Introduction

About 12 years ago, my wife returned home raving about a wine that she had drunk at a friend’s house. At the time, we lived in Maine, and purchasing wines in Maine is not easy – they did not (and still do not) allow direct importation of wines, and wholesale distribution is limited so that the selection is not the best. The result was that we were frustrated in our ability to buy wines that we wanted to try. I work for a company based in the bay area, and made frequent business trips to California. On one of these trips, my wife came with me, and we visited the winery which had created the wine which she had liked (Joseph Phelps Winery, the wine was ‘Le Mistral’, probably one of their first vintages of that wine). We joined their wine club, and arranged to have wines shipped to an address in New Hampshire where we could drive to collect our illicit booty.

Over the past several years, we joined a few other clubs associated with wineries that we liked, and continued to circumvent Maine law until last year, when I was relocated to California. Wines no longer have to be shipped to us (of the five wineries where we are members, four are within driving distance). In addition there are events hosted by several of the local wineries, which give us the opportunity to try out even more wines.

My intention with this blog is to put down my notes and impressions of the wines that we (my wife Sharon, and I) drink, and some of the events that we attend. Neither of us have any formal training in food or wine, we just go by what we like, tempered by what we can afford.