Wannabe Wino

I found this bottle of dessert wine lurking in the cellar during one of our reorganization projects. I purchased it in 2005 from the Williamsburg Winery in Williamsburg, VA back when I lived down there and was a frequent visitor, particularly to scoop up bottles of the Governor's White! This wine was a 2002 Williamsburg Winery Late Harvest Vidal. I bought it at the winery, it had a real cork closure, clocked in at 11% alcohol by volume, had 13% residual sugar, and I couldn't tell you what I paid, though the current vintage sells for $24.

On the nose the wine was sweet, showing honey and apricot. In the mouth, much of the same. It has held up incredibly well over the years, and actually tasted even better than I remember. The color had also intensified, though I can't find the picture of it that I took for you. Given how well it's drinking now, but also taking into consideration that it still had a nice backbone, I'd say this one still has some life for aging in it. I will also admit that it was not stored under perfect conditions....it lived on my counter wine rack in my townhouse for well over a year, survived a summer in VA in un-airconditioned climate, then lived in the racks in our one bedroom apartment for almost a year before it moved to our house for almost another year. And it still tasted great!

Now, I would hazard a guess that many an avid wine drinker finds themselves, at one time or another with a bag of corks. Or a box, or perhaps, as was the case in my last apartment, an entire drawer. For whatever the reason, I think many of us just don't want to throw the corks away. This is a picture of our bag of corks. It currently resides on top of our wine fridge. At the moment, it is not as alarmingly full as it once was, since over the summer I did this to our corks in order to make placecards for our wedding. At the time, I wasn't sure I would have enough. The joke was on me. After making over one hundred of these placecards for our wedding, I still had a bag of corks. And that bag has not gotten any smaller in size over the course of the fall. So today I went and bought this corkboard kit at the Curious Grape. I first saw one back in the day at the Williamsburg Winery and thought it was pretty darn nifty which is why I had all the corks in the first place. Then I thought it would be much more fun to use them at the wedding since they were all bottles we had consumed at one point or another over the previous 3 years. (I'm really not sure that says great things about our consumption habits, but hey, I was a law student at the time, does that give me a good enough excuse?) Personal touch and whatnot. Plus we put half bottles of wine in all the welcome bags at the hotel, so it was kind of going on a theme or something.

Which brings us to today's purchase. The kit says you need around 200 corks. Which will probably leave me with around 200 extras. So what to do with the rest? I did see a creative idea this year. My mom sent me a reindeer ornament made of corks. It was quite cute, and clearly thought up by someone who has a creative gene I am missing. Oh well. Anyone need a cork trivet? Or twelve? And please, tell me I'm not the only nut that saves wine corks. And if I am, lie to me, I promise, I won't hold it against you! I'll take a picture of the finished product, hopefully I won't hotglue a cork to myself.

Go over to Fermentation and read this post.

I knew that these laws were being pushed here by lobbyists. As we were visiting Virginia Wineries earlier this year at least one of them, Tarara, had a sign up asking patrons to sign a petition against the enactment of the law forbidding VA wineries to sell directly to retailers and restaurants. Something they had previously been permitted to do.

I wish I knew what good, if any, wine distributors actually did. To me, it seems like they are simply a middle-man in the process of getting wine to retailers and restaurants, thus driving up the cost for the ultimate consumer and hurting small wineries, especially local ones who could use any leg up they can get.

The development of this law makes me sad for the future of the wine industry in VA. And for me, since I doubt I will be able to get the Governor's White from the Williamsburg Winery for $7 in the store anymore.