Dudette taken within the last few months (which is after having born a child – sure, that baby was on the small side, but still…). She’s the gears in the Roberts family machine, the sunshine on my grapes, the `82 for my Lafite.  And she’s no dummy so something had to convince her that I was worth putting up with.

The only logical explanation is that my wine smarties made me appear sexier to her (being in a rock band probably didn’t hurt either – hey, just look at any pictures of me, I needed all the help I could get!).

Cheers – and may you be lucky in wine and love!

(image: courtesy of Celeste Guliano Photography)

I mean, who doesn’t feel like this at least once during the rush of the holiday season, right?

Wishing you and yours a safe, jolly, and wine-filled holiday!

Cheers!