Quest for the best. One year over 130 wines.

Wine (Photo credit: Uncalno)

2011, one year; over 130 wines.

At the time of course we never knew how many wines we would get to taste. Attending monthly wine classes, being a member of The Wall Street Journal Wine Club, researching independently, shopping sales and receiving as well as sharing wine tips from friends made it fun, informative and challenging. We only had one rule: the Wine Diary would be for wines imbibed at home only.

For the most part we followed this rule only bending it slightly when we discovered a wine out at dinner or attending a social event. For these occasions when we discovered what we thought may be a “keeper” we would search high and low for the same wine, stock it in our cellar [the guest bedroom] and have it once again at home not only obeying our one rule but at the same time confirming we liked it the second time around as much as the first.  Interestingly enough there were a few wines we LOVED the first time and not the second with the same occurring in reverse: disliked at first taste and thinking the second time around “what were we thinking?”.  Hard to explain why but I guess multiple reasons are possible; not in the mood, bad batch, not paired well, temperature etc.

Over 130 wines in one year. Not as difficult as one would think. But now the challenging part; narrowing down the favorite lists.

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2010 resolution for 2011; let’s keep a year long wine diary!

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2010 resolution for 2011; let’s keep a year long wine diary!

It was as easy as that. After about a year of attending monthly wine classes with my better half and best friend I decided we should record every wine we tasted at home and keep a diary of our thoughts.  Everything from WOW to Swill! Thinking back over the last year my unsaid original goal might have been to find tasty wines under $10.  Although we did find some good wines at that price point [and 1 or 2 may make my top ten list] I think a lesson learned was that for my purposes the better wines are in the $12-$18.00 range. Of course my favorite wine of the year is $40.00 a bottle and I just had an incredible Cabernet Sauvignon from California priced at $170.00[!!!] but in a general sense there are excellent wines out there for under 20 bucks.

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To think it only took me 28 years to take a wine class.

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Picture it 1983, or 1984; those days were a bit blurry for one reason or another having nothing to do with wine.  Two fresh-faced twenty-something year olds graduating from university with still not dry business degrees in hand already talking about possibly taking classes again. But of course for fun this time!

The idea would return every year or two in between life’s moments; first jobs, more jobs, townhouses, condo’s, first homes, family, dating, remodeling, more dating, first loves, boyfriends, true loves, partnerships, breakups, good health and bad, widowhood, and this being the short version even a marriage in Vermont [not to each other].

The only real constant in this story other than a thirst for wine is almost 30 years of breakfasts together between friends. Daily when we were in school and every possible Saturday since.

Our motto should have been: With a good breakfast to start off your day and great wine at the end of your day, who needs lunch or dinner!!!

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