Blue Collar Wine Guide: An Experiment
30 Days. 30 Wines. And the Real People Who Drink Them.
Guest Post: Blue Collar Wine, Lesson One
By Damien Wilson, PhD, Hamel Family Chair in Wine Business at Sonoma State UniversitySpier? Then Botabox… SkinnyGirl… And, yes: Moscato! I’d found wine diva heaven. On hearing about Cathy Huyghe’s adventure into the joy that consumers found in wine, I knew that the era of oratory vinogurgitation was on the wane. Finally, someone influential taking the opportunity to communicate with people who actually drink wine for the enjoyment of it. As a born-again lover of wine, on reading Cathy’s adventure into wine democracy, I recalled the best lesson I ever learned about the wine…
Cathy HuygheNov 5, 2015
Day 8: 2013 Layer Cake Cabernet Sauvignon
It isn’t so often when you take a sip of wine and think, “Yep. That’s exactly the wine for exactly this thing.”The wine was the 2013 Layer Cake Cabernet Sauvignon, and the “thing” was chocolate fondue. But it wasn’t any chocolate fondue… We are exactly one week into this month-long series, and we are also exactly one week after Halloween which, when you have young children, means that there have been mountains of trick-or-treat candy scattered here and there around the house. My friend P. has a brilliant solution for what to do with this left-over candy, which is to unwrap it, put it in a pot, and melt…Cathy HuygheNov 8, 2015
Day 9: 2013 Jadot Beaujolais Villages
I’m afraid I’m starting to make my younger friends a little nervous.I keep asking them about wine. And which ones they drink. And why they like those wines. And who they’re with when they’re drinking them. And what those people are drinking too. ¶ Which, obviously, leads to a conversation about dating. And sex. And Bumble. And Hinge. And Tinder. ¶ (Which, naturally, led me to wonder why these apps weren’t around when I was dating… I mean, Tinder? Really??) ¶ Anyway.Cathy HuygheNov 9, 2015
Day 20: Port Sippers
“It isn’t like it was the best chocolate, or the best red wine. But having them together for the first time told us that hmm, there might…be something here.” ¶ That was a new friend, now in her mid-twenties, talking about “port sippers” when she was in college. The idea was to have chocolate with red wine — usually Ghiradelli squares or Hershey kisses, alongside a high-alcohol red wine. ¶ The combination foreshadowed what, years later, the wine manager at my local Costco would point to, as the reason why Apothic red was their best seller: lots of fruit, some sweetness, and a hit of mocha for good measure.Cathy HuygheNov 22, 2015