Vegas Wineaux

I remember one day tasting about 65 wines. Yes. Tasting. Not drinking. And my budget died. What can I say? The wines were spectacular, and I simply had to have them!

Ah. 2020. Can I use the word “shitshow” on my own site? Well, I am. In March, I had packed up all of my (paid for) vacation stuff, reserved a wonderful house in Paso Robles for the week, had rented a car, arranged for the pet/house sitter, and was good to go. I planned to take the WSET III exam in Buellton on Sunday and then spend the rest of the week in Paso, writing, photographing, and chilling. All of this was supposed to happen the third week of March. And then California closed. Everything. Shortly afterward, Nevada closed. As with most folks, I spent the next several months in the house. I gained the requisite weight, and for a while, watched more TV than I ever have before in my entire life. And then a few things happened. A few months earlier, I’d started a book (a romance novel), and I continued to work on the one chapter I’d begun. I also took up my (very) old art hobby and found that I still had the chops. Magically, my book began to take shape and I've been able to do a few small frameable watercolors and mixed media. Who knew. I did grocery runs for my aunt and cousin, both of whom were high-risk, and only twice stood in line for a ridiculous amount of time for stuff. Usually pet stuff. I have an Amazon subscription for paper towels and toilet paper, so I always had a good stash. I probably could have...

Yes, I've been away for a while. That said, I published a couple of posts in 2020 and I don't know what happened to them. The most important one is the news that I lost my mother, The Tough Old Broad™, last year. She did not pass away from Covid. I think she was lonely because everything was shut down and she had no visitors. Even though she understood (sort of) that we weren't allowed to come to visit her, I think the lack of companionship from loved ones really affected her. She would have been 100 this year, so her emotions were delicate. That said, she did tell the nurses that she was sick and tired of "eating that so-called shit that you people call food," a couple of days before she passed. Feisty till the end! The photo, by the way, is one that I took when we were out several years ago celebrating her 90th birthday. We were in Downtown Vegas and she loved fondling hugging the statue! And for those of you who Mom well, I'm sad to say that she did not "get some" before she passed. She had hoped for an interlude with a young (under 80) man before she left us.  

For those of us who can't (or won't) drink an entire bottle of wine in one sitting, "Leftover Wine" is a way of life.

Unfortunately, many of their alcohol laws give the impression that they left Prohibition behind reluctantly and are making up for its absence with rather odious laws.

Their first game was just days after 1 October, the deadliest mass shooting in American history. The Knights embraced Las Vegas and Vegas fiercely embraced them back. The rest, as they say, is history.

September is, through an act of the United States Congress in 2007, National Bourbon Heritage Month. Along with wine and other regular articles, I will be sharing occasional postings on my favorite spirit, Bourbon, through the entire month. While I don't drink a lot of spirits, I do have a couple of favorites. My absolute favorite, of which Single Malt Scotch (the peatier the better) is only a close second, is good old American Bourbon. Because I enjoy it so much, I decided to get much more educated about it and start reading books on the subject. I think I have read a total of six books on whiskey, most of which were specifically about the history and business of Bourbon. I felt that I needed to know the mechanics of Bourbon as well. About Bourbon Curious I've learned about Bourbon tasting, flavor profiles, grain origins, nose, palate, etc. in reading Bourbon Curious by author Fred Minnick. In other words, this is the Bourbon equivalent of a wine study manual. I first purchased Bourbon Curious on audible.com shortly after it first appeared on that platform. Although it was originally published in 2015, it wasn’t until this year that audible.com presented it. I found it to be fascinating and enlightening and knew it to be different from the other Bourbon books that I had read. It is broken down into three parts, with a total of nine chapters and an introduction, an appendix on brand histories, notes, bibliography, a comprehensive index, a minuscule “About the Author”...

Pescetarians and vegetarians may find this too big a wine to have with halibut or tofu.

it's okay to still have stuff in your bucket list, no matter how old you are, or even if you think that you've done it all. You haven't.

I purchased a couple of bottles - one for sharing and one for binge-watching something romantic on Netflix. Can't pair this with a slasher movie.

I often tell people that if you live in Las Vegas – or thereabouts – and you are bored, then you are doing something wrong!

Plus it's America's Whiskey (with an "e"), and that makes it special. 'Murica!