The Nerdy Wine

Wine shopping, while fun, can be incredibly time consuming. Unless you're a connoisseur, chances are you'll stare at the bottles until you can figure out if you want a white, a red, or possibly a rose wine. Then you'll stare at the bottles until you figure out what grape of wine you want, and/or possibly a particular brand/vinyard.

Well, my fellow nerds, I've found the perfect wine.

The Little Penguin

Not only is the labelling irresistably cute, but I've also discovered that Linus Torvalds, of Linux fame, was bitten by a Little Penguin (the animal for which the wine is named after), which inspired Torvalds to use a Little Penguin for the mascot of his operating system (Tux, if you don't know). How can you not love a bottle as fun as this?

On their website, there's also a personality test (making wine shopping that much easier) which allows types your personality to their wine. My friends, I'm a merlot.
"With your charm and charisma, it's no wonder you're so popular. It is that easy-going attitude that makes you the preferred penguin wherever you are. Of course, you're not one to squawk, but you can't help it if your plumage turns heads. Rest assured, you are as smooth as a bottle of the Little Penguin Merlot."
Ironically enough, I'm having the Merlot tonight with lasagna.

Wine Shopping

Everytime I buy wine, I invariably spend at least a half hour looking at the wine bottles in the store. While I like wine, I don't drink a lot of it, and have definitely not been inducted into the cult of wine drinking.

This time spent looking at bottles of wine is exactly that; usually I know the type of wine I want to buy, and a couple of minutes is spent looking for that particular variety. But after I find the section of "Zinfindel" or "Pinot Noir" or "Reisling", the rest of the time is spent staring at the labels from the different vinyards.

I went to Albertsons' today to retrieve disposable pie pans so F can confiscate the leftovers and feed the starving individuals at KXLF. And I thought that, besides bringing an apple-cranberry pie to Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, it would be cool to bring a bottle of wine as well. And then I thought that I should buy a bottle of wine for myself, even though that adventure usually ends disastrously. Now I'm standing in front of the wine display at Albertsons', looking for not just one bottle of wine but two.

I ended up buying a bottle of Merlot for the hosts of the party tomorrow. Pinot Noir and Blackberry Merlot are the only two red wines I've been able to drink and not instantly get moody and emotional (not to mention a splitting headache), so I tend to stick to white wines and Zinfindels.

Let's segue into the last time I experimented with red wine: My significant other at the time had just dumped me, and I was intensely emotional and all alone at home. The only thing I had to drink at the house was a bottle of Black Opal's Cabernet Sauvingnon. I drank two sips and ended up curled into a ball in the corner of my room being even more emotional than I was when I started. Now you all know why I'm leery of red wine.

Back in the present, I bought a bottle of Cafe Zinfindel for myself (from Ernest & Julio Gallo), because I had a glass at a dinner party the other night and thought it was most excellent.

One of these days I'll have to blog about my experiences with beer and liquor. There are some interesting stories, I'll tell you that.