Interruptus

Due to another death in the family (my grandmother passed away), we'll be silent again through Tuesday. Please have some patience with us and we'll return to our regular programming as soon as we can.

Back on Monday

I've been fighting off spring allergies, swamped with "real world" work, aggressively promoting the upcoming KLP Scholarship benefit, and suffering from a bit of writer's block. But we're spending this weekend at my Grandma's in rural Indiana. No internet access. I anticipate it will be a bit relaxing.

Monday I'll be back with what I hope is my own little restaurant week, as we've recently been to Oceanaire, The Palace, and Red.

So my apologies for the dearth of posts, but I'll hopefully be ready to jump back in on Monday!  Have a great weekend!

News Update

I'm off judging a wine competition for most of Friday. Because of that, the weekly Featured Wine Events post won't go up until Saturday morning. (I ran out of time for everything this week!)  In the meantime, you can view all the events – featured and recurring – on the Cincinnati Wine Events Calendar.

If you have emailed me in the last week or two, I've been incredibly wrapped up in a real-world  (non-wine) deadline. That's over now, for the most part, and next week I will start pawing through my wine emails, and I promise I'll get back to you.

Thanks for your patience!

Featured Cincinnati Wine Events … and My Thanks

Folks, I've got nothing.

Next week is Christmas week, so one-off wine tastings are few and far between. The following week is New Year's Eve. I have a post detailing the events I know of as of right now. If you learn of more, please post them in the comments on that post.

Other than that, remember that the regular tastings may or may not be occurring over the next two weeks. Even your favorite retailers need some time to enjoy the holidays. 

Here are some posts to keep you up to date for the holidays:

• New Year's Eve events
• Break Out the Bubbly (you can also read my article on this in the new hard-copy issue of Taste Magazine)

Until the end of the year, I'll be working my tail off on "real world work" so you won't hear a peep from me for about two weeks. However, Kevin has volunteered to write about Christmas beer next week, so expect 2-3 posts from him.

Now that business is out of the way, let me take a moment to wish each of you a happy holiday and extend a huge thank you. 

I have had an amazing year in wine, and I couldn't have done it without the support of you, my fantastic and loyal readers. I hope each of you have a wonderful end to 2008 and a prosperous 2009.

Wishing you health, wine, and wisdom in the upcoming year. Remember, life is too short to drink bad wine.

Cheers,

Michelle

Local Wine Tasting Event Calendar

Friday Interactive Wine Tasting Map

Saturday Interactive Wine Tasting Map

WBW #48: Getting Back to Our [Wine] Roots

This isn’t at all the post I was going to write for Wine Blogging Wednesday this month. When I learned that this month’s tasting was all about getting back to your wine roots, I approached it academically. I was going to tell you about the Bordeaux that first illuminated me on the concept of terroir. We even drank our second bottle of it for this event (1998 Chateâu Lafon-Rochet).

I was lying in bed thinking about another post I wanted to write, this one about Tobin James and his Cincinnati connections, and it hit me. Who cares when I learned about terroir? Getting back to my roots should be an emotional connection, not academic. And I knew exactly what to write about.

When Kevin & I first met, back in 2000, we both enjoyed wine but we didn’t know much about it. We certainly weren’t the hobbyists and collectors we are today. Our first date was at a restaurant in O’Bryonville called Chateau Pomije. For our first Valentine’s day, in 2001, we braved a snow storm to trek out to the Chateau Pomije winery in Indiana. The owner, a rather fun and knowledgeable older gentlemen, would hold court in the outer lobby and gift shop, sharing tastes of his wines before everyone entered the restaurant proper. (The restaurant, by the way, had excellent barbecue.) 

At the time, I didn’t live overly far from the O’Bryonville restaurant. We often grabbed friends and visited for wine tastings. I joined their wine club – my first ever – which introduced me to wines outside of my previous purview of Columbia Crest and Dynamite Vineyards. Kevin and I continued to head out to Indiana, buying a lot of the Chateau Pomije wines and enjoying the restaurant, with its views out into the vineyard. As our own relationship changed, Chateau Pomije changed right along with us. The O’Bryonville location dropped the restaurant and became a fantastic wine bar and wine shop. The vineyard itself was sold to an out-of-country group. It’s not the same anymore.

But before the vineyard was sold, Kevin and I were married. It was probably right around 5 years ago that we showed up at their door on a Monday evening, not knowing they were closed. That older gentlemen let us in anyway and we purchased a lot of wine. In fact, Chateau Pomije Winery was the first place I ever purchased a case of wine. On that particular trip, we stocked up for the wedding. We purchased a bottle of amazing (to my memory) late harvest Riesling for each member of our wedding party. We also bought a half-case of sparkling wine, each bottle specially engraved, for us and for each set of our parents.

There are so many connections now to Chateau Pomije. I only recently realized that the young guy who helped me in the old wine shop/restaurant – and signed me up for the wine club – was probably Liquor Direct’s Kevin Keith, now a good friend. Chateau Pomije was there for my first date with my husband and it was there for my wedding. We took a bottle of their sparkling to the Dominican Republic with us for the ceremony, and shared the other bottles at our reception back home. Since then, I’ve talked with Tim Shumrick a little. Tim runs the O’Bryonville wine shop. It was his dad who sold us our wedding wines. His brother is Toby James, of Tobin James Winery in California. Wine runs in their family.

Chateau Pomije is many wines to me. But it was the first winery that ever meant something to me. I’ve always associated music with particular events in my life. Chateau Pomije taught me that wine can bring on that same wonderful nostalgia. It’s not always the wine that matters, but the memories that come with it.

Thanks Lenn, for hosting a great Wine Blogging Wednesday, and cheers to another four years!