My Corkd Reviews

I don't know much about wine. It used to give me headaches, but I think I drank enough of it to build up my natural resistance to the sulfites (or maybe the alcohol, who knows) so that I can imbibe in peace. Normally when I go out I'll trust Z to make my wine selection (and there is only one per meal, as I'm a lightweight who can't build an alcohol tolerance), as he knows my tastes when it comes to the stuff better than I do; even so, oftentimes I'll just go with beer as it's familiar and predictable and I generally know what's good and what's not.

I decided at some point I wanted to learn about wine, and this has been going on for a while now, except I haven't learned anything aside from which wines in the $3-5 range are happily drinkable (you want Bull's Blood from Trader Joe's and the Big Kahuna from Fresh & Easy... if you're in search of whites, you're on your own), which while important in many ways doesn't quite qualify me as anything close to a connoisseur. I love port and swear by Warres Warrior as my favorite affordable port (Morgado from Trader Joe's is great as a cheaper alternative); I had a 40-yr old Graham's once and it really was fantastic. Otherwise, everything else falls into the drinkable and icky categories, and I've never actually had a wine experience worth remembering. I want to figure out what the fuss is about, so I'm trying to build up the rudimentary knowledge to get there. I want to be able to choose my own red wine to drink with my steak.

Important, somewhat telling confession: I was straightedge for 21 years and vegetarian for six. Yep.

Anyway, after reading a lot of not-quite-useful information, I figured my best plan of attack would be to just keep drinking stuff, except I would keep a log of what I drank so that a) I could remember if it was good or bad; b) I would pay more attention while drinking. I've started a log at corkd (and I have another one at wine log but the interface isn't as pretty), so feel free to check it out and see what I've been tasting. This is probably going to be slow-going, as I have trouble spending more than $10 (sometimes it's hard to even spend $5, which is funny because I will easily spend that much on a 12 oz bottle of good beer) on a bottle, and I don't start a new bottle until the one I've been drinking before has gone bad (since I can't finish a whole bottle before it goes bad - how pathetic is that?).

Cheers!