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I have a wooden wine rack that sits in my living room and holds 24 bottles of wine. Here in Colorado Springs the type of storage that I have is only a factor during the last 2 weeks of July and the 1st 2 weeks of August as that’s when the temperature soars and we don’t have A/C.

We’re fortunate that we don’t have to worry about the ambient temperature very often but there have been times when I’ve noticed that our red wine is too warm at the time of drinking. Of course, the white wine is stored in the fridge as we don’t usually have many bottles of it to worry about! During the summer season though we do put the open bottles on ice as even they can become too warm for the palate.

If you’re fortunate enough to be able to have open storage like I do and are looking for a stylish Wine Rack then look no further. I was checking this site out earlier today and found that they have a very large selection of functional and stylish racks. They also carry coolers if you’re budget allows and your palate demands!

I fear that even as a redneck I’ll be investing in a cooler sooner rather than later and this may just be the place I purchase from!

Been way too long since I’ve written a post. My apologies to you.

Thanks to Russ over at Californiawinehikes.com for awarding this review of his site the #1 prize - a case of wine!

I’m currently thinking of ways to “redistribute” at least a portion of this prize to the readers here. If you have any cool ideas that would promote this site and would be fun to participate in please let me know by leaving a comment on the About page.

Kudos to the WannaBe Wino as well for taking the runner-up spot. Megan does a fantastic job on her site and I feel lucky to have won out over her. Keep up the great reviews and consistent posting Megan!

Again, many thanks to Russ! We’ll be in his area in Spring of ‘08 and will do the aforementioned Redwoods Hike and will follow it up with a review at that time. If you like the outdoors and wine then it seems you can’t go wrong by contacting Russ and booking your very own California Wine Hike!

What’s in a wine glass? Hopefully, wine!

What makes a wine glass? The shape.

Don’t believe me? Heck, I didn’t believe it until the other night.

We were drinking a very nice bottle of wine and waxing poetic about the various flavors and tastes and smells in this wine. Out of nowhere my wife asks me to trade glasses with her. “What for?” I ask. After all, I have my favorite wine glass that I drink out of and she has her favorite glass that she drinks out of. However, the glasses are different shapes.

Forget about the fact that both of these glasses have white wine in them. You know that as a Level 4 I rarely drink white wine. Our glasses were full of red wine! My glass is on the left and Robin’s glass is on the right.

My wife always likes to show me up about her wine glass and tease me about how attached I am to mine but I indulge her and swap glasses for a taste of wine. What followed was interesting…I got a different set of tastes from her glass than I did from my own glass. She experienced the same thing.

Hmm…looks like those Riedel people are on to something after all.

But why did it taste different? My immediate discovery was that I was able to put my nose further into her glass than I was my own. This led to different aroma qualities as well as the fact that when I took a drink/taste I wasn’t required to tilt my head back as far as when I drank from my own glass. This results in the wine hitting further back on my tongue initially and therefore producing a different set of flavors. They weren’t entirely different but they were different and enhanced.

When drinking out of my own preferred glass I can’t get my nose in as deep and my head tilt causes the wine to hit the front of my tongue first. This results in some different, enhanced flavors.

What I noticed with the wine we were drinking at the time (review to come over the weekend) was that with my glass I noticed more fruit flavors and with her glass I got more of the earthy flavors. It was an interesting experiment and one I will try again.

Go here for a peek at the Riedel Sommelier series of glasses and try this out the next time you’re drinking wine!