Iowa City Wine Geek

Let's set a couple of things straight. I am not a professional sommelier. I am not certified in tasting or distributing wine. I don't work in the wine industry. I am strictly a geek. What that means is I am obsessed with wine. I love the smells, the tastes, and the history of the grape. What makes it geeky (or weird) you ask? Well, I love everything about wine except intoxication. I know that may seem to discredit my opinions but it doesn't bother me so if that bothers you noone's forcing you to read this…

Being really into wine is a fairly recent interest for me. However, I always been fascinated by what seems to be the secret world of wine. I don't know about you but when I would go to a restaurant and take a look at the wine list I could never tell you a single thing about the wines. Except maybe that I like cabernet sauvignon. It was something I always wished I knew, but then I would get my meal and the thought would disappear. Food can be magical that way.

What brought this desire back for me was the discovery of the many great audio and video podcasts and blogs out there in the interweb about wine. From Three Wine Guys to Wine Library TV to Dr Vino's Blog. All worth checking out by the way. They helped by making the introduction to wine easy and fun!

While I still follow all these podcasts religiously I have been following my own path for learning about wine. the first question was what would be my path? There are so many different regions and wines it seemed overwhelming to decide what to focus on first. To help my decide I went for a little stroll though a my local wine purveyor. My wine knowledge was limited to what I had consumed in the past which were primarily red wines. I asked myself which regions had I really enjoyed red wines from? Well Spain for one, and there were definitely quite a few good reds from California and South America that I had in the past. France had always scared me because the labels were difficult to decipher.

How was I going to decide?

Then it hit me, I'll let someone else decide for me!

Enter google search for local wine tastings….

I found a local restaurant here in town, Devotay, that does monthly wine tastings. First up on their schedule was Beaujolais, great!!...….but what the heck is Beaujolais?